Star Wars

The New Jedi Order

Enemy Lines I

Rebel Dreams

by Aaron Allston

DRAMATIS PERSONAE

The Jedi

Luke Skywalker; Jedi Master (male human)

Mara Jade Skywalker; Jedi Master (female human)

Jaina Solo; Jedi Knight (female human)

Kyp Durron; Jedi Master (male human)

Corran Horn; Jedi Knight (male human)

Tahiri Veila; Jedi student (female human)

Alema Rar; Jedi Knight (female Twi'lek)

With the New Republic Military

General Wedge Antilles (male human)

Lando Calrissian; merchant (male human)

Colonel Tycho Celchu (male human)

Commander Eldo Davip; captain, Lusankya (male human)

Colonel Gavin Darklighter; Rogue Squadron leader (male human)

Captain Krai Nevil; Rogue Squadron pilot (male Quarren)

Captain Garik "the Face" Loran; Wraith Squadron leader (male human)

Captain Yakown Reth; Blackmoon Squadron leader (male human)

Iella Wessiri Antilles; Intelligence director (female human)

Jagged Fel; Twin Suns Squadron pilot (male human)

Voort "Piggy" saBinring; Twin Suns Squadron pilot (male Gammorean)

YVH 1-1A (masculine droid)

Civilians

Danni Quee; scientist (female human)

Wolam Tser; holodocumentarian (male human)

Tarn Elgrin; holocam operator (male human)

With the Yuuzhan Vong

Tsavong Lah; warmaster (male Yuuzhan Vong)

Czulkang Lah; commander (male Yuuzhan Vong)

Viqi Shesh; former Senator (female human)

Maal Lah; commander (male Yuuzhan Vong)

Denua Ku; warrior (male Yuuzhan Vong)

Wyrpuuk Cha; commander (male Yuuzhan Vong)

Kadlah Cha; warrior (male Yuuzhan Vong)

Takhaff Uul; priest (male Yuuzhan Vong)

Ghithra Dal; shaper (male Yuuzhan Vong)

ONE

One Month Ago, Pyria System:

Borleias Occupation, Day 1

"A god cannot die," Charat Kraal said. "Therefore it can have no fear of

death. So who is braver, a god or a mortal?"

Charat Kraal was a pilot of  the Yuuzhan Vong - humanoid, a  little over

two meters in height.  His skin, where it  was not covered by  geometric

tattoos, was pale, marked  everywhere by the white,  slightly reflective

lines of old scars. Some years-ago  mishap had eaten away the center  of

his face,  eliminating even  the diminutive  nose common  to the Yuuzhan

Vong, leaving behind brown-crusted  cartilage and horizontal holes  into

his sinus passages. His forehead angled back less dramatically than many

of the  Yuuzhan Vong  and looked  a trifle  more like  the forehead of a

human, for which two warriors had  taunted him, for which he had  killed

them. He disguised the trait as much as he could by yanking out the last

of the hair on his head and adding skulltop tattoos that drew the eye up

and back, away  from the offending  forehead. One day  he would earn  an

implant that would further mask his deformity and end his problem.

He wore an ooglith cloaker, the transparent environment suit of  Yuuzhan

Vong  pilots,  over a  simple  warrior's loincloth.  Both  garments were

living creatures, engineered and bred to perform only the tasks demanded

of them, to aid the Yuuzhan Vong in their pursuit of glory.

He sat in the cockpit of his coralskipper, the irregular rocklike  space

fighter of  his kind,  but he  did not  wear his  cognition hood  at the

moment; the masklike creature that  kept him in mental contact  with his

craft, that allowed him to sense  with its senses and pilot it  with the

agility of thought rather than muscle and reaction, was set to the  side

while his coralskipper cruised on routine patrol.

He and his  mission partner, Penzak  Kraal, were in  distant orbit above

the  world  Borleias.  The  planet had  been  recently  seized  from the

infidels native to  this galaxy so  that it could  be used as  a staging

area for the  Yuuzhan Vong assault  on the galactic  throneworld of Coru

scant. Borleias  was an  agreeably green  world, not  overgrown with the

dead, crusty dwellings of the infidels, not strewn with their  unnatural

implements  of  technology;  only  a  military  base,  now  smashed, had

affronted the Yuuzhan Vong with evidence of infidel occupation.

The voice  of Penzak  Kraal emerged  from the  small, head-shaped villip

mounted  on  the  cockpit  wall just  beneath  the  canopy.  Though most

coralskippers were  not equipped  with villips,  relying instead  on the

telepathic  signals   of  yammosk   war  coordinators   for  all   their

communications,  long-distance patrol  craft did  call for  a means  for

direct  communications. "Don't  be an  idiot. If  a god  is the  god  of

bravery, then  by definition  he must  be braver  than any Yuuzhan Vong,

than anything living."

"I wonder. Let us say then  that you could become immortal as  the gods,

and never die, but remain one of the Yuuzhan Vong. You would never  face

death. Could you then  be as brave as  the Yuuzhan Vong? You  could kill

forever but  never truly  risk death,  defy death,  choose your time and

place of death. Which is better, to  be brave for a lifetime or to  kill

forever?"

"Who cares? The choice is not ours.  But if I were to choose, I  think I

would choose immortality. Live long  enough, and you might learn  how to

be  brave as  a Yuuzhan  Vong again.  Kill long  enough, and  you  could

perhaps learn to kill a star."

Charat Kraal sobered. "I have heard..."

"What?"

"That the infidels did that. Learned to kill a star."

He heard  Penzak Kraal  hiss in  irritation; in  the villip  he saw  his

partner's lopsided features go even more off center as his mouth  pulled

down in an expression of contempt. "So what if they did? They killed  it

the wrong way, with their wrong minds and their wrong devices. And, like

idiots, they  must have  lost the  secret. Or  they'd be  destroying the

worldships one by one."

"I  have  also  heard..."  Charat Kraal  lowered  his  voice,  a foolish

instinct, since no one but Penzak Kraal could be listening to him. "That

gods may smile upon them, too. On the infidels."

"Ridiculous."

"Can you know the minds of the gods?"

"I can no more know the minds  of the gods than summon one of  the enemy

battleships to destroy for my personal glory."

In the distance, away from Borleias, many kilometers from them, an enemy

battleship winked into existence, its bow pointed toward them. The  ship

was  already up  to speed;  it grew  rapidly as  it neared  them, as  it

approached Borleias.

"Penzak, you fool."

"My words did not summon it,  you idiot." The villip's face blurred  and

adjusted, reflecting a change  to Penzak's features; Penzak  had  pulled

on  his  cognition  hood. Charat  did  likewise.  His surroundings,  the

cockpit interior, seemed to become transparent, giving him a view in all

directions  through  the  senses of  the  coralskipper,  showing him  in

breathtaking detail the onrushing enemy ship.

No, now it  was ships. More  and more of  the loathsome things  of metal

were dropping out  of hyperspace, all  aimed at Borleias.  At Charat and

Penzak.

A moment later, Charat could feel  a buzz through the cognition hood,  a

telltale sign  that Penzak  was sending  a warning  to the  Domain Kraal

commander on Borleias.

The foremost  New Republic  ship, a  sharply angled  triangle in  white,

passed over the  two coralskippers, blotting  out the sun,  casting them

into shadow. Nowhere near so large  as a Yuuzhan Vong worldship, it  was

still of impressive size,  and so near that  Charat felt he could  reach

out and drag his finger along its hull as it passed.

Penzak Kraal sent his coralskipper into  a dive and turned to match  the

larger craft's course.  Charat paced him.  Above, he saw  thruster gouts

from  the  ship's  belly  herald  the  launching  of  the  hated infidel

starfighers.

"How do we hurt them worst?" Charat asked.

"Follow me in," Penzak said. "While they're launching. Don't engage  the

fighters; bait them so  they follow us. The  ship won't fire on  us with

the fighters in  close proximity. We'll  enter their launching  bays and

destroy the facilities there, then gut the ship from within." He  looped

around, rising and angling in toward the ship's belly. Charat followed.

Mon Mothma, one of  the newest cruisers in  the New Republic's fleet,  a

Star  Destroyer  refitted   with  gravity-well  generators   capable  of

interfering with  the short  jumps made  by Yuuzhan  Vong craft, cruised

straight toward  Borleias from  the point  where it  had dropped  out of

hyperspace. This  hadn't been  a timed  drop -  they'd plotted  a course

straight for  the planet  Borleias, and  the planet's  gravity well  had

dragged  them into  realspace when  they'd come  close enough.  And  now

before them was the blue-green world they had come to recapure.

"No sign  of a  Yuuzhan Vong  worldship in  orbit," reported  the sensor

officer, a Mon Calamari male with deep blue skin. "The two coralskippers

are turning to engage."

General Wedge  Antilles, a  lean man  with a  careworn face and military

posture,  commander of  the fleet  group for  which Mon  Mothma was  the

flagship, nodded. "Gunnery, stay on them, vape them if they come against

us. Fighter control, continue launching starfighter squadrons."

"Yes, sir."

"Yes, sir."

Data screens lit up with colored blips as New Republic starfighters -  X

wings, A-9s, B-wings, E-wings, and more-streamed out of the docking bays

and turned toward the planet.  Wedge, standing at the captain's  station

toward  the  rear  of  the  spacious  bridge,  ignored  the  screens. He

concentrated instead on the live view of Borleias, which filled the main

viewport at the bow end of the bridge.

I hope  the Vong  here have  come to  love this  world, he told himself.

Because I'm going to take it  from them. They're going to learn  what it

is to lose the things they love.

Luke Skywalker  hit his  thrusters. His  X-wing roared  out of  the main

docking bay,  losing altitude  relative to  the Mon  Mothma. Behind him,

eleven pilots of Twin Suns Squadron, the temporary X-wing squad that was

his command, formed up on him. "Twin Suns away," he said.

"Twin Suns, copy." That would be the controller on Mon Mothma''s bridge.

"Be advised, two coralskippers are maneuvering into your flight path."

Luke glanced at his sensor board. Two red blips were indeed turning from

below to head  toward them. "Squadron,  follow me out,  let's give these

two the gauntlet treatment."

He heard a chorus of acknowledgments.  There was tension in some of  the

voices, but not  alarm. All his  pilots were veterans,  survivors of the

Sabers, the Shocks, and other squadrons that had been reduced to  shield

trios, wing  pairs, and  solo pilots  during the  Yuuzhan Vong attack on

Coruscant mere  days earlier.  Two of  them, forming  with him  a shield

trio, were  his wife,  Mara Jade  Skywalker, and  the Corellian-Security

officer-turned-pilot-turned-Jedi named Corran Horn. All his pilots  were

disciplined and competent. Many wanted revenge.

Luke understood how they felt. The Vong, aided by their human agent Viqi

Shesh, had almost managed to kidnap his and Mara's infant son, Ben, just

days ago. They had  killed his nephew Anakin,  and his nephew Jacen  was

missing. The losses, especially  that of his apprentice  Anakin, created

an ache within him that he could not soothe.

In his youth, Luke would have been anxious for payback, but today he set

that portion  of himself  aside. That  was dark  side thinking, immature

thinking. It  had been  a long  time since  he had  been a  smooth-faced

innocent; the scars of  combat and lines of  age had accumulated on  his

face, matching the weight of experience and calm that had accumulated on

his spirit.

He extended his perceptions and sought Mara with them. He found her  and

almost flinched  away from  the contact;  she was  now an  icy presence,

concentrated totally on their mission.

He shrugged. Iciness was better than one alternative. Mara, despite  her

cool and controlled manner, was as  anguished as he by the near  loss of

Ben and the loss of their nephews,  and it would be no surprise to  find

her lit like a lightsaber with  a desire for revenge. The fact  that she

wasn't meant that she was in control.

"S-foils to attack position," Luke  said, and suited action to  words by

flipping the switch that split  the X-wings' flight surfaces into  their

familiar  X-shaped  attack profile.  "First  and third  trios,  take the

leader, the rest on the wingmate. Fire at will." He linked his lasers to

quad  fire, so  that all  four would  fire with  a single  press of  the

trigger, and  opened up  on the  lead coralskipper.  Four red streams of

destructive laser energy lanced out against the coralskipper -

No, it was eight streams. Luke's  burst, aimed at the starboard side  of

the skip,  never reached  its target;  a blackness  appeared before  it,

distorting space around it like a gigantic magnifying lens, drawing  the

laserfire  into it.  Those four  red lances  of energy  simply bent  and

disappeared.  But  Mara's  burst,  aimed  at  the  port  side,  hit  the

coralskipper an instant after Luke's vanished. He grinned; she must have

been using her own Force abilities to monitor him, as well. She couldn't

have timed it so expertly  otherwise. Her lasers raked across  the enemy

starfighter's  hull  until  the  distortion  flicked  over  to interpose

itself,  then  Luke fired  again,  chipping away  at  the coralskipper's

stern. His blasts  were joined by  Corran's. The coral-like  material of

the skip's hull superheated and the lasers tore red-hot gouges along the

surface.

Luke sent his X-wing into  evasive maneuvers, moving back and  forth, up

and down with  the randomness of  a flying insect.  He saw his  target's

counterattack, a glowing missile from the coralskipper's plasma  cannon,

flash by to port, far enough away  to be no danger to himself, Mara,  or

Corran. In fact, there  were no cries of  alarm from his squadmates,  no

sudden and tragic disappearances of New Republic blips from his sensors.

"They're not engaging." That was  Twin Suns Eleven, a Commenorian  woman

named Tilath Keer. "Turning to pursue." Luke saw the blips of Twin  Suns

Four through  Six and  Ten through  Twelve turning  back, following  the

coralskippers straight in toward Mon Mothma.

Luke felt a little tingle, but whether a warning from the Force or  from

his own years of combat  experience he could not tell.  "Negative, break

off," he said. "Do  not engage. Twin Suns,  turn to original course  and

form up on Record Time. Mon Mothma, these skips are yours."

"Copy, Twins One."

Luke  turned back  toward Borleias,  saw his  pilots breaking  off  from

pursuit  of  the  coralskippers  and maneuvering  to  form  up  with the

squadron. The moment his fighters  were clear of the coralskippers,  Mon

Mothma's laser cannons opened up. One of the coralskippers was destroyed

instantly, its dovin basal unable to absorb all the incoming damage with

its void; the craft was reduced in a flash to glowing, molten  particles

no larger  than a  fingernail. The  other, apparently  more skillful  at

soaking up damage  with its void,  still sustained a  grazing impact and

spun  away  from Mon  Mothma,  out of  control,  no danger  to  the Star

Destroyer.

Luke shook his  head at the  Yuuzhan Vong's pointless  sacrifice, at the

sad waste of  life, and formed  his fighters up  in an assault  wedge in

front of Record Time.

Record Time was an armed troop transport. At nearly 170 meters, with two

bulbous main portions - the larger stern housed the bridge and personnel

bays, the smaller stern the engines - connected by a narrow access tube,

the vessel  looked impossibly  vulnerable, impossibly  fragile. But  its

captain-owner,  a  private trader  -  a smuggler,  Luke  believed -  had

volunteered its use  to General Antilles  during the fall  of Coruscant,

claiming it was the  fastest, toughest vessel of  its type. Now its  bay

was clear of trade goods and was filled with soldiers instead.

Luke's comm unit hissed with a  moment of static, then a woman's  voice:

"Record Time to Twin Suns Leader, all set."

"Twin Suns to Record Time, you  set the pace. We won't have  any trouble

staying where we need to be."

The transport  surged forward,  not fast  by starfighter  standards, but

quickly enough for a freighter. Luke calculated its rate of acceleration

and brought his X-wing up in  front of the freighter's bridge. Mara  and

Corran settled in with him. Another shield trio dropped back to the port

side of Record Time, a third to the starboard side, and the last  astern

of the transport.

All  around  Twin   Suns  Squadron,  starfighter   squadrons,  frigates,

destroyers, transports, and shuttles began accelerating to battle speed.

Luke heard Colonel Gavin Darklighter's voice over the operation channel:

"Rogue Squadron  to Borleias.  We're back.  We kicked  your butt  twenty

years ago. Now we're here to do it again."

Luke grinned.

Squadrons of coralskippers  were already climbing  to their altitude  by

the time Twin Suns Squadron began its descent into atmosphere.  Slightly

longer than  X-wings and  comparable spacecraft,  the coralskippers were

far more massive. They were dense constructions of yorik coral, tapering

toward the bow,  broadening and deepening  toward the stern,  with rough

exteriors reflecting their organic origins.

They could be quite beautiful, Luke had decided. The ones rising against

them and the two they'd seen after leaving the Mon Mothma shared a color

scheme, a  pastel red  and a  pearlescent silver  swirled together  in a

mottled pattern. At the bow, tucked into a sort of niche grown into  the

coral  surface, was  the round  reddish shape  of the  dovin basal,  the

creature whose gravitic  powers dragged the  coralskipper from point  to

point in space and also brought up defensive voids that drank in  damage

like a Tatooine bantha  drank water. On the  top surface, just ahead  of

the point where the ship's body  swelled to its greatest width, was  the

canopy over the cockpit; this one was tinted blue.

Their beauty  was irrelevant.  As soon  as they  came within range, they

opened up with their plasma cannons, life-forms that spewed  superheated

materials  that could  eat through  a starfighter's  hull. "  Break  and

engage,  cover  the transport,"  Luke  commanded, and  suited  action to

words; he spun out in a  rapid descent relative to the planet  below and

opened fire, trusting  his wingmates to  stay with him,  to fire out  of

phase with him and at different  portions of his target to overload  and

baffle the dovin basal. This time the creature defending his target skip

intercepted  Mara's   shot,  fired   from  slightly   below  the  skip's

centerline, but  couldn't whip  the void  around fast  enough to counter

Luke's and Corran's shots, which scoured the yorik coral all around  the

pilot's canopy.

Superheated blobs  from his  target's wingmate  flashed toward  Luke's X

wing. Luke heard a squeal of  alarm from R2-D2, who was tucked  into the

astromech bay behind his canopy, but ignored it as an irrelevant detail.

He continued  his rolling  descent, varying  the speed  of his  roll and

distance covered each half a  standard second, and saw the  plasma flash

between his snubfighter and Mara's.

Then the three of  them were well below  their targets and rising  again

behind  the  coralskippers'  sterns.  The  skips'  voids  swung  around,

hovering at  the sterns,  ready to  soak up  infinite amounts  of weapon

energy.

The   first   engagements  between   coralskippers   and  New   Republic

starfighters  had  been terrible  for  the New  Republic.  Even seasoned

pilots had been thrown off balance by the skips' incredible  durability,

by the  failure of  proton torpedoes  and laser  blasts sucked  into the

voids to do any harm to the vehicles, by the tenacity of the damage done

by plasma cannons,  which kept on  eating away at  vehicle surfaces well

after they'd hit.

Now  things  were different.  The  surviving pilots  had  adjusted their

tactics and passed their information  along to their fellows. The  rules

of  the game  were to  overload the  dovin basals,  striking them   from

several directions at once to ensure that some damage got through to hit

the coralskippers' surfaces. Starfighter pilots had to avoid taking  any

hits at all from  skip weaponry; any hit  could eat through shields  and

prove fatal.

And there were new  tactics all the time,  in every battle. Mara  surged

ahead  of  Luke  and  Corran,  flying  in  a  pattern  that  was   oddly

predictable, and drew fire from both coralskippers. She became  suddenly

erratic in  her flight,  as random  as only  Force skills  could make  a

pilot,  and flashed  ahead until  she was  just behind  the skips.   She

sideslipped to port, and as both streams of plasma cannon fire  followed

her, the fire from the starboard skip crossed the body of the  port-side

skip;  two  balls of  fire  thudded into  the  skip's belly  before  the

starboard pilot compensated.

The port skip's void whipped around to shield the skip's belly. In  that

instant, Mara drop-fired a quad-linked burst of laserfire.

The skip detonated,  hiding Mara's X-wing  from sight for  a moment, and

Luke fired a laser stutter-burst  at the starboard skip's underside.  He

hoped that the pilot's confusion at having hurt his own wingmate,  along

with the dovin basal's effort to  shield this skip from the damage  from

Mara's attack, would leave it momentarily vulnerable.

He was right.  His lasers hit  the skip's underside  and chewed through.

That skip vectored  away, trailing fluids  that instantly froze  at this

near-vacuum altitude.

He checked his sensors. Two skips down. Mara was coming around to rejoin

him and Corran. Diagnostics said his X-wing was undamaged.

Farther out, two of his Twin  Suns snubfighters were gone. The pilot  of

one of them was extravehicular;

Luke hoped  that the  flight suit  would keep  the pilot  alive until  a

rescue shuttle could arrive. "Good tactics, Mara," he said.

"You always know the sweet thing to say."

Luke grinned and came around toward a new set of opponents.

Starfighter squadrons held the Yuuzhan Vong response to three points  of

conflict in orbit. The Twin Suns group took advantage of the opportunity

and  roared down  through the  atmosphere in  an undefended  zone,  then

banked toward the coralskippers'  launch point, which had  been detected

on gravitic sensors. It was, not coincidentally, the same map coordinate

as Borleias's  New Republic  military base.  Luke 'didn't  relish seeing

what had become of the base during the Yuuzhan Vong occupation.

As they  dropped low  over the  jungle canopy,  Luke could  make out the

target zone ahead. It didn't have the same profile as the holocube  he'd

studied. The main building seemed to be lower, broader.

Small chips of  yorik coral were  rising above it,  angling toward them.

His sensors said  there were six  of them. "Twin  Suns, up front,"  Luke

said. "Engage all those skips.  Record Time, it's your call  whether you

want to hang back with us or move on to the target without us."

"Twin Suns One, this is Record Time. We're here to fight. We'll see  you

at the landing zone."

"Copy."

Lando Calrissian,  in Record  Time's troop  bay, stood  next to the ramp

access and tried not to look concerned.

He  was  sweating. He  didn't  like sweating.  It  suggested hard  work,

something he  wasn't fond  of, and  just didn't  give the  impression of

someone who was infinitely cool, infinitely in control.

He looked over the units of men  and women in the bay. Most were  seated

in rows of high-backed troop couches, strapped in against the turbulence

that was likely to come. Their commanders walked up and down those rows,

issuing   last-minute  instructions,   advice,  encouragements,   jokes,

insults.

He looked over his own troops. They stood in a circle, each with a  hand

on the metal post at the  circle's center, and stared at him.  They were

impassive, fearless. "Ready? "he asked.

In unison, they answered, "Ready, sir!"

He knew that once they left the  bay he'd never see some of them  again.

Unlike the other commanders present, he was content with that knowledge.

His troops would serve their purpose.

The bay  shuddered as  enemy fire  finally began  to strike Record Time.

Lando saw fear, even nausea, on the faces of some of the other troops.

Not his. They continued to stare at him, waiting.

Luke, with Mara and Corran tucked in beside him, roared along in  Record

Time's wake. He grimaced. He had lost his top starboard laser cannon and

engine to plasma fire. His power, maneuverability, and fighting strength

were reduced.

Ahead, Record Time was settling down into the jungle canopy, or  perhaps

into the open field just before the base; from here, it looked the same.

Little flashes of  light were pouring  up from the  ground and hammering

into  the  transport's  hull,  blackening  it.  Though  he  was situated

directly astern of the transport, Luke thought he could see the edges of

Record Time's bow distorting as combat  damage ate away at it. Then  the

transport turned to  port and Luke  saw that he  was right; the  bow had

sustained terrific damage from plasma cannons. He'd be astonished if the

transport was spaceworthy now.

After the last lurch and  vibration, Lando knew the transport  was down.

He could barely hear over the systems alarms. He took a last deep breath

and nodded  at his  troops, then  slapped the  button on  the hull panel

beside him.

The top portion of the entry slid instantly up out of sight. The  bottom

portion lowered, becoming a ramp. Warm, humid air flooded into the troop

bay. Beyond the entryway was  field, its stringy grasses calf-high,  and

beyond that was some sort of reddish Yuuzhan Vong construction, a  large

cylindrical building with arms radiating outward at regular intervals.

"Go, go, go!" Lando shouted, and his troops released the bar they'd been

holding. Shouting an inarticulate battle cry, they surged for the  ramp,

readying blaster rifles.

As they reached  the top of  the ramp, incoming  fire began to  rain in.

Lando heard the rear wall of  the bay ring as ammunition pocked  it. No,

it wasn't ammunition, he reminded  himself, but creatures hurled by  the

Yuuzhan Vong - thud bugs, the hard-hitting insect projectiles, and razor

bugs, which  sliced whatever  they hit  and came  around again to attack

whatever they missed.

One of his  troops took a  concentration of thud  bugs, several of  them

hitting the man in  the throat. The force  of the impacts was  enough to

shear through. That soldier's body collapsed and his head clanked to the

bay floor, rolling unerringly toward Lando.

Lando stopped it with his foot like a player trapping a ball and  looked

dispassionately at it. His first casualty of the day. The combat droid's

features stared up at  him with no more  expression than they'd shown  a

moment ago. The damage didn't look  too bad, he decided. This one  would

be easily repaired.

The unhurt  nineteen droid  troops charged  down the  ramp and  into the

field, turning to head toward the  right flank of the big red  building.

Their war  cry changed  from a  simple roar  to words  that Lando didn't

understand.

But  he knew  what they  meant. He'd  arranged for  the war  cry to   be

installed in his  droid troops. It  was in the  language of the  Yuuzhan

Vong, and it meant,  "We are machines! We  are greater than the  Yuuzhan

Vong!"

On the bridge of the Record Time, the communications officer, a  Rodian,

his green scaly hide immaculately clean and the mouth at the tip of  his

pointed chin puckering, said,  "Captain, it's working. They're  breaking

cover, showing themselves."

The captain, a tall human woman with copper-colored hair tucked up under

an officer's cap, extracted herself  from her chair and stood.  This put

her  head  squarely  in  the  smoke  accumulating  against  the bridge's

ceiling.  She coughed,  ducked, and  moved to  stand over  the  Rodian's

shoulder.

On the screen was a  panoramic view collated from the  holocams situated

on the  transport's hull.  It showed  the ground  all around  the Record

Time, jungle to port and open field to starboard.

Lando Calrissian's droid  troops were off  the ramp and  charging across

the field,  firing in  a defensive  screen all  around them. And Yuuzhan

Vong warriors  were popping  up all  over the  field, emerging  from the

jungle  at  a dead  run,  heading toward  them,  ignoring the  transport

lunging like maddened  animals toward the  droids that insulted  them by

words and mere presence.

"Transmit this  visual to  all vehicles  and vessels  in our  engagement

zone," the captain  said. "Transmit to  Mon Mothma that  the tactic does

work. Then tell - oh, blast."

On the screen, something huge was  approaching from the far side of  the

building with the  radiating arms, moving  around it. This  was a living

creature, vaguely reptilian,  itself the size  of a large  building. Its

skin was a blue-green,  but patches of red  and silver yorik coral  grew

over its head and  along its spine. From  the spine grew huge  sail-like

plates, and plasma cannons protruded by the dozens from the yorik coral.

The captain's voice rose into a commander's bellow. "Get the troops  off

this  ship  now.  Nonessential personnel,  follow  the  troops off.  All

weapons come to bear  on that target. Fire  at will. And vent  the smoke

here. We've got to breathe to fight."

This had to be one of  those creatures that had fought in  the Dantooine

engagement. The captain had an ugly presentiment that Record Time  would

not survive to lift off again.

TWO

Borieias Occupation, Day 1

The living troops  poured out of  Record Time's bays,  their war cry  an

inarticulate roar.  Lando steered  his bodyguard,  another of  his droid

troopers, in the wake of his main body of troops while the others surged

toward the main building, spread out  to set up a perimeter, or  stopped

to set up equipment.

Ahead,  his  droids  were   experiencing  heavy  incoming  fire;   their

laminanium armor was  peeked with small  impact craters from  thud bugs,

stained with the juices of  razor bugs that had smashed  harmlessly into

them. Lando watched as a warrior of the Yuuzhan Vong hurtled between two

of  them, his  vonduun crab  armor dark  but gleaming,  and whipped  his

amphistaff back and to the right  as he passed. The staff, rigid,  swept

toward the droid's midsection, but the droid caught it with a free hand,

its own motion a  blur. The droid aimed  its heavy blaster and  fired, a

burst of  energy tearing  through the  Vong warrior.  The warrior jerked

backward, convulsed  by the  outpouring of  blaster damage,  and hit the

ground steaming.

A blow to Lando's back not hard enough to be a thud bug hurled him  onto

the grass, and he dimly heard  his bodyguard say, "Down, sir." Then  the

droid  was  firing.  Lando  half-rose and  saw  a  Yuuzhan  Vong warrior

approaching at a dead run, zigzagging to avoid the droid's  blasterfire.

From his knees,  Lando aimed to  the right of  the on-rushing enemy  and

fired, spraying laser energy up and down into open space, then traversed

left. His shots flanked the  droid's, and the Yuuzhan Vong  warrior, now

five steps away, dodged into them,  taking a blast in the knee.  He fell

forward and skidded toward Lando and the droid, his amphistaff  whipping

around, pliant.

Lando  stood. He  and the  droid backed  away at  divergent angles   and

continued to pour  fire into the  fallen warrior. The  warrior rose, his

armor  blackened in  several places,  and drew  back his  hand to  throw

something, but a  blast - Lando  wasn't sure whether  it was his  or the

droid's - caught it in the throat. It toppled backward.

Lando nodded at the droid. "I'm a businessman," he said.

"Yes, sir."

"You know what that means."

"You hate being here, sir."

"You've got  that right."  The two  of them  circled around  the smoking

body, continuing toward Lando's force.

Now the armor-plated beast was  visible around the building's edge.  The

muscles beneath and surrounding its armor plates rippled and the  plasma

cannons all over its back tilted, taking aim - directly toward Lando, it

seemed to him.

He dropped to the ground and began firing.

Luke, Mara, and Corran took a high-speed run over the base area,  giving

them a  split-second view  of the  Yuuzhan Vong  building, of the Record

Time, of the tremendous beast hurling plasma into the transport's side.

Luke sighed.  The last  time he'd  faced one  of these  creatures, which

Jaina Solo had  nicknamed "ranges," and  later was known  by its Yuuzhan

Vong name, a  rakamat, and saw  the tactic he'd  used to destroy  it had

knocked him out for hours. He couldn't afford to do that now. "Let's  do

what we can to distract the thing from the ground troops," he said. "Two

Flight, Three Flight, Four Flight, whenever you get through playing with

those skips back there, we can put  you to work up here where the  fight

is."

He led Mara and Corran in a tight loop back toward the engagement  zone.

All  three X-wings  began juking  just before  they cleared  the  jungle

canopy, and plasma danced up through  the air all around them. He  fired

linked lasers at the enormous beast  and saw his blast and those  of his

nightmares swallowed  by the  creature's void  defenses. Then  they were

over jungle again.

Lando elbow-crawled  forward, chanting,  "I'm too  old for  this, I'm  a

businessman, I'm too old  for this, I want  a drink." The rhythm  of his

own words kept  him from being  fully aware of  the sweat dripping  from

him, of  the fear  radiating from  him as  plasma fire  flashed by  mere

meters over his head and into  the side of the Record Time.  Return fire

crossed from the other direction,  heavy laser cannon blasts that  would

evaporate him if they grazed him. His droid kept pace, walking slowly so

as not to leave Lando behind.

He'd crawled into a  circle of troops before  he knew it -  six of them,

five humans and a Twi'lek, only three of them with shoulder arms. "Where

are your blasters?" he asked.

The Twi'lek,  a red-skinned  female, huddled  against the  mound of  her

pack. "We're engineers."

One  of  the others,  a  long-faced male  with  a blaster  rifle,  said,

"They're  engineers."  He  fired  at  the  legs  of  the  giant creature

lumbering in their direction.

"Engineers?" Lando asked. "With explosives?"

The woman nodded.

"You're hiding behind your explosives? "

She nodded again, her dismayed expression suggesting that she understood

the insanity of it.

"Dig,"  Lando said.  "A shallow  hole. Large  enough to  put all   those

explosives in."

"No," said the trooper with  the blaster. "We'll just leave  them behind

and get clear of them."

"No, we're digging." Lando glanced at the Twi'lek woman, who was frozen,

her  hand halfway  to her  field shovel,  looking between  him and   the

trooper.

The   trooper   gave  Lando   an   ingratiating  smile.   "I'm   only  a

noncommissioned officer, but that  beats a civilian on  the battlefield.

We leave."

Lando grabbed him by the collar of his tunic and dragged him close.  The

trooper  had to  be younger  than twenty,  despite his  apparent  poise.

"Listen to  me, bantha  fodder," Lando  said. "I  blew up  a Death  Star

before you were  born. In twenty  seconds I can  conclude a conversation

with General Antilles, who blew up that Death Star with me, and I'll  be

General Calrissian again, and and you'll spend the rest of your military

career cleaning refreshers on Kessel. Or you can dig. Which is it?"

The trooper looked at him for  one long moment, during which streaks  of

plasma began to look like solid lines in the air above them. "I guess we

dig, sir."

"Right."  Lando released  him. He  looked at  the Twi'lek  engineer  and

gestured at the trooper. "Give him your shovel."

"Yes, sir."

Lando stretched out, took up  his blaster rifle, and took  the trooper's

place at the  perimeter. He fired  a few times  at distant Yuuzhan  Vong

warriors and once at the creature.  Then he turned to his bodyguard  and

smiled.  "You know,  that's the  kind of  worker negotiations  I  really

love." The droid nodded. "Yes, sir."

The latest flyby of Luke and  his wingmates, during which some of  their

shots were again absorbed by the rakamat's voids and others hit the side

of the Yuuzhan Vong building, showed  one party of soldiers in a  circle

directly  ahead  of the  oncoming  rakamat. The  soldiers  seemed to  be

digging a hole. "What do you think?" he heard Mara ask. "Idiots?"

"Picnickers," Luke offered.

"There's a thought."

Luke led Mara  and Corran back  toward the Yuuzhan  Vong base. A  moment

latel, three more Twin Suns settled into formation with them.

"Good to see you," Luke said. "Split off and approach the base from  the

far side so that you reach the edge of the canopy half a second after we

do. They're only expecting three of us. Ready, break."

The ground here  was soft; they  had the hole  dug and three  engineers'

worth of explosives loaded into it  in less than a standard minute.  The

eight of them crawled away from the hole and toward the Record Time.

The Twi'lek woman wasn't crawling. She  was flat on her back toward  the

rear of  the column,  fiddling with  a remote  detonator, while  Lando's

droid dragged her by  the feet. The droid  kept up sustained fire  aimed

behind them,  toward the  rakamat and  the main  engagement area  of the

infantry fight.

Lando, elbow-crawling at the head of  the column, heard the roar of  the

returning X-wings. He knew their  attacks on the beast were  futile, but

was grateful for their strafing runs,  which had kept him and this  unit

from falling under constant fire.

Three X-wings  flashed by  from the  right, unloading  laserfire on  the

beast's  left  side. The  voids  flicked around  into  the path  of  the

attacks, and  Lando thought  he saw  the snubfighters'  red laser  beams

actually bend as they entered the voids.

Then three X-wings flashed by from the left, pouring laserfire into  the

beast's right side. The six snubfighters crossed like a demonstration of

trick flying and disappeared beyond the jungle canopy.

Lando saw yorik coral superheat and explode, propelled out as the  flesh

beneath the coral was instantly transformed into steam.

Blackish blood poured down the beast's right flank. The creature roared,

a noise like  the offspring of  a ground-quake and  distant thunder, and

poured plasma  fire after  the six  snubfighters. But  still it came on,

toward them, toward the Record Time.

"Got it," the Twi'lek engineer said.

"Get ready," Lando said. "We'll try to time it to the X-wings' next pass

if they're back in time."

The woman began elbow-crawling, freeing Lando's droid.

Lando suddenly found  two stumps in  the way before  him. He looked  up.

They  weren't stumps.  They were  the legs  of a  Yuuzhan Vong  warrior,

encased in vonduun crab armor. The warrior's amphistaff was straight  as

a spear,  its tapered  tail pointed  right at  Lando's back; the warrior

held it up, ready to plunge.

The point came down  and a dark shape  shielded Lando from it,  from the

dazzling display  of plasma  and laser  energy overhead.  Lando heard  a

human scream,  and abruptly  the Yuuzhan  Vong warrior  was flat  on the

grass,  his  feet kicking  centimeters  from Lando's  nose.  One of  the

soldiers was atop him, but was already going limp, the amphistaff driven

clear through his back.

From  his position,  Lando had  a view  under the  skirt plates  of  the

Yuuzhan Vong warrior's armor. As the warrior tossed aside the  soldier's

body, Lando angled his blaster  rifle in and fired, hitting  the warrior

where neither leg armor nor skirt armor protected. This time it was  the

Yuuzhan Vong  who cried  out in  pain. The  warrior jerked  and writhed,

agony twisting his body apparently beyond the level that even a  Yuuzhan

Vong could endure.

Lando's bodyguard droid landed between Lando and the warrior. It  kicked

out against the amphistaff. Its blow hurled the weapon away, though  the

amphistaff, pliant again, bit the droid; the attack, faster than Lando's

eye could follow, did not penetrate the droid's armor and would not have

damaged the droid if it had. The amphistaff flew meters away.

The droid stood over the warrior, aimed carefully, and began firing.

Lando  twisted around.  The giant  creature behind  them, still  pouring

blood, had picked  up speed. Knowing  it was injured,  perhaps dying, it

was charging the Record Time.

The Twi'lek engineer had the detonator  in her hand, her thumb over  the

button.

"Wait, "Lando said.

She turned an anguished expression toward him, but didn't argue.

The  roar  of  the  returning  X-wings  began  to  rattle  everyone  and

everything in the field.  Lando watched the skies  with a small part  of

his attention and kept the rest on the oncoming creature. Its front feet

were over, then past the buried  cache of explosives, and its main  body

was  moving  into  place  above the  disturbed  ground  that  marked its

location.

Lando swallowed. If  he was successful,  the beast would  die. Innocent,

and Lando found  it painful to  watch it lumber  toward him, toward  its

death.

He put the blame on the Yuuzhan Vong. It was better than accepting every

bit of responsibility  for killing a  tremendous creature that,  but for

its controllers, might never have endangered him.

The X-wing  roar rose  in volume,  and the  plasma cannons  on the beast

diverted their streams of fire from the Record Time into the air.  Lando

saw the  vehicles flash  in from  two sides,  north and  south this time

instead  of  east  and west.  He  saw  red lasers  flash  down  into the

blackness of the beast's voids, saw return plasma fire clip an  X-wing's

underside and begin burrowing in.

Then  the  snubfighters  were gone,  the  plasma  cannons sending  fiery

destruction after them. "Now!" Lando shouted.

He didn't even see the woman press the button; he was aware only of  the

fire, reddish  yellow and  as evil  looking as  anything produced by the

Yuuzhan Vong, roiling out from under the beast. It engulfed the creature

and slammed Lando with heat and  noise; he buried his face in  the grass

to escape it.

A moment later, he could look again. The creature was down on its  side,

its belly  ripped and  blackened by  the force  of the  explosion. Blood

streamed  from it,  but amazingly,  it still  lived, at  least for   the

moment, its sides heaving with the effort to breathe.

It was not  firing on X-wings  or the troop  transport now. Lando  could

hear and see the transport's lasers picking up again, not  concentrating

their fire  on the  creature, now  picking off  individual Yuuzhan  Vong

warriors within sight.

Lando's  droid was  firing, too.  Lando looked  over to  see the   droid

placing shot after shot into the body of the Yuuzhan Vong warrior  who'd

come so close  to killing him.  The warrior was  dead, the neck  and top

torso portions of his armor burned away by repeated blasts.

"One-One-A,  you  can stop  now,"  Lando said.  "What's  wrong? Is  your

threat-recognition software on the blink?"

The droid looked at him. "Yes, sir. I suspect so, sir. I still  register

this one as a threat."

"Override  control twenty-seven  aye aye  six, flag  this target  as  no

threat."

"Understood, sir." The droid stopped firing.

"We'll get you in for repairs," Lando said. "But don't feel bad. You did

well."

"Yes, sir."

The situation was largely under  control by the time Wedge  descended to

the planet's surface in his shuttle. He made a pass over the site of the

Borleias New Republic base.

Once upon a time, it had been an Imperial base, housing TIE fighters and

stormtroopers, charged with  the duty of  defending a nearby  biological

research facility managed by  the Imperial general Evir  Derricote. Then

Rogue Squadron, at the time commanded by Wedge himself, had come as  the

spearhead  of a  mission that  had wrested  control of  the world   from

Derricote. The Imperial base had become a Rebel Alliance base, and then,

once the Rebels had taken Coruscant and become the legitimate government

in this part of the galaxy, a New Republic base.

Now it was rubble. Wedge doubted that any part of the original base  was

more than two meters in size.

Where the  main facilities  buildings had  once been  now rested another

sort of  building, pastel  red and  pearl, several  stories in height, a

circular core  from which  eight more  or less  evenly spaced extensions

radiated, like arms on a sea creature. Wedge didn't have to ask to  know

that the building was something  organic, a living creature bred  by the

Yuuzhan Vong to serve as a  dwelling. Had it been dropped on  the former

base like a bomb, crushing it flat,  or had it grown out of the  middle?

Wedge didn't know.

Lying beside it was a gargantuan creature, another of the Yuuzhan Vong's

fighting resources, the reptile the Record Time had reported. It lay  on

its side in an immense pool of black blood. Wedge's troops reported that

it was dead and  awarded the kill to  Lando Calrissian and the  group of

engineers.

The main building  was surrounded by  numerous smaller buildings,  these

shaped  like  the  curved  shells  found  on  the  backs  of  oceangoing

arthropods and  some land-based  snails. Each  was the  size of  a small

house, aesthetically  pleasing in  muted color  and curving  design - so

long as  one didn't  remember that  they housed  beings who killed other

sapient beings without mercy and injured themselves for pleasure.

The rest of  the old base  was in ruins,  docking bays and  outbuildings

turned into blackened,  crumbling shells. It  looked to Wedge  as though

they'd  been  used  for target  practice  by  the coralskippers'  plasma

cannons.

The area was swarming  with New Republic troops.  Dead men and women  in

New Republic uniforms  lay at various  points on the  ground; there were

many  dead  Yuuzhan  Vong  among  them.  Wedge  saw  his  troops leading

prisoners into open patches of  ground surrounded by other troops.  Many

of the  prisoners were  human, their  foreheads, even  at this distance,

clearly bearing the coral-like twin horn growths that signaled they were

slaves of the Yuuzhan Vong. Other prisoners were Yuuzhan Vong, but their

skins were smooth, unadorned by the extensive tattooing or scarring he'd

seen on Vong pilots; Wedge assumed that they were members of the  Shamed

Ones, the pariah  caste of Yuuzhan  Vong society, whose  bodies rejected

modifications and who  could thus never  climb the ranks  of the Yuuzhan

Vong social hierarchy.

The base was a loss, and,  even though it was captured, the  new Yuuzhan

Vong base on top of it was not the sort of place Wedge wanted to use  as

a ground-based operations center. It might contain numberless traps  and

dangers for New Republic  occupants, and it certainly  wouldn't reassure

the  New  Republic  refugees  he expected  to  begin  streaming  in from

Coruscant.

He keyed his comlink. "Rogue One,  this is Antilles. Give me an  escort.

We're going to visit the biotics facility."

"Will do."  A few  moments later,  two X-wings,  one belonging  to Gavin

Darklighter and  the other  to his  wing-mate Krai  Nevil, maneuvered to

flank him. Wedge  heeled about toward  the biotics facility  and hit his

thrusters. Not long after, he hovered over the site of that base.

General Derricote's biotics facility was a long single building, several

stories  tall,  its eastern  facing  a sheer  drop,  its western  facing

graduated downward in an aesthetically pleasing slope; the top story was

a narrow strip, wide enough for  a corridor along one set of  rooms, the

next story  down wider,  the next  story down  wider still,  so that the

whole thing seemed to  be a gigantic wedge  whose sharp edge pointed  at

the sky. Officially,  it had been  a site where  Derricote preserved and

studied  samples  of rare  plant  species from  the  world of  Alderaan.

Secretly, it  had been  used to  engineer a  deadly disease,  the Krytos

virus, which afflicted  and killed members  of nonhuman species.  It was

spread by the Imperial forces when the Alliance captured Coruscant.

From this height.  Wedge could see  that the building  was still intact.

The jungle had grown right up to it, trees surrounding it, vines draping

over the turquoise-colored banks of viewports. But those viewports  were

unbroken;   it   didn't   surprise  Wedge   that   Derricote   had  used

transparisteel instead of some lesser material.

Wedge transmitted a holocam view of the site, adding coordinates to  the

data stream accompanying the transmission. "Mon Mothma, this will be our

ground facility. I want an occupation force and engineers here from  our

battle reserves as soon as possible. I want the jungle burned away for a

kilometer around on the north, east, and south faces, two kilometers  to

the west - with escaped Yuuzhan Vong in the jungle, I want a substantial

kill zone. Once that's done, have  the ground forces enter and clear  it

of Yuuzhan Vong and other predators, then bring in personnel to clean it

up, get its  generators working, and  so on. The  field immediately west

will be our landing zone.

"Issue the order that  all the Yuuzhan Vong  dead are to be  stripped of

gear for study, but their bodies  are to be left where they  fell." This

was not an act of insult  on Wedge's part. The Yuuzhan Vong  had several

times in the past  demonstrated a need to  retrieve the bodies of  their

dead.  By  leaving the  bodies.  Wedge hoped  to  reduce the  number  of

assaults that his troops would suffer, since there would be no  assaults

while attempting to retrieve bodies.

"Keep  a detachment  on duty  to contain  the Yuuzhan  Vong base   while

another  detachment,  plus  Danni  Quee's  people  and  Lando's  droids,

searches it for prisoners and hiding Vong. When they're done  evacuating

the site, have the engineers blow it up."

He sighed  to himself.  After a  brief respite  from it,  he was back to

niggling  administrative details.  He'd rather  be retired  or  fighting

again.

Borleias Occupation, Day 2

A day later, the biotics building was secure and operational.

The occupation forces  hadn't found any  Yuuzhan Vong hiding  within the

structure,  but  it  was  obvious  the enemy  had  been  here  on  a few

occasions, breaking up machinery, smashing furniture -  warrior-vandals.

The  bad  news  was  that the  building's  generator  had  been smashed.

Currently a  small freighter  was situated  next to  the building, heavy

cables running from its engine compartment into the building's  basement

and to field shield units set up to protect the complex.

The building was  now surrounded by  six square kilometers  of destroyed

jungle growth. His  forces had used  fire, lasers, defoliants,  whatever

they could get their  hands on. The biotics  facility, a secret home  of

ugliness,  was  surrounded  by  obvious ugliness.  To  step  out  of the

building was to step into a hot, humid environment that stank of  burned

vegetation  and offered  no view  but char,  ships that  had landed  for

repairs, and distant jungle.

Luke,  returning  from  a  perimeter  sweep  around  the  Yuuzhan   Vong

settlement - a  sweep in which  they'd encountered no  Yuuzhan Vong, but

suspected, from the behavior of  Borleias's animal life, that Vong  were

out there - learned that Wedge  had requested his presence at a  general

meeting of his senior officers and personal allies. He joined the  crowd

in  the  biotics building's  ground-floor  mess hall.  Mara  was already

there, baby Ben in her arms; at  her feet was a baby carrier she'd  jury

rigged from a backpack. On one ankle was a cast, immobilizing it against

the bone break she'd sustained when she crash-landed during  Coruscant's

fall.

Luke headed for a seat beside her, but Wedge waved him up to the head of

the table,  to the  other seat  beside him.  Luke gave  Mara a  smile of

apology and moved to sit by Wedge.

"Our stay here is going to be short," Wedge said to the entire assembly.

"But it's going to  be longer than we'd  like. There's going to  be more

fighting. I'd  like to  have some  tricks up  our sleeves  to offer  the

Yuuzhan Vong  when they  come, so  I want  you to  be thinking about it.

Transmit your ideas to your commanding officers. The commanding officers

will transmit them to me - and I don't want there to be too much editing

of them. Now's not the time to think conservatively."

A naval officer Luke  did not know, a  woman in a lieutenant's  uniform,

spoke up. "General, if I can ask -"

"Go ahead," Wedge said.

"Why do we want  to stay here at  all? The garrison has  to have alerted

their commanders that they were being overrun. The Yuuzhan Vong will  be

coming."

Wedge  nodded. "Well,  there are  several reasons.  The first  is  this:

because Borleias  - rather,  the Pyria  solar system  - is  an important

hyperspace crossroads, the convenient  intersection of a lot  of routes,

it's  on a  lot of  people's nav  computers. It's  inevitable that  many

refugees fleeing Coruscant - or arriving there and suddenly  discovering

that the Yuuzhan Vong have taken it  - will be coming here as the  first

stage of their escapes. Someone needs to help them. A lot of them may be

in damaged craft. We can't  have them clogging up our  repair facilities

in space,  not when  they're needed  to repair  combat craft, so they'll

have to put down on the planet's surface.

"Second, we need to catch our collective breaths. We left Coruscant with

just the ships on  our backs. We need  to take stock, take  inventory...

and calculate the enormity of the disaster that we've just experienced."

Wedge's face, for a moment, expressed a pang of pain, and Luke felt  it,

too. Wedge hadn't  been able to  get in touch  with his wife,  Iella, or

daughters, Syal and Myri, before duty had forced him to leave Coruscant.

Not knowing what had  happened to them, the  shame of not being  able to

carry out  both his  duties to  the New  Republic and  his duties to his

family, had to be eating at him. Wedge swallowed hard, then his features

were schooled once again into impassivity, and he continued.

"Third, yes, the Yuuzhan Vong will be coming here. They can't permit  an

enemy garrison so close to the planet they've just taken. And if we  can

hold  their attention  for a  while, that's  even more  time for  others

fleeing Coruscant to get away, and for our other fleet groups, the  ones

bel Iblis and Kre'fey command, to gather themselves, too.

"Fourth, and last,  it's a morale  issue. Our people  have just taken  a

tremendous kick in  the teeth -  the loss of  Coruscant. We're going  to

kick in return. If you run  from neks, or Vong, they won't  respect you.

They'll chase you, drag you down,  and kill you. Only if you  stand your

ground do you have a chance of survival. If we dig in our heels here and

slap the  Yuuzhan Vong  across the  face, it  may do  some harm to their

morale. It may do  some good for ours.  Luke, I'd appreciate it  if your

Jedi could be  not just as  active as possible,  but also out  there for

everyone to see - a constant reminder to our forces of the strength  and

versatility they represent."

"And of one of our most important roles," Luke said. "Protectors of  the

people. Consider it done. General."  Luke left unstated the fact  that a

higher profile for the Jedi could  mean more lost to the Peace  Brigade,

fewer able to  reach the escape  routes Han and  Leia were establishing.

This was a necessary risk.

"Thanks." Wedge turned his attention away from Luke and to the gathering

before him. "Colonel Darklighter, I want to keep Rogue Squadron on  high

guard in Borleias orbit for the time being."

"Yes, sir."

"Captain Deevis, I want at least  two ships with good sensor systems  on

station in the  Coruscant-Borleias approach corridor,  one just on  this

side of the point Borleias's gravity well would cause incoming ships  to

come out  of hyperspace,  one at  a distance,  our best-guess projection

based on previous tactics as to  where a Yuuzhan Vong sortie might  drop

out of hyperspace."  He began looking  among the assembled  officers and

civilians, not waiting for  confirmations of his orders.  "Captain Birt,

while Record Time  is being repaired,  you're in charge  of the injured.

Find a portion of this facility you can set up for triage, surgery,  and

wards. Coordinate with Haven Jace, our medical frigate. Lando, the  rest

of  the  facilities   are  yours  to   apportion,  and  you'll   act  as

quartermaster. Booster, you're in charge of communications. Make sure we

make the best use of whatever equipment we have on hand, and  coordinate

it through the Errant Venture. Danni - is Danni Quee here?"

"I'm here." Luke saw a hand waving from the back.

"You're  in  charge  of  just  about  everything  Vong.  You'll  get the

prisoners, the gear, and vehicles  we've captured from the Yuuzhan  Vong

garrison. First priority, in my opinion, would be freeing the  prisoners

from the blasted coral things. Corran Horn?"

"Here." Another  hand waved  from the  back of  the crowd.  Horn was  no

taller than  Luke and  wasn't always  easy to  spot in  a large group of

people.

"Corran, Gavin did receive your request to rejoin Rogue Squadron, and he

and I both welcome it, but  I've got another assignment for you  for the

moment. We know there are Yuuzhan Vong out in the jungle. I want you  to

help  set  up security  for  this facility.  Your  combination of  Jedi,

Corellian Security, and Starfighter  Command experience is just  what we

need. In the meantime you can  continue flying with the Twin Suns  until

you transfer back to the Rogues."

"Understood."

"Tycho,  you're in  charge of  Starfighter forces.  I remain  in  direct

command  of  space  navy  forces.  I  want  preliminary  status  reports

downloaded to my datapad in half  an hour and a meeting of  officers and

divisional heads in the conference room in two hours. Lando will let you

know where  the conference  room is."  Wedge clapped  his hands together

sharply. "Let's move, people."

The crowd dispersed with  military rapidity, leaving behind  only Wedge,

Tycho, Luke, and Mara. Mara joined the other three at the table.

Luke made  his voice  mild. "You  didn't ask  anything of  me. Well, you

asked me to do what I was going to do anyway. You didn't have a specific

task or duty for me."

Wedge gave him a  puzzled look. "Luke, you're  more or less the  guiding

light of this  whole operation. I  don't mean just  my fleet group.  All

three groups are looking to you for advice. I can't make demands of you,

or of the Jedi."

"You can make demands of friends."

Wedge blinked, then offered up a  slight smile. "True. And I'd be  happy

to do that." He  offered an apologetic shrug.  "As drained as we  are of

resources, I want  the Errant Venture  to stay here.  I've already asked

Booster. But that means that if the Jedi trainees stay aboard her -"

"It's no  longer a  safe haven  for them,  I know.  I'll be dealing with

that. I have some ideas on where we can put the students."

The Maw, he thought, with the Jedi haven under construction there,  with

its surrounding  screen of  black holes  and mad  gravitic interactions,

would be best for now.

"Then I want you in charge of special forces, special operations.  Mara,

I know this is a lot to ask of a woman with a small baby -"

Mara straightened, holding Ben to her. "Trust me, my capacity for mayhem

is undiminished."

Wedge's  smile  broadened.  "I  didn't  spot  any  ranking  Intelligence

officers  in that  crowd. I'd  appreciate it  if you  could act  as  our

Intelligence head for  the time being.  When we get  in an officer  from

Intelligence, you can move over  to Luke's department of special  forces

and mayhem."

Luke hesitated before  speaking again. "Wedge,  has there been  any word

about Iella or the kids?"

Wedge shook his head. "None. But  if there's anyone in the New  Republic

who could smuggle herself and two children offworld -"

"It's Iella, I know. They'll be fine. Wedge."

"Are you -"  Wedge's voice was  suddenly hoarse. "Does  that mean you've

seen something? With your Jedi perceptions?"

Luke shook his head. "I'm sorry, no."

"Oh." Wedge schooled his features back into impassivity, but to Luke, he

looked as though another hope had suddenly died within him. Luke felt  a

crushing shame at having given him a false hope, however inadvertently.

Wedge rose.  "Yes. I'm  certain they'll  be fine."  He left the chamber,

Tycho with him.

"He's hard to read," Mara said. "How is he?"

Luke shrugged. "Holding on. Relying on all that military discipline. But

not knowing about his family is chewing away at his guts. "C'mon,  let's

find out what sort of resources special operations and Intelligence  can

put together. And we need to  find someone who can baby-sit while  we're

off doing our duties."

Mara shook her head.  "I'm not going to  accept any duties that  take me

away from Ben. Not anymore. Flying yesterday, that was the last time.  I

couldn't stand it again."

"Mara -"

"No, listen to me, farmboy. There's  no one, other than you and  Karrde,

that I'd trust more than Leia. But she couldn't protect Ben. Viqi  Shesh

took him back on Coruscant, and we  had to rely far too much on  luck to

get him back. I'm not going to  let him out of my sight. Period.  Anyone

who comes after him, I kill personally."

Luke looked at her, taking in her calm demeanor and the wild eruption of

emotions it hid, emotions he  could feel through his Force-bond  to her,

and knew he wouldn't win this argument today. As if on cue, Ben woke and

erupted into  wails of  distress. "We'll  talk about  this later,"  Luke

said.

Mara gave him a frosty  little smile. "Sure, if you  like reexperiencing

the same conversation and the same results."

THREE

Yuuzhan Vong Worldshlp, Coruscant Orbit

They were  two Yuuzhan  Vong guards  assigned to  march her  to her last

interview. Assigned  to conduct  her to  the meeting  where she would be

condemned to death.

She was afraid of them, for either could kill her on a whim, and neither

had the slightest regard for her life.

She knew  contempt for  them, for  they were  ugly, anonymous creatures,

drones whose  names would  never be  known. Somewhere,  and perhaps very

soon, they would die in battle and be forgotten.

She envied  them. The  remainders of  their lives,  however short, would

probably be longer than hers.

She was Viqi  Shesh. Once the  Senator representing Kuat  before the New

Republic, she had for a long time also been a spy for the Yuuzhan  Vong,

tunneling them crucial  information about the  planet Coruscant and  the

workings of the New Republic's  government. Long and faithfully had  she

served her new masters.

But long and faithful service hadn't meant much to them. As the  Yuuzhan

Vong invasion of Coruscant had begun, she had attempted to carry out her

latest assignment - the  kidnapping of Ben, the  infant son of Luke  and

Mara Jade Skywalker - and had failed. Her enemies had been a step  ahead

of her and  had swept the  brat off to  safety. She had  pursued and had

been within meters of retrieving the baby, but a counterattack by  Lando

Calrissian and his combat droids had left her disgraced and  friendless,

in the grip of the Yuuzhan Vong she had failed.

Until that moment, she'd confidently anticipated receiving great rewards

from the Yuuzhan  Vong for her  service and effort.  Instead, her reward

had been to be arrested and hustled up to Domain Dal, the worldship that

served Tsavong Lah, Warmaster of the Yuuzhan Vong, as his flagship.

She was in pain. Neathlats, a sort of living bandage, clung to her right

forearm, where Princess  Leia's Noghri bodyguard  had bitten her  to the

bone, and to  her back, where  Leia's lightsaber had  slashed and burned

her. Neathlats promoted healing but did not diminish pain. That was  not

the Yuuzhan Vong way. Instead, they irritated nerve endings, causing the

pain of injuries to be sharper.

She was without allies.  No one would speak  for her. She had  failed to

produce Ben Skywalker for the Yuuzhan Vong, and her betrayal of the  New

Republic was by now certainly  common knowledge among the refugees  from

Coruscant.

But she  was not  weaponless. Not  while she  had her  intelligence, her

political experience. She  still had a  weapon she could  aim at Tsavong

Lah.

The guards led her  along a lengthy corridor.  Its lines were not  truly

straight,  its  corners not  quite  right angles.  Its  surfaces were  a

mottled red reminiscent of muscle tissue. It smelled like raw meat,  and

Viqi forced herself to keep an expression of disgust from her face.

It was deep within  the Yuuzhan Vong worldship.  It had to be  well away

from the ship's centers of command, for there was no other traffic along

it. Viqi was pleased that she could still think analytically.

They  reached a  large chamber,  its walls  identical to  those of   the

corridor, with an ivory-colored set of double doors opposite, a  matched

pair of Praetorite Vong guards standing before them. The guards drew the

doors open to let them pass.

Beyond was  a large  oval chamber  in the  same mottled  red. Its  floor

sloped downward  in a  gentle curve,  its lowest  point being a circular

opening some three meters across. The opening surrounded blackness; Viqi

found she  could not  focus on  the darkness.  It seemed  fuzzy somehow,

rising above the level of the floor a quarter meter or more.

Beside the pit stood Tsavong Lah, the great planner and guiding light of

the Yuuzhan Vong invasion of this galaxy. A heavily scarred and tattooed

example  of  high-ranking Yuuzhan  Vong,  his lips  had  been slit  into

tatters  that stirred  whenever he  exhaled heavily,  and his  body  was

marked  everywhere  with bloodred  scales,  implants that  spoke  of his

importance. His  left arm  had been  replaced at  the elbow  by a radank

claw, all reddish  scales and spines,  with fingers that  were segmented

and  articulated in  a manner  not natural  for Yuuzhan  Vong or  human;

spines and scales were emerging from the flesh above his elbow as  well,

and small black dots, carrion-eaters, swarmed around them. She repressed

a shudder. Despite all of Tsavong Lah's mutilations and decorations, she

had found him somewhat attractive - power and ambition in males being  a

lure for her, a secret weakness - but the rot that afflicted him,  which

threatened  both to  rob him  of both  his radank  claw and  his  power,

disgusted her.

The guards and Viqi came to a halt before Tsavong Lah. He turned to  fix

his stare on her. "You may feel honored," the warmaster said. "It is not

customary for one of my position to witness the disposal of waste."

She looked at him,  and then again at  the pit overfull of  darkness. In

the blur  of that  darkness, at  its edges,  she saw  motion that seemed

suddenly familiar. It  was identical to  that of the  little black dots,

the carrion-eaters, that infested Tsavong Lah's arm.

She concealed a sensation of revulsion. "This is the fate you've  chosen

for me?"

"Yes." The warmaster gestured at one of her guards. "Denua Ku will  kill

you. If you are polite in these last few moments of life, I will let you

choose the means of your death. He could break your neck, stab you  with

his amphistaff, have the staff bite  you. Then your body will be  tossed

into the pit. The  creatures there will ignore  it for a time,  until it

begins emitting the odors of  decomposition, and then they will  fall on

it,  slowly  eating it  away  to nothingness.  You  will disappear  into

darkness, Viqi Shesh, and cease to be, as though you never were."

Viqi's stomach knotted, but  she kept her expression  calm, emotionless.

"Why don't  I just  jump in?  I can  drown as  your little  bugs fill my

lungs. That  way, these  two nameless  nothings beside  me don't  get to

participate."

She  could  sense  anger  in the  increasing  stiffness  of  her guards'

postures,  but Tsavong  Lah merely  widened his  eyes and  looked a  bit

surprised. "You are anxious to provide compensation for your failure?"

"Of course. I will do  it this way if it  is what you require; it  is my

obligation to serve. But I'm more  anxious for you to stop lying  to me.

To end that particular torture, I'll jump in right now."

"Lying. An  interesting accusation.  A deliberate  offense." Tsavong Lah

smiled again. "One  you can offer  because you think  nothing worse than

death could await you. If that is your belief, you are wrong."

"I  say you  are lying  for this  reason: you  are not  disposing of  me

because  I failed  you. Others  have failed  you and  been permitted  to

live...  because they  were still  loyal resources  you could  rely  on.

You're having me put to death  because you think I'm no longer  valuable

to you. No longer a resource."

To the extent that they could, Tsavong Lah's features became thoughtful.

"I am impressed. You make your  point. I am killing you because  you are

no longer a resource, Viqi."

"But I  am. My  most powerful  weapon is  still with  me, Warmaster - my

brain. While I sat in  my cell, I used it,  and I uncovered a threat  to

your control  of the  Yuuzhan Vong,  to your  plans for  this galaxy, to

everything you consider a  goal. You are in  danger you don't even  know

about. Only I have uncovered the secret."

"Name it, then."

"No." She looked at her guards. "Not while these unworthy ones can  hear

my words. Not while anyone other than you can hear them."

Tsavong Lah gestured. Viqi's guards took her by her arms and,  seemingly

without effort, lifted her. They held her over the pit. Black dots leapt

up from it, settling on her feet and lower legs. Some leapt off again.

"Anything you have to tell me, they can hear," Tsavong Lah said, "in the

final moments of your life."

Viqi returned her gaze  to his. She was  able to keep the  fear she felt

out other voice. "You and I are the only ones in this chamber I know are

not your enemies. I will not speak what I know before strangers, because

it might spell  your doom. If  I die now,  with my secret  unspoken, you

might figure it out yourself, and survive anyway. I will not betray you.

So drop me." She  made her expression fierce,  and the ferocity was  not

just a show - the fear she felt was real, and fueled very real anger.

Tsavong  Lah considered  her for  a long  moment, then  made a   shooing

gesture to  his guards.  They withdrew  a step,  bringing Viqi back over

solid flooring, and released her. She fell awkwardly, almost  collapsing

when she landed; a stumble and  she might have pitched forward into  the

pit anyway. Then they turned and left the chamber.

Viqi felt the first, faint stirrings of hope. She was in charge of  this

situation, for the moment at least. If she could hold on to her  tenuous

advantage, she might live.

Tsavong Lah regarded her steadily. "Well?"

"Your body rejects its latest modification," she said, her words  coming

out in a rush. "I know what you're thinking. You believe it's your  gods

talking to  you, telling  you to  figure out  the correct  path to their

approval. But that's not what's happening.

"You're being betrayed, Warmaster. By the shapers. They've put a  faulty

limb on you. It threatens to  turn you into a Shamed One.  Soon, they'll

start recommending courses of action to you - military action, political

action. When you start doing what they say, the problems with your  limb

will diminish. But  anytime you fail  to do as  the shapers demand,  new

problems will begin. You're going to be their slave, Warmaster."

Tsavong Lah fell silent. His eyes were unreadable.

You contemptible, predictable fool, I have you. Viqi clamped down on the

rush of elation she felt - she  could not afford for it to be  reflected

in her expression.

In her  cell, she  had used  her skills  of fabricating and anticipating

treachery -  not to  figure out  the source  of the  problems afflicting

Tsavong Lah, but to concoct an accusation that explained all of them,  a

story that would take  time and effort to  disprove. She would use  that

time to find some way to escape the Yuuzhan Vong.

"An interesting notion," the warmaster said. "What if you are wrong?"

"I am not wrong." Viqi gave him her most unconcerned expression. "I just

ask for the opportunity to see  my theory proven right. Kill me  then if

you choose. At least I'll die victorious."

Tsavong Lah regarded  her for long  moments. Then he  nodded to himself.

"We will see.  I will give  you duties to  perform until proof  is in my

hands...  or  my  patience ends."  He  called  out a  few  words  in his

language, and  the guards  returned to  flank Viqi.  At the  warmaster's

gesture, the guards took Viqi by the shoulders, spun her around, and led

her back out the door.

Every step was more distance between  her and the pit. Every step  was a

loosening in the tight grip that fear had on her heart. Every step was a

drumbeat accompanying the words that pulsed through her mind: I live.  I

live. I still live.

Borleias Occupation. Day 3

Wedge's comlink beeped, awakening him. His booted feet slid off the desk

before  him  and hit  the  floor with  a  too-loud clatter.  He  sat up,

wondering for a moment where he was and what he was doing there.

His office was  dark. He'd fallen  asleep before making  it back to  his

temporary quarters. He  grabbed his comlink  and held it  up before him.

"Go." He rubbed  sleep from his  eyes and wondered  how many minutes  of

rest he'd had.

"General, this  is Mon  Mothma. One  of our  wing-pair patrols reports a

transport with fighter escort arriving insystem."

"Yuuzhan Vong or refugee?"

"Neither,  sir.  Its  communications  officer  says  it's  the  official

transport of  the New  Republic Advisory  Council. Their  authentication

code checks out."

Wedge frowned  at the  comlink. It  was inconceivable  that the Advisory

Council  was  still  functioning  in any  capacity.  Until  the  fall of

Coruscant,  they'd  been  Chief  of  State  Borsk  Fey'lya's  handpicked

advisers, a lubricating layer between him and the grinding machinery  of

government. But  with Fey'lya's  death during  Coruscant's fall  and the

collapse and flight of the  New Republic Senate, Wedge had  guessed that

the Advisory Council would have been scattered to the space routes, each

member racing home to prepare for Yuuzhan Vong pursuit. "Have they  done

anything other than request clearance to land?"

" Yes, sir. They've, um, requested  a meeting with you and your  general

staff, as soon as possible. They say they've brought your orders."

Wedge made a  face. As if  he needed interference  from a now-irrelevant

group of politicians. "All right. Set up two starfighter squadrons in  a

circle illuminating a  landing field well  away from the  facility. Tell

the Advisory Council that it's a military honor display. If they ask why

they've never heard  of such a  thing, tell them  it's a Rogue  Squadron

tradition. The  starfighters are  authorized to  attack without  further

confirmation if this turns  out to be some  sort of Vong trick.  If it's

not, conduct the Advisory Council here, to the conference room, as  fast

as  possible.  Begin  reprovisioning  and  repair  of  their   transport

immediately - and put some technicians aboard to sweep the ship and make

sure it doesn't have any surprises for us. Got that?"

"Got it, sir."

"Out." Wedge rose  with the uneasy  feeling - one  that had come  to him

every time politicians had a surprise for him, one that had almost never

been proven false.

When  Luke and  Mara reached  the conference  room -  he with  a cup  of

steaming chocolate in one hand and a  cup of caf for Mara in the  other,

as her  arms were  occupied holding  Ben -  it was  already half full of

Wedge's officers and advisers. They occupied seats around two-thirds  of

the main  table and  chairs behind;  several seats  at the  table, those

nearest the main doors, were  being kept conspicuously empty. Wedge  sat

at the head of the table,  facing the door, Tycho beside him;  they were

huddled in conference, though Wedge spotted Luke as he entered and waved

the Jedi Master up to the head of the table again.

The  expressions  of  most  people in  the  room  suggested  they'd only

recently been roused from sleep. Luke knew how they felt.

Mara dropped into the seat closest to the chair reserved for Luke,  next

to Lando. Lando  looked pained, his  brow creased in  a frown, his  eyes

bloodshot.

"Hangover?" Luke asked.

Lando winced. "Stop shouting."

"I could whistle you up some caf."

"If you were to whistle, my head would explode and there would be brains

everywhere."

Mara shook her head, deadpan. "No brains. Just skull fragments."

Lando shot  her a  betrayed look.  Luke grinned,  waited until  Mara had

settled Ben in her lap, and handed her the caf. Then he joined Wedge and

Tycho.

There was noise from the hall, a clattering of boots, and a group of ten

or twelve people turned into the conference room.

Luke knew several of them by sight.

Pwoe, first  of the  council to  enter, was  a Quarren. Quarren, roughly

humanoid in shape,  sometimes tended to  unnerve humans and  near-humans

because of  their looks;  they were  an aquatic  species with  squidlike

heads from  which trailed  four tentacles  where a  human's lower facial

features  would  be. The  Quarren  as a  culture  did not  deserve  this

reaction, but, in Luke's estimation,  Councilor Pwoe did; Luke knew  him

to be a grasping, politically carnivorous being who was no friend of the

Jedi.  It  would not  have  surprised Luke  to  find out  that  Pwoe had

something to do,  either directly or  indirectly, with the  formation of

the Peace Brigade,  the collaborationist forces  who kidnapped Jedi  and

handed them  over to  the Yuuzhan  Vong. Today,  Pwoe wore a full-length

green robe that contrasted nicely  with his leathery orange skin.  As he

entered the room,  his turquoise eyes  scanned the chamber,  found Luke,

fixed on  him for  a moment,  and then  moved on.  Pwoe sat in the chair

directly opposite Wedge.

Chelch  Dravvad of  Corellia sat  to Pwoe's  right, and  Fyor Rodan   of

Commenor sat beside  him. The two  human males, both  of middle age  and

with the confident,  artificial aura of  politicians on display  wrapped

tightly around them, tended to keep their attention on Pwoe, rather than

making eye contact around the room.

Niuk Niuv, the fourth councilor to  enter the room, was a Sullustan.  If

some long-ago  biological engineers  had created  a race  to resemble  a

child's  stuffed toy,  they could  not have  done much  better than  the

Sullustans, who  had round  heads, large  round ears,  wobbly jowls, and

charming  nonhuman  features; only  Ewoks  were more  likely  to produce

squeals of glee  in a child  seeing them for  the first time.  But, like

Ewoks, Sullustans could be dangerous  foes, and Niuk Niuv was  dangerous

even for  a Sullustan.  He'd been  an opponent  of the  Jedi ever  since

joining the Advisory Council. He sat to Pwoe's left.

Niuv was the last council member to enter. The remaining members of  the

council's company  appeared to  be aides,  datapads in  their hands  and

worried expressions on their faces, and guards, faces impassive, blaster

rifles held at the ready position.

Luke rose as the  others did, a customary  show of respect for  Senators

and members of the Advisory Council, but he felt a wave of irritation or

offense roll off the people already present in the room. So many council

guards present suggested that the council didn't trust Wedge's  security

arrangements. It was an insult;  Luke simply didn't know whether  it was

accidental or deliberate.

Wedge said, "Councilors, welcome to Borl -"

Pwoe  held  up a  hand.  "General Antilles,  you  address not  only  the

Advisory Council but the Chief of State."

Wedge blinked,  then his  gaze moved  to the  clasp being  used to  hold

Pwoe's robes  together. Made  of gold,  it was  the New  Republic symbol

surrounded by stars.  Borsk Fey'lya had  occasionally worn it.  Luke saw

Wedge struggle with his response - Pwoe's rise to the position of  Chief

of State was not by any stretch  of the imagination a legal one, but  in

these unsettled circumstances, it might just be a practical reality.

"Congratulations on  your promotion,"  Wedge said.  He gestured  for the

others to sit, and did so  himself. "If I may ask, where  are Councilors

Cal Omas and Triebakk?"

Pwoe spread his hands, a gesture of ignorance. "Alas, we do not know. We

suspect that they perished during the assault on Coruscant."

"Two more tragedies to add to the list."

"Indeed."

That,  potentially,  was  bad news.  Omas,  a  Senator representing  the

relocated people  of Alderaan,  and Triebakk,  a Wookiee  from Kashyyyk,

were sensible beings who did not have an irrational dislike of the Jedi.

They had been  a moderating influence  on the Advisory  Council. Now, if

they were indeed lost, all the members left to the council were  largely

opponents of the Jedi, advisers who had often argued in favor of finding

a  way  to  accommodate  the  Yuuzhan Vong  -  to  settle  the  war with

negotiation.

Luke felt a surge of suspicion. Had the two missing councilors  perished

on Coruscant? Or could they have been left behind deliberately by  these

deal-making bureaucrats - or even been pushed out of an air lock on  the

trip here? He shook his head, willing those thoughts away.

Mara leaned over, nearly touching foreheads with him. "I felt that," she

whispered. "That was my thought, too."

Lando leaned into the  huddle. "You don't need  the Force for that,"  he

whispered. "I could read it in Luke's expression."

"Shh," Luke whispered. "Or I'll make a loud noise."

Lando leaned away again, his motion hurried.

Pwoe  continued  to  stare  at Wedge,  impatience  evident  in  his body

language. "We should begin."

"We'll start in a minute," Wedge said. "Members of my general staff  are

still in transit." His face was fixed in a slight smile. Luke could tell

that it was nothing but veneer, a mask covering agitation, irritability.

Pwoe fixed  him with  an admonishing  look. "I  understood that you'd be

ready for us. Time is pressing."

There were footsteps in the hall. Booster Terrik, glowering, entered and

moved to sit near the table, close to Tycho. There were more  footsteps,

running footsteps, and  Danni Quee skidded  through the doors,  juggling

datapads and portable screens; her hair was an unruly blond mess tied in

an off-center  ponytail. She  slid into  a seat  near the door, directly

behind Corran Horn, and looked at Wedge. "Sorry," she said.

"Nothing to  be sorry  for," Wedge  said, and  looked up  at one  of the

council's guards. "Doors."

The guard looked at Pwoe, received his nod, and closed the doors.

"Now we can start," Wedge said.

Pwoe nodded. " Yes,  of course. First, I  want to reassure you  all that

the government of the New Republic is in fine working order. Drawing  on

the  emergency authority  that has  fallen to  us with  Borsk  Fey'lya's

death, and with the temporary  disarray the Senate finds itself  in, the

Advisory Council has assumed the reins of power. We are now  formulating

plans to  reorganize our  armed forces  and retake  Coruscant. We are in

communication with planetary governments from all over the New Republic,

which are acknowledging our leadership and awaiting orders."

Luke and  Mara exchanged  glances. She  took a  sip of  her caf and then

winced, as if the bitterness of the drink were the reason.

Wedge responded to Pwoe's statement with only a nod.

Pwoe waited,  as if  expecting more,  and then,  after an  uncomfortable

silence, continued, "We wish to congratulate you on your success here at

Borleias, General."

"Thank  you...  but we  haven't  had any  success  yet. We  seized  this

facility through  use of  overwhelming force,  which says  nothing about

either side in the conflict."

"Yes,  of  course.  Still, I  need  to  hear details  of  what  you have

accomplished here."

With little evident emotion and  no extraneous words, Wedge briefed  the

Advisory Council  members on  the situation  on Borleias.  Luke saw  the

councilors nodding and whispering to one another as he spoke.

When Wedge was through, Pwoe said, "You've done very well in seizing the

initiative, in anticipating the needs of the New Republic and acting  on

them. Not that I wouldn't expect that  of you. But now we need to  bring

your operation back into the  New Republic command structure so  that it

can be coordinated with the rest of our response to this disaster.  Sien

Sow remains Supreme Commander of  our armed forces, and you'll  continue

taking orders from him. Here is the first set."

Niuk Niuv sent a data  card skidding across the table-top.  Wedge caught

it, then slotted it into his datapad.

"Since these  are your  own trusted  advisers, I  will share your orders

with them," Pwoe said.

Wedge looked at him.  His face was impassive,  but the look was  still a

warning, a rebuke. To announce a  leader's orders in this manner to  his

subordinate officers was to  question that leader's competence,  to deny

that  leader  the  right   to  limit  the  information   reaching  those

subordinates.

Pwoe ignored  the look  and continued.  "What we  need from you, General

Antilles, is  for Borleias  to stand  as a  fortress against the Yuuzhan

Vong, even beyond the point  that the stream of refugees  from Coruscant

ends. The Yuuzhan Vong  won't be able to  tolerate the thought of  a New

Republic-controlled  military  base so  close  to Coruscant,  on  such a

prominent hyperspace crossroads, and  so they'll come against  you here.

This will give us crucial time  to regroup and then to come  and relieve

you. Once we've done so, we  can use Borleias to stage the  recapture of

Coruscant. You must hold here at all costs. Can we count on you?"

Instead of answering. Wedge asked, "What forces and materiel will I have

for this assignment?"

Pwoe blinked. "Most of Fleet Group Three is currently away from here, is

that correct?"

"Yes. At  deep-space rendezvous,  on operations,  coordinating with  the

other fleet groups, and  so forth. I'll have  to bring portions of  them

back here for the sort of operation you describe."

"Not at all. You underestimate yourself, General. We'll leave you with a

large proportion of the materiel you currently have in the Pyria system.

That should suffice until you're relieved. Of course, you can commandeer

additional forces arriving from Coruscant, and any volunteer units  that

choose to join you."

Wedge  nodded. "Councilor  Pwoe, I'm  afraid I  have to  turn down  your

assignment."

All whispered conversation stopped in  the conference room. Luke felt  a

slight  sense  of  unreality.   Through  the  years,  he'd   seen  Wedge

reinterpret orders and bend them in his efforts to do what was best  for

the Alliance and New Republic, but never refuse orders.

Pwoe straightened, becoming taller and  somehow seeming to swell in  his

chair. His voice  became deeper, projecting  better to those  in the far

corners of the chamber. "Perhaps I made a mistake in couching what I was

saying in the form of a request, General Antilles. You must  understand,

that actually constituted an order."

Wedge nodded. "Nevertheless, I'm refusing it."

"As an officer of the New Republic, you cannot do that."

"I'll resign my commission."

"In  this  period  of crisis,  that  could  be construed  as  an  act of

treason," Pwoe said. Luke could  actually feel outrage pouring from  the

Quarren, but it didn't feel quite  right - Pwoe was outraged because  he

was  being  refused, not  because  he actually  believed  his charge  of

treason.

For the first time since the  meeting began, Wedge smiled; it looked  to

Luke as though he were clamping down on a laugh. But the smile wasn't  a

cheerful one.  Luke imagined,  with a  flash of  insight from the Force,

Wedge drawing his blaster, a fast, smooth move, and shooting Pwoe  right

in  the  face.  Luke  twitched,  his  hand  automatically  seeking   his

lightsaber hilt, before he realized that this vision was not what  Wedge

intended to do - just what he wanted to do. Luke found himself  startled

by the violence Wedge was obviously keeping under restraint.

But Wedge merely  said, "Treason. Now  there's a curious  charge in this

circumstance. But we don't need to get into that. Or into the legitimacy

of your claim to be the Chief  of State. Instead, I'll make you a  deal,

Councilor  Pwoe. I'm  going to  mention a  set of  military forces   and

privileges.  Give  them  to  me for  this  assignment,  and  I'll accept

command.  Otherwise,  I'll  transmit you  my  resignation  of commission

before you can walk a hundred paces."

Outrage  crept  into Pwoe's  voice.  "You can't  dictate  terms to  your

superiors."

"Actually, given these circumstances, I can."

Pwoe  turned  to  Tycho,  who sat  beside  Wedge.  "Colonel  Celchu. I'm

promoting you to the rank of general. Your assignment will be the one  I

just described to this traitor..." His voice trailed off as Tycho  shook

his head.

Pwoe took a  deep, long breath.  His eyes flicked  back and forth  as he

evaluated other officers  in the chamber.  He relaxed, settling  against

the back of his chair. "All  right, then, in the spirit of  cooperation,

I'm prepared to hear what it is you want to ask for."

Wedge began counting off on his fingers. "First, all materiel  currently

in Pyria system, including extraneous forces we picked up in our retreat

from  Coruscant,  and any  currently  in transit  here  remain under  my

command for this operation."

Luke could  see, though  the councilors  could not.  Wedge give  Tycho a

light kick under the table.  Tycho opened his datapad and  began typing,

glancing  at Wedge  occasionally as  though transcribing  the  general's

words, but Luke was certain  that Tycho was performing a  very different

task.

"Second, I want the Lusankya."

Pwoe almost rose out of his chair. "The most powerful ship remaining  in

our navy? I don't think so."

"I do think so. And since,  once the Yuuzhan Vong decide to  besiege the

Pyria system, getting  supplies will be  somewhat problematic, I  need a

three-month supply  of food,  medical gear,  fuel, and  ordnance for the

entire force. I'll  give you three  days from the  time you depart  this

system  for that  to arrive.  If it  doesn't, we  leave. And  one  other

thing."

Pwoe's voice turned frosty. "There's always one other thing."

"I want the right to communicate directly with any officer in the  armed

forces, to invite him  or her to join  us here, and the  right to accept

his  or her  transfer -  without having  to go  through the   commanding

officer."

"Antilles, you are obviously deranged.  You should have been put  out to

pasture years ago."

"I was, Pwoe. I should have been left there. And if the Advisory Council

had conducted its part of the war with the Yuuzhan Vong in any competent

fashion, I could have been left there." Wedge held his hands out,  palms

up, a gesture saying. There we are. "Well?"

"Refused, of course."

"As you wish. When this meeting  is done, I'll order the forces  here to

abandon Borleias. By the time you can get another occupation force here,

the Yuuzhan Vong will hold this world. And, no, I'm not bluffing."

Pwoe  locked  stares  with  Wedge,  and  whispers  began  again  in  the

conference chamber. Finally Pwoe said, "A moment."

"Take two."

Pwoe turned  to huddle  with the  other Advisory  Council members. Wedge

turned to Tycho. The murmurs rose in volume.

Luke leaned back toward Mara and Lando. "Sometimes," Luke said, "I  wish

I had my sister's political insight, or yours. What's Wedge doing?"

"Pwoe is lying," Mara said. "He wants Wedge to shore up Borleias so that

the Yuuzhan Vong  will come here  to crush it.  But he won't  be sending

forces to reinforce  Borleias. No one  will. It will  fall, and everyone

here will die."

Luke frowned. "Then what's the point to holding it?"

"It  gives  the  Advisory  Council members  time  to  go  home and  make

preparations there. Preparations  for war, or  preparations so they  can

make  the  best  deal  possible with  the  Yuuzhan  Vong.  It gives  the

surviving members of the Senate the same time. And if they did their job

right and convinced Wedge to  fight ferociously, the Yuuzhan Vong  might

even be impressed with this  little battle, might offer better  terms in

their negotiations."

Luke  gave Wedge  a look.  "So all  he just  negotiated for  was  enough

military strength to let us hold out longer."

"That's right."

"But everyone who stays here is still dead. Pointlessly dead. Just  dead

a little later."

"That's right."

"I'm sorry I asked."

Mara managed a slight smile. "If  he's negotiating, he has a skitter  up

his sleeve. You know that."

The huddled members of the Advisory Council leaned away from one another

and  Pwoe  turned  again  toward  Wedge.  Conversation  in  the  chamber

immediately  died  down.  "General,  I  deplore  your  methods  and your

arrogance. I don't imagine you can expect much in the way of a  military

career once this assignment is done."

Wedge nodded. His expression was  kind, solicitous - or nearly  so. Luke

suspected it was actually mockery of those emotions. "But you accept."

"Yes. We accept. It  is my pleasure to  relieve you of command  of Fleet

Group Three, even if I must  leave you your current rank and  command of

this garrison."

"Once your orders confirming the  terms I specified have been  broadcast

over  the HoloNet  to our  armed forces,  you can  consider me  to  have

accepted, too." Wedge glanced at Tycho's datapad. "But I recommend  that

it be soon. Rogue Squadron has  reported sighting what may be a  Yuuzhan

Vong  scout  ship.  This  planet  will be  a  war  zone  very  soon." He

straightened and looked around. "This  meeting is over. In five  minutes

we'll have a quick operational  planning meeting." He gestured at  Luke,

Mara, Lando, Booster, and others, indicating that they were expected  at

that meeting.

The  members  of  the  Advisory Council,  suddenly  kicked  free  of the

activities at  hand, rose,  looking a  little uncertainly  at Wedge, who

paid them no further attention. The guard Wedge had called upon  earlier

opened the door again  and Pwoe led them  through. Luke could feel  both

irritation and smugness from the Quarren.

Luke shook his head. Smugness. Pwoe was smug because he knew Wedge would

soon be dead.  Luke felt anger  rise within him.  He shook his  head and

dispelled the  anger -  not forcing  it from  him, simply  releasing it,

feeling it dissipate.

Mara smiled. "I felt that."

"It's hard to be the serene Jedi Master all the time."

"I don't want you to be serene all the time, farmboy."

Gavin Darklighter moved up toward Wedge. He heard the general whispering

to Tycho, "What results?"

Tycho whispered back,  "All Fleet Group  Three ships within  four hours'

travel of Borleias are now in hyper-space on their way here."

"Good work."

Gavin leaned  over his  commander and  lowered his  own voice. "General,

none of the Rogues  on patrol reported anything  to me about sighting  a

Yuuzhan Vong scout."

"Of course they did. Five or six hours ago. In orbit around Borleias."

Gavin frowned, remembering. "Wait a minute. That was just the burned-out

hulk of a coralskipper. One that we vaped when we arrived."

"Correct. And a coralskipper can be used as a scout ship."

"Sure."

"And Rogue Squadron did report sighting it."

"Sure." Gavin felt his confused  expression give way to a  rueful smile.

He  looked across  the room,  where the  last members  of the   Advisory

Council  were  leaving,  haste and  nervousness  evident  in their  body

language. "Sir, how  you can be  so deceptive without  actually lying is

beyond me."

Minutes after the Advisory Council's  shuttle left orbit, Wedge had  the

conference doors locked and guards posted outside. He looked across  the

faces of those he'd asked to  remain behind - Tycho, Luke, Mara,  Lando,

Booster,  Danni,  Gavin,  Corran.  "Is anyone  not  clear  on  what just

happened?" he asked.

Luke spoke up.  "Are we sure,  are we absolutely  sure, that we've  just

been thrown to the neks?"

"Think of  it this  way," Wedge  said. "Pwoe  just handed  me the navy's

biggest surviving warship and enough materiel to noticeably diminish the

New Republic's ability  to defend itself  from the Yuuzhan  Vong. From a

coldly  analytical  political perspective,  do  the Coruscant  refugees'

lives or Borleias's military importance warrant that sacrifice?"

Luke shook his head. "No."

"Then the only  thing we can  conclude from this  is that the  so-called

Advisory  Council  has  given  up on  the  New  Republic.  That band  of

connivers  has already  concluded that  we're going  to lose,  that  the

Yuuzhan Vong  are going  to become  the dominant  force in  this galaxy.

They've given up.  And considering how  much political power  they hold,

their giving up could well doom the New Republic."

"I suppose so."

"Now, back to the subject ofBorleias. We're worse off than we thought we

were," Wedge continued.  "Before, we thought  we'd be able  to blast off

this rock, rejoin bel  Iblis and Kre'fey, and  lay in plans to  help the

New Republic rebound. Now, we can't. I would very much like to hear  any

ideas about what we can do to counteract the damage the Advisory Council

seems very prepared  to do to  our chances for  survival - both  here on

Borleias and in the galaxy as a whole."

"Before  we do  that..." Luke  frowned at  his old  friend. "Wedge,   if

there's no good to come out of it, why did you accept this assignment?"

"Well, because in a sense, the  council is right. Pyria does have  to be

held. The  Yuuzhan Vong  have to  be slowed.  And if  you'll permit me a

little ego here, I don't think they'd appoint someone as skilled as I am

to replace me here. It would be some commander who followed their orders

with blind loyalty  and nothing but  the death of  this garrison at  the

hands of the Yuuzhan Vong." Wedge  shrugged. "I don't plan to die  here,

Luke. And while I  don't think I can  hold Borleias, I might  be able to

make it a name that causes little Vong children to whimper." He returned

his  attention  to  the  room  in  general.  "So,  back  to  my original

question."

No one  spoke at  first. Then  Luke cleared  his throat.  "There are two

basic styles  of fighting,  hard and  soft. Back  in the  Rebel Alliance

days, we fought soft. The  New Republic fought hard. You're  expected to

stay here and fight hard. But, ultimately, hard obviously isn't going to

work.

"I think that the model extends  into our politics, too. If we  continue

to devote ourselves to the hard style, we're going to doom ourselves."

Wedge nodded.

Lando said, "So what you're saying - what are you saying?"

Mara said,  "What we're  saying is  that you  should stop  attacking the

Yuuzhan Vong with the New Republic. Attack them with the Rebel  Alliance

instead. Both here and in the wider theater of war."

"But  the  Rebel Alliance  is  gone," Danni  said.  "It became  the  New

Republic."

Luke nodded.  "Correct. What  I'm proposing..."  He took  a deep breath.

"I'm proposing that it's time for a new Rebel Alliance. Something that's

unbounded by the traditions and the shortsighted thinking of the current

government of the New Republic. Something different."

"That's treason," Booster said. "I like it."

"A resistance force,"  Wedge said. He  gave Luke a  sharp look. "But  it

would have to be a secret resistance. We can't just declare independence

from the New Republic  and march off to  fight the Yuuzhan Vong.  Secret

units  in  hidden  locations.  Operations  not  discussed  with  the New

Republic High Command."

"That's right," Mara said.  "Which, if we decide  to do this, makes  you

the weak link. Wedge."

Tycho frowned at her. "Perhaps you'd better explain that comment."

" Because in the  legal sense, it is  treason, Tycho. Wedge has  already

demonstrated that he's  willing to bend  the rules -  misappropriating a

sizable fraction of the New Republic's armed forces and using them in  a

manner inconsistent with his orders. This goes well beyond that. He'd be

misappropriating munitions  and materiel  and giving  them, not  loaning

them, to a private force. Even if we win, he could end up with the stamp

of traitor in all the historical records. So could you. Can you do that,

Wedge?"

Wedge  looked troubled  and did  not respond  at once.  The others  kept

silent.

Finally, Wedge met her  gaze, then looked at  the others. "I think  that

we're right at  the edge of  annihilation. Not just  the government. Our

entire  culture,  our  history.  If the  Yuuzhan  Vong  win,  they won't

necessarily  wipe us  out... but  they'll ingest  us. Digest  us.  We'll

become the  Yuuzhan Vong,  and everything  we stood  for, everything  we

aspired to, will vanish.  It would be as  if we were a  hologram and the

power was suddenly cut off. Gone without a trace." His voice  hoarsened.

"I'm not going to let that happen to my daughters, or to your  children.

So here's what I propose."

He  drew his  blaster and  shoved it,  spinning, to  the center  of  the

conference table. "Anyone  need a blaster?  That's mine. I'm  willing to

put it out  there because there's  no one in  this room I'd  hesitate to

give it to, or to put my life in the hands of. And that's how I  propose

we build this Resistance. For the time being, don't bring in anyone  you

wouldn't trust  your life  to, or  your children's  lives. We'll  set up

contacts, bases,  and cells  the old  Rebel Alliance  way. While the New

Republic hits the  enemy where they're  strong, we'll figure  out how to

hit them where they're weak. And if - or when - the New Republic finally

falls, we'll be here to hit the Yuuzhan Vong bothr ways, mixing hard and

soft styles.

"Are we in agreement?" He caught the eye of each of the others in turn.

Each person nodded or  raised a hand, all  but Booster, who drawled,  "I

suppose so." The others laughed.

"All right." Wedge  leaned back. "From  now on, we're  the Inner Circle.

Things said here don't go outside. People outside will think it's my own

group of advisers,  rather than the  start of a  resistance movement. If

there's someone you think can hear the treason we're plotting, tell  the

rest of us... and we'll vote to bring him or her into the Inner  Circle,

or not. Others we know we trust  and need, like the Solos, will join  us

when and if they arrive.

"Now, let's think about soft-style fighting. The Yuuzhan Vong are  going

to hit  us here  at Borleias.  We need  to draw  them in, give them some

success they don't deserve, so they'll grow to depend on and  anticipate

tactics that we can abandon  when we need to. I  need a me and I  need a

them." He turned to Tycho.

Tycho took a long breath. "Well, I can be them probably as well as I can

be you. And, of course, you can be you better than I can be you. But  if

you're them and I'm you, everyone is thinking outside the box."

Wedge nodded. "Good point."

Lando said, "I'm really lost."

Wedge grinned. "A  game of tactics,  Lando. When they  decide to send  a

serious military commander against us - whether it's right away or after

a few engagements - that commander is going to be analyzing our  tactics

so he can  implement the best  strategy possible against  them. In other

words, to have an idea of what he's going to be doing, we have to figure

out how much of our thinking and tactics he predicts. So if we can  give

him exactly what he expects from us, reinforce his prejudices about  our

strategic skills -"

"You can abandon them later and give him a surprise," Lando said.

"Right.  So in  our planning  sessions, Tycho  is going  to be   General

Antilles, and I'm going to be whoever the Yuuzhan Vong commander is, and

we'll see just how far astray we can lead him."

"I get  it," Lando  said. "In  fact, I  get it  better than you realize.

You're playing sabacc."

Wedge considered that statement,  his expression thoughtful. "I  suppose

so. And for bigger stakes than I've ever seen before."

FOUR

Borleias Occupation, Days 4-5

For the first time in years, Luke found himself facing an opponent whose

very nature made him waver in courage and resolve: bureaucracy.

Meetings were among the most ferocious weapons of his opponent. He would

spend  one hour,  two, three  discussing anti-Yuuzhan  Vong  starfighter

tactics with Colonel Celchu and a board of military advisers, then  rush

to a similarly  lengthy, tedious, and  tiring gathering with  scientists

pondering yet again the reason the Yuuzhan Vong and their creatures were

invisible to  the Force.  Luke learned  to alleviate  his frustration by

taking  charge of  the meetings  and conducting  them along  with  other

activities -  exercise, inventories  of supplies,  training sessions for

the Jedi students aboard Errant Venture.

And yet plans progressed as the Inner Circle formulated the structure of

a Resistance that could settle deep into hiding as the Yuuzhan Vong came

and could then spring up to gut the invaders when the time arrived.

Similar in structure to the Jedi underground that Leia and Han had  been

organizing, the  Resistance would  be broader  in nature  and greater in

numbers. The  Inner Circle  would land  one or  more trusted  members on

every world  it could.  Those members  would set  up Resistance cells of

personnel. Each cell would set up more cells. No member of a cell  would

know the identities of more  than two Resistance members outside  his or

her  own  cell, the  better  to contain  damage  if a  cell  were to  be

compromised. Each cell  would try to  establish a base  that the Yuuzhan

Vong could not find, a place to store vehicles, weapons, tools,  droids,

anything that the Resistance would need when the time came to return the

fight to the Yuuzhan Vong.

The existence  of the  Inner Circle  was known  throughout Wedge's fleet

group and nicknamed the Insiders,  but it was commonly believed  that it

was a board of military advisers. Its true purpose remained a secret.

Luke offered what knowledge and tactics  he could, and it turned out  to

be more than he'd expected.

In the years since he'd become a  Jedi Master - and for years he'd  been

the only Jedi Master known to the galaxy - he'd searched tirelessly  for

knowledge about the  Jedi as they  had been before  the rise of  Emperor

Palpatine to power. Palpatine  and his right-hand servant,  Darth Vader,

Luke's own father,  had systematically destroyed  the Jedi and  tried to

eradicate all knowledge of their  existence. Luke had sought to  recover

that knowledge.  He'd searched  out the  remaining traces  of the  Jedi,

finding  scraps here  and rumors  there, and  had learned  to run  those

trails to ground.  Most had led  nowhere - as  the Jedi he'd  sought had

either successfully vanished or had disappeared temporarily, only to  be

found, at last, by Palpatine's minions and expunged.

In  learning  how  Jedi  who had  survived  the  initial  sweeps of  the

Emperor's Purges had done so -  how they'd gone to ground, erased  their

official  identities,  concealed  their  Force  powers,  smuggled  their

lightsabers, and eluded  their hunters -  Luke had, without  knowing it,

accumulated  a  tremendous,  if  only  theoretical,  knowledge  of those

techniques. Now,  in meetings  and recording  sessions, that information

poured from him and was added  to the Intelligence training of Mara  and

others, becoming part of the handbook of establishing Resistance  cells,

as  it  had  when he  and  his  allies had  begun  setting  up the  Jedi

underground across the galaxy.

Eventually,  realizing  what good  they  might do  for  the Resistance's

cause, Luke became resigned to, even comfortable with, the meetings. And

they kept his mind  away from the worry  and ache he could  feel growing

within him.

More than twenty-five  years ago, when  Luke's Uncle Owen  and Aunt Beru

had  died on  faraway, insignificant  Tatooine, Luke  had found  himself

alone - surrounded by new friends, but possessing no family. Then,  over

time, he'd gathered a  family about him. His  father had not been  among

those gathered; Anakin Skywalker had died months after the revelation of

his true identity. But in Leia, Luke had found his true sister; then his

friend Han Solo  had become his  brother-in-law. Their children,  Jacen,

Jaina,  and Anakin  Solo, had  followed. Then  Luke's relationship  with

Mara, which had evolved from a  murderous hatred on her part to  love on

both their parts - love, and  a bond, expressed through the Force,  that

blurred the edges between them,  between their thoughts and hopes  - had

culminated in  their marriage.  Finally there  had been  Ben, born  mere

months  ago, and  Luke's family  numbered eight,  all calling  Coruscant

home.

Now "home" was  a conquered battlefield.  His family, gathered  after so

much  sacrifice and  effort over  so many  years, was  scattered.  Young

Anakin Solo was dead,  and all the hopes  Luke had invested in  him were

gone. Jacen was missing; most were convinced he was dead as well.  Jaina

had not come to Borleias; she was off on a personal quest of  vengeance,

and such quests often led to ruin, the dark side of the Force, or  death

... or all three.  Han now recuperated from  an injury at a  secret Jedi

base, and Leia  waited with him.  The only ones  Luke could hold  to him

each day were Mara  and Ben, and the  three of them lived  surrounded by

enemies.

Each time this realization  hit Luke, he gently  moved it away from  his

conscious thoughts and meditated,  focusing himself on his  purpose, his

tasks, those  he loved.  But these  Jedi techniques  merely put  off his

worries for a  while longer. The  worries endured, waiting  patiently to

claim his attention and erode his confidence. They were the Yuuzhan Vong

of his own mind.

Luke found himself surrounded by foliage and thought for an instant that

he was on foot patrol in  Borleias's jungles. But he realized within  an

instant  that  the  air  here was  even  danker  than  was customary  on

Borleias, and the precise nature of the plants and trees around him  was

wrong for that world. Here,  the trees were darker, larger,  their limbs

drooping, while opaque pools of ground-water concealed furtive movements

of their occupants.

Dagobah. It was  the world where  he had trained  with Yoda, a  lifetime

ago.

So this was a dream. He shook his head. No, in dreams he was not usually

so lucid. It was a vision, then, a vision through the Force.

He turned and faced the opening into the cave. It was there that he  had

confronted a vision of Darth  Vader - of himself in  Vader's distinctive

dress. Now, there was  no Yoda to warn  him against taking weapons  into

this place of evil and confrontation, and Luke felt sad that this vision

would not give him even the momentary pleasure of seeing his old  Master

again in the one context where his presence was appropriate.

Luke found he was dressed in black. His lightsaber hung at his waist. He

removed it, depositing it in the crook of a tree branch, and entered the

cave.

Within, he found  only darkness and  silence. But he  knew something was

there, a few steps from him, a deeper darkness. He could neither see nor

hear it, but could  feel it within the  Force. He stepped toward  it and

felt it move to the side, circling him.

Then it brushed past him, a contact that sickened him, reawakened in him

every great hatred of his life  - for Darth Vader, for the  Emperor, for

himself when he had  stumbled too far  down the path  of the dark   side

and left the cave. Luke followed.

He emerged into brighter light than he'd seen outside a moment ago,  and

now he was  surrounded by soaring  buildings, construction so  high that

the sky was  visible only as  a faint sliver  of light. All  around him,

duracrete   surfaces,  crashed   landspeeders,  and   giant  blocks   of

unrecognizable debris were coated with green algae and waving grasses in

a more pallid green hue. At his feet, a human body was covered with  the

same stuff.

The darkness  he'd pursued  was ahead  of him,  farther down  the narrow

aperture between skyscrapers,  still invisible to  the naked eye,  still

nausearingly tangible within the Force.

It roiled and spun like a tornado. It increased in size until it brushed

against  the  buildings to  either  side. The  algae  and grasses  there

changed when it touched  them, suddenly bearing large,  malformed fruits

as black and slick as old  oil. Then every surface in sight  was covered

with the fruits, and as he watched they began to drop from their  stems.

They  struck the  ground and  then struggled  to newly  developed  feet,

walking in every direction with the awkwardness of babies.

And each of them was filled with misery and dark side longing for ruin.

One opened its mouth and let out a piercing wail. Then another did,  and

a third. Suddenly the air was full of their cries.

A hand  gripped Luke's  shoulder. He  opened his  eyes. Mara was shaking

him; her face was  pale. The air was  still filled with cries,  but they

were Ben's, and Mara held the baby away, as if to protect him from Luke.

"What is it?" she asked.

"A vision." Luke brought his breathing under control and found that  one

part of  his vision  still lingered;  dark side  energy and malice still

surrounded him. Ben, as sensitive to the Force as only the child of  two

eminent Jedi could  be, wailed in  protest. "There's evil  on Coruscant.

Tremendous dark side evil."

Borleias Occupation, Day 5

The  hologram  showed a  familiar  sight: the  daytime  skyline of  some

portion of Coruscant.  The enormous, soaring  buildings and the  mottled

orange clouds in  the sky were  distinctive to that  world, though there

were so countless many different planetary vistas like this that no  one

present  could  precisely  identify  the  portion  of  Coruscant   being

displayed.

Things were different, though. The more distant skyscrapers seemed to be

a uniform shade of green, and  the reason why was evident on  the nearer

buildings: they were coated in  a material that looked like  algae. From

the  algae protruded  things that  looked like  grasses, tree  branches,

umbrella-topped fungi. Up  close, their colors  were different; only  in

the distance did they blur together into a single hue.

Luke found the hologram unsettling. The algae and grasses were identical

to those of his vision.

In  the  darkened conference  chamber,  a man  stepped  up next  to  the

holoprojection. In the  light cast by  the projection of  Coruscant, his

face was luminous, the  green from the algae  lending color to his  pale

skin, white hair, mustache, and beard, giving him a nonhuman aspect.  He

was lean with age, though not  to the point of emaciation. His  garments

were black, covering  all but his  head and hands,  leaving viewers with

the impression that those body parts were floating free in the chamber.

But this wasn't an eerie image. Many of those present had known his face

for years. Wolam Tser was a political historian whose  holodocumentaries

had cataloged every stage of the New Republic's development from when it

was  nothing  but  a  poorly  funded,  chaotically  disorganized   Rebel

Alliance.

"I've stopped  the image  here for  a moment,"  Wolam said,  his rolling

voice and upper-class accent instantly familiar to those in the chamber,

"so you can see what is  happening on Coruscant's surface. Some sort  of

planet  shaping has  begun. Those  growths cover  much of  the  planet's

surface.  They spread  incredibly swiftly;  everything you  see in  this

image was bare duracrete the  day before this was recorded.  The darkest

green material, some sort of  pastelike scum, secretes acids that  break

down the chemical  composition of duracrete.  The fungi, I  suspect, are

related  to  the  exploding  fungi  of  Yavin  Four;  when  struck, they

detonate.  The  hardier-looking  growths  send  deep  taproots  into the

surfaces  beneath  them.  In  short,  they  are  rapidly  destroying the

construction  on  Coruscant's  surface -  and,  of  course, construction

covers almost every square centimeter of the planet's surface. The  air,

though this image doesn't suggest  it, is increasingly noxious, and  the

remaining population is staying in ever-lower city levels, huddling near

air scrubbers that provide them with adequate atmosphere."

Luke asked, "What about Yuuzhan Vong intrusions?"

Wolam  peered in  his direction,  squinting in  a futile  effort to  see

deeper  into  the shadows.  "That  is the  distinctive  voice of  Master

Skywalker, isn't it?"

"It is."

"The Yuuzhan  Vong are  indeed performing  raids into  the lower levels.

Some seem to have objectives, such as the destruction of air  scrubbers,

while others seem  to be nothing  but hunting expeditions.  But the most

fearsome of their  assaults are not  raids; they occur  when the Yuuzhan

Vong remove themselves from an area. They evacuate to a distance of many

kilometers. And then  this happens." Wolam  brought up a  small handheld

device and depressed one of its buttons.

The  frozen  image suddenly  flickered  back into  life,  though nothing

changed other than  the motion of  nearby planet-shaping growths  in the

wind and a brief flash of lightning in one of the clouds.

Then  something  did change.  A  patch of  that  cloud became  brighter.

Something erupted from it, a small flaming dot with a trail,  descending

at an angle toward the planet's surface.

The dot disappeared  behind the buildings  in the distance.  There was a

moment in which nothing occurred other than the dissipation of the dot's

smoke trail high in the atmosphere.

A flash of light from that point in the distance briefly overloaded  the

holocam's ability to record; the  image burned away to brightness.  Then

it returned.

The buildings still  stood in the  foreground and the  distance, but now

there was something  behind them: a  tall column of  smoke spreading out

toward the top into a shape reminiscent of many forms of fungus.

And something was racing toward  the holocam, a shock wave.  Nearest the

smoke  column,  the  buildings   blurred  and  vanished.  The   wave  of

destruction,  a  distinct  semicircle,  flashed  across  the intervening

kilometers  faster  than  a  starfighter  could  fly,  eradicating every

structure in its way.  As the leading edge  came close to the  holocam's

viewpoint, Luke could  hear members of  the audience drawing  breath and

leaning back as though to put more distance between them and the wave.

The vision of Coruscant shook and faded to blackness.

Someone brought up the  lights in the chamber,  and once again it  was a

cozy meeting room rather than a vision of doom.

Wolam stood near the head of the table, to Wedge's left; he was the only

one standing. "That event nearly  cost the life of my  holocam operator.

Tarn." He  gestured to  a man  at the  rear of  the chamber; the fellow,

young and bulky enough to look awkward in a normal-sized chair, gave him

an indifferent wave. "Tarn lay  unconscious for two days before  finding

his way back to me, and was sick for days after because he'd breathed in

so much of the toxic atmosphere. He's still feeling the effects."

Wedge asked, "What sort of weapon did they use to achieve that result?"

Wolam  gave  him  a thin  smile.  "Our  own. That  was  a  Golan Defense

Platform. A  few days  ago, it  defended Coruscant  against the  Yuuzhan

Vong. Then, after  it was destroyed,  it was nudged  from orbit to  come

down upon  the planet's  surface. I  can't estimate..."  He stopped, and

there was no indication on his face of what had caused him to  hesitate,

but Luke felt a sudden flash of pain from the man. "I can't estimate how

many died when it hit. Millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions.

That  impact  zone was  a  couple hundred  kilometers  southwest of  the

Imperial Palace. They're pushing more satellites and skyhooks down,  one

after another. And since only a few million of Coruscant's citizens have

found passage offworld, the vast majority  are in mortal peril - in  the

short term, from the falling satellites,  and in the long term from  the

planet shaping."

"We appreciate the information you've brought us," Wedge said, "and  the

samples you've given  us have been  forwarded to our  team of scientists

specializing  in  Yuuzhan  Vong techniques."  He  consulted  the datapad

before him.  "Your shuttle's  damage -  that was  sustained during  your

departure from Coruscant?"

Wolam nodded.  "One reason  it took  me a  few days  to depart  was that

several of us clubbed  together to make a  mass departure. The idea  was

that, since their star-fighter  analogs would inevitably come  after us,

some of us might survive where one ship wouldn't." He looked apologetic.

"Mine was one of the few that made it out."

"Your damage is being repaired. Your shuttle should be ready in a day or

two. We  can send  you out  with the  next batch  of refugee departures;

you'll have starfighter cover for your trip."

Wolam glanced around. Luke saw  his attention freeze, for the  barest of

moments,  on several  of the  faces present  at the  meeting,  including

Luke's own. Then Wolam returned his  attention to Wedge. "If I may,  I'd

like to stay instead.  I'm a historian. Here  is where history is  being

made. We won't  be much of  a draw on  your resources. We  have quarters

aboard my shuttle."

"Very well." Wedge stood.  "Now, it's back to  work. I'm sorry it's  all

bad news today, but we need to be kept updated."

On his  way out  the door,  Tarn accepted  congratulations from  many of

those  who'd  been  present  -  congratulations  on  bringing   valuable

information,  congratulations  on  surviving.  He  nodded  and   gulped,

uncomfortable at being  among so many  people - at  being among so  many

famous people - and moved as quickly  as he could. His size, for he  was

tall enough to brush his hair against the top of the doorjamb and  bulky

enough to bring  a smile to  the face of  a smashball team  owner, acted

against him, as it usually did; he managed to catch chair legs with  his

feet and inadvertently brushed some smaller people out of the way as  he

staggered for the door. Then he was out in the hall, where at least  the

traffic was moving in the direction  he wanted to go, and a  few moments

later was outside, gratefully gulping in Borleias's moist, warm air.

"Not much for crowds, are you?" The speaker - female, young - had  moved

up beside him as he'd recovered.

He took  a look  at her  and his  stomach lurched  again. She was right.

Crowds were bad. But attractive  females didn't help either. They,  too,

made words stick in his throat  and made his heart hammer. This  one was

slender, her hair a cascade of blond curls now tied back in a tail.  Her

eyes  were a  lively blue,  her features  the sort  that brightened  any

chamber they entered.

Tarn took  a moment  to remember  what it  was she'd  said. He managed a

smile that, he  hoped, suggested he  was at ease.  "That's right. I'm  a

field holocam operator, not a city boy. How I ever let Wolam persuade me

to come back to Coruscant with him really baffles me."

"I suspect that he's pretty persuasive."

"He is." Tarn thought furiously,  trying to remember what normal  people

did in these situations, then extended his hand. "Tarn Elgrin."

She shook it. "Danni Quee."

"Say, I  know your  name. You're  almost famous."  Then he winced. "That

came out wrong."

Her smile said that she was amused rather than offended. "Listen,  Tarn,

I have a question  for you. Do you  have any recordings that  Wolam Tser

didn't show us back there? Any recordings of the Yuuzhan Vong?"

"I -" He  felt the onset  of a headache  but ignored it.  He hadn't been

told that he couldn't share his recordings. Wolam Tser might fret  about

it, but then again,  in these times of  war, when it was  vital to share

information with  appropriate parties,  he probably  wouldn't. "I  do. I

have some recordings of a Yuuzhan Vong hunting pack. In the midlevels of

Coruscant. I was with some people. After I stopped recording and  really

started running, I got toward the front of the pack and the Yuuzhan Vong

fell on those in the rear." He  shrugged. "So I got away." He pulled  up

the bag he always carried with  him, the one that held his  holocam, his

miniature backup holocam, his recordings, his recording blanks. He found

the recording  he was  looking for  and pressed  the data  card into her

hand. "That's the one. I'd like it back."

"I'll copy it and get it back to you soon. Today, even."

"Thanks."

"Nice meeting you."  She flashed him  a smile and  headed back into  the

building.

"Likewise."  Finally able  to get  his heart  rate under  control.  Tarn

headed away from the building, out into the kill zone.

Within the half kilometer nearest the front of the building, the  burned

out area that had once been jungle was heavily occupied by vehicles  and

vessels; two large docking bays were under construction, duracrete being

poured, prefabricated  metal walls  being raised.  All around  them were

shuttles and starfighters, speeders and hovercrafts, transports and  one

large freighter with extensive damage to its bow.

Tarn brought out his holocam and took a few moments to record the scene.

Someday, if  the New  Republic survived,  people would  want to know how

these events played out.

The headache grew in  strength so suddenly that  it felt as though  he'd

been stabbed.  He cried  out, clutched  his head,  and struggled to keep

from falling.

He knew why the headache was back. It was because he wasn't obeying. His

instructions were clear. He dropped the holocam back into his bag.

Tarn weaved  his way  between the  ships in  the kill  zone to reach his

well, really, Wolam's - shuttle.

Of course, it was a shuttle in function, not a shuttle in design. It had

begun its career as a  Sienar-built Skipray blastboat, an Imperial  four

person gunship. An ungainly-looking thing, it had a bow that looked like

an  eccentric  cam  gear,  the  narrowest  portion  pointed  forward and

broadened by a pair of fixed wings angled downward at a sharp angle. The

bow was  attached to  a stern  that was  little more  than a  huge axle.

Mounted on  the axle  were the  stabilizer fins,  forward-sweeping wings

that  could  rotate  to  be  horizontal  for  landing  or  vertical  for

stabilization in atmospheric flight.

When it had been a machine of war, it had been heavily armed. But  years

ago, after  Wolam Tser  had stolen  it when  escaping with recordings of

Imperial base-building  activities that  the Empire  didn't want  him to

retain, he'd begun modifying the boat. The proton torpedo and concussion

missile tubes had  been removed to  give the boat  more cargo and  cabin

room.  The  laser  cannon  turret  on  top  had  been  replaced  with  a

transparisteel  dome,  opening up  more  cabin room  and  offering those

beneath it another view of the stars. The controls had been  simplified,

making the optimum crew size two instead of four.

Behind the command  cabin, room that  had been needed  for missile racks

was now converted into  two smallish cabins, one  for Wolam and one  for

his holocam operator.

Tarn offered a false smile and a wave to the mechanics now welding metal

plates over the holes in the wings, repairing damage sustained when  one

of the boat's companion  vehicles had exploded under  coralskipper fire.

He climbed up the port-side bow wing to the main hatch and entered,  his

movements hurried. Only if he hurried would the headache be kept at bay.

He didn't pause as he entered the command cabin but headed into the  aft

passageway. In two  paces he was  at the door  to his cramped  cabin. He

entered in a rush - Hurry, hurry - and sealed the door behind him.

He lifted  the mattress  of his  bunk to  reveal the storage compartment

beneath.  In  it was  a  large, roughly  spherical  piece of  rock  - "A

souvenir of Corellia," he'd explained to Wolam.

Of course, he'd lied. He'd had to.

He set the stone, which was lighter than it should be, atop his bunk and

rapped three  times on  its surface.  A moment  later, he  rapped again,

twice.

The stone split along an invisible center seam. It opened like an  ocean

bivalve, but  instead of  revealing two  linings of  flesh and perhaps a

pearl,  it showed  only an  amorphous blobby  mass of  material in   the

bottom.

His stomach lurching at the  thought of touching it again,  Tarn reached

out and found the slight protrusion  at the top of the blob.  He stroked

it, feeling the living  thing react to his  touch. He snatched back  his

hand and  wiped it  on his  pants, though  there was  no residue  on his

fingers from the smooth thing.

Moments  later,  the  blobby  material  stretched  up  and  assumed  the

approximate shape of a  human head. Tarn didn't  think it was a  Yuuzhan

Vong female's head;  the forehead was  too pronounced, the  features not

made irregular by mutilation.

The villip looked at him with  the face of his controller. "Report,"  it

said, its speech unaccented.

Tarn felt his  headache fade to  almost nothingness, but  the turmoil in

his stomach, the turmoil in his emotions kept this from being the relief

it otherwise would have been. "We are on Borleias," he began.

Borlelas Occupation, Day 6, Predawn

There was a rap at the door. Wedge jolted upright, his eyes opening, his

mind momentarily cloudy about where he was, what he should be doing.

He was still  in his office,  in his chair,  but he'd fallen  asleep. He

couldn't let himself do that. Every moment he didn't push himself,  more

people might die.

He rubbed sleep from his eyes and turned to the door. "Come."

The  door slid  over and  out of  sight, but  there was  no one  in  the

corridor beyond. Then his visitor showed himself, peeking in from around

the doorjamb.

The man was of average  height and bald-shaven bald, Wedge  knew, rather

than prematurely bald.  His mustache and  goatee were close-cropped  and

black,  giving  him a  sinister  appearance, but  his  smile, all  cheer

flavored  with  wicked  humor,  dispelled any  sense  of  dread.  He was

handsome  in  a way  that  only celebrities  and  a few  extraordinarily

successful businessmen and criminals could be.

Wedge rose. "Face! I  was afraid you were  lost back on Coruscant.  Come

in."

Garik "Face" Loran, leader of the covert Intelligence team known as  the

Wraiths, shook his head.  "Later. For now, I'm  just here to drop  off a

package."

"What package -"

She moved around Face, entering the office at just short of a dead  run.

She was tall. Wedge's average  stature making them the same  height, and

slender, with dark blond hair now frosted attractively with gray. In her

youth she'd been  an extraordinary beauty;  now, to Wedge's  perception,

lines  of  laughter  and  worry  accentuated  that  beauty  rather  than

detracted from it.

Suddenly he was on the other side of the desk - by running or  vaulting,

he could not recall - and enfolding her in his arms. "Iella..."

There  was  more noise  than  two voices  could  account for,  cries  of

"Daddy!" Wedge  released his  wife, crouched,  and grabbed  up his  dark

blond, blue-eyed daughters, who had magically appeared on either side of

Iella; he stood with one in either arm, Syal in the left and Myri in the

right.

A few days before,  when he'd picked them  both up in their  quarters on

Coruscant, he'd complained that they were getting big, too heavy for him

to lift. Now, their arms around  his neck, he could barely detect  their

weight.

A moment ago he'd had nothing but a mission. Now he had a future  again,

a future he could  hold to himself, a  future he could squeeze  and hear

and  smell. Wedge  glanced over  at Face,  but the  Wraith leader   had,

appropriately, vanished while attention was elsewhere, and the door  was

sliding closed where he'd been.

They  lay in  the darkness  of Wedge's  quarters. Moonlight  spilled  in

through the  turquoise transparisteel,  casting everything  in shades of

blue, bed and walls and skin.

"It's not the same as watching  your home dying," Iella said. Her  voice

was thoughtful. She stared at the blue-tinged ceiling as if staring  far

beyond it, staring all  the way back to  Coruscant. "Not the same  as if

they'd descended on Corellia. But seeing orbital platforms drop onto the

city, knowing that millions were  dying with every impact, knowing  that

the few  who were  streaming into  space in  private vessels and leaving

their homes behind were the  lucky ones... Coruscant is dying.  Wedge, I

don't know if I can describe the misery of it."

"You don't have  to," he said.  " I know  what it was  like to leave you

behind. To have to tell myself, 'I can't find them, I can't help them, I

can keep people alive up here.' "

She turned a smile on him. "Didn't you trust me to get us out alive?"

" Yes. But trust doesn't keep worry from eating you up from inside."

She kissed him, rested her head on his shoulder. "What do we do now?"

"Well, you were just promoted  to head of Intelligence for  my operation

here, which frees up Mara to make the Vong suffer in her own  inimitable

way. I'm going to  need you to spread  information among our people  and

see if the Yuuzhan Vong act on any of it - if we have any traitors among

us, I want to find out who they are as fast as possible, to use them for

our own purposes or eliminate them as a threat."

"Is that going to be here or at some other station?"

"Here." And he told her of the meeting with the Advisory Council.

She was  silent for  a long  time as  she thought  about what he'd said.

"Wedge, you're  doing what  you never  like to  do. Fighting a two-front

war.  The Yuuzhan  Vong on  one side  and the  Advisory Council  on  the

other."

Wedge  smiled. "The  Advisory Council  doesn't know  we're at  war  with

them."

"They know they're at war with us; they just don't know we know it.  But

they may figure it out more quickly than you imagine. Even without Borsk

to lead  them, they  have a  lot of  political smarts.  Which means that

Yuuzhan Vong spies aren't the only spies you have to worry about. One of

my jobs is going to be  leaking information and seeing how our  supposed

allies respond  to it...  so we  can use  them for  our own  purposes or

eliminate them as a threat."

"I knew I was keeping you around for a reason."

"At least two reasons."

"Don't tickle."

FIVE

Yuuzhan Vong Worldship, Coruscant Orbit

The villip  stared at  Viqi Shesh  with the  face of  a human man, large

boned, the angle  of his head  suggesting fear and  pain. "I'm not  in a

position to  learn any  secrets," the  villip protested.  "I just follow

Wolam Tser around, recording his observations and interviews."

Viqi made her voice a purr. She hoped its tones and nuances would  carry

across the villip. This voice excited  men, made them long for her,  and

the notion that desire for her  would torment this man amused her.  "You

met Danni Quee. Become her friend.  Her lover, if you're capable of  it.

Convince her  to confide  in you.  Volunteer for  additional duties when

Tser isn't  making use  of you.  You can  do simple electronics repairs,

can't you?"

Tarn's voice sounded pained. "Yes."

"Get a  job doing  that. Put  recorders or  transmitters in devices that

will  go  in critical  places.  Iella Wessiri  is  good enough  to  find

anything you might plant, so don't try to harvest the information  those

devices might bring you; instead, leave counterpart objects where  blame

will fall on people within their command structure, people Antilles  and

Skywalker don't quite trust yet. Cause paranoia. Do you understand?"

"I understand."

"Prove  it,  simpleton."  Viqi stroked  the  villip  and it  contracted,

cutting off the communication.

She  sighed  and  stretched.  The  skin  of  her  back,  still  healing,

protested, but she did  not let that minor  pain show on her  face. Then

she  turned,  the  bloblike  material   that  served  her  as  a   chair

accommodating itself to her motion, and faced her own controller.

He was dressed in  the loincloth of a  warrior, amphistaff in hand.  His

nose  had  been smashed  flat,  an oddly  symmetrical  mutilation for  a

Yuuzhan Vong, and part of his right upper lip was gone, revealing  teeth

beneath. His skin was decorated extensively with tattoos.

But his most  extensive mutilation was  a single puckered  scar. In most

places it was  an angry red,  sometimes graduating to  a scabrous brown,

everywhere standing out starkly against his skin. It started out at  the

top of his bald head, wound down his right cheek to his chin and up  the

other side, then turned  downward again just short  of his left eye.  It

continued down his neck and wound back and forth across his chest before

disappearing  beneath  his harness.  It  reemerged on  his  right thigh,

ending in a circle around his knee. It must have been among his earliest

decorations, for his tattoos paralleled it, never running across it.

His  name  was Denua  Ku,  and Viqi  knew  from the  few  words she  had

exchanged with him that he  had no grasp of Intelligence  operations. He

was here to guard her, not to help her with her assignment. She gave him

a smile that was all contempt and mockery. "All done," she said.

"Then you  will return  to your  quarters." His  voice suggested  mutual

contempt,  even  through  the tizowyrm,  an  organic  translator of  the

Yuuzhan Vong, implanted in her ear.

"I'm sick  of my  quarters. I  do half  an hour's  worth of  work a  day

managing this idiot  of an operative  and spend the  rest of my  time in

chambers that smell like half-cooked  bantha tripe. I want something  to

do."

Denua Ku said nothing. Viqi took that as a good sign. If he'd been under

strict orders  to keep  her in  her quarters,  he would have immediately

demanded that they go there. But he wasn't going to suggest any sort  of

recreation to her; she'd have to find her own diversion.

She knew  they'd never  agree to  a diversion  that would  get her  near

spacecraft or pilot training,  so she'd have to  find some other way  to

get her into other parts of  the worldship, places where she could  meet

other Yuuzhan Vong - or even some of their prisoners.

"I want to  learn how coralskippers  and buildings and  armor are grown.

How  everything is  grown. I  suppose I'll  need a  skill for  when  the

Yuuzhan Vong have subj negated everything and don't need an Intelligence

division  anymore."  Denua Ku  didn't  answer, so  she  added, "Take  my

request to the warmaster. I suspect he'll agree to it."

It was the carrion-eaters'  hour, or so Tsavong  Lah thought of it,  the

hour in which he permitted visitors to come before him on  miscellaneous

errands,  the  hour  in  which  he  cleaned  away  his  visitors'  petty

difficulties  so they  didn't accumulate  like carrion.  He steered  his

attention away from that customary thought, as it came too close to  his

problem with his new arm.

The warrior Denua Ku came before him with Viqi Shesh's request.  Tsavong

Lah authorized it. The human woman would never abandon her  manipulative

ways to learn a productive trade.

Next into the small reception chamber was Maal Lah, his kinsman and  one

of his  best military  advisers. Maal  Lah's features  were surprisingly

regular, his jawline unbroken,  but his face was  meticulously decorated

with red and blue swirls.

"Yes, my servant?" the warmaster asked.

"I have learned a curious thing," Maal Lah said. "The infidel fleet that

took  Borleias  has not  yet  begun its  withdrawal.  And the  surviving

warriors of Domain Kraal report that the tool-users are digging in as if

against a siege."

"That makes little sense from a military viewpoint," the warmaster said.

"They  cannot  hope  to  hold  it.  They  cannot  hope  for  relief." He

considered the matter. "Send Wyrpuuk  Cha's fleet to crush them.  Domain

Kraal  despises  Domain Cha;  having  to admit  a  debt to  Cha  will be

additional punishment for not holding Borleias as they should."

"Yes, Warmaster."

"Was there anything else?"

" No, Warmaster." Maal Lah withdrew.

Next to  receive an  audience was  Takhaff Uul,  a priest. Highly placed

within the  order of  Yun-Yuuzhan, the  great god  of the  Yuuzhan Vong,

Takhaff Uul was young for his duties; others of his age in the same sect

were low-ranking priests, servants and aides to senior priests, while he

was already a well-respected interpreter of the god's will. His  tattoos

were not geometric designs or exaggerations of deformities; his  designs

were  of  eyeballs,  small  clawed  hands,  tentacles,  all  rendered in

realistic detail as if  to suggest he had  had dozens of transplants  in

his short life. He bowed low before the warmaster.

"Speak," Tsavong Lah said.

Takhaff Uul straightened.  "I speak out  of place," he  said, "bypassing

the high priest  to bring words  directly to your  ears, so I  have come

prepared to die if my words displease you."

"You should always come prepared to die," Tsavong Lah said. "You  should

not try to predict when your words will displease me."

"Yes, Warmaster."

"Speak your mind."

"I speak  not my  mind, but  the will  of the  Creator, Yun-Yuuzhan.  My

visions of  him in  last night's  dreams led  me to  thoughts of you and

your... affliction."

Tsavong Lah lifted the hand of his radank claw and studied its  grasping

digits. With  this limb,  he could  rend the  throat of  a Yuuzhan  Vong

warrior... assuming  the limb  did not  tear free  of him  with such  an

exertion. "What did he say of me?"

"Only that your pursuit of this war brings much pleasure to the heart of

the slayer Yun-Yammka."

"I do not see how this relates to my arm."

"It was  what he  did not  say, Warmaster.  I felt-and  this was  only a

priest's intuition-that the Creator believed himself to be separate from

the glory you  are achieving. That  he is not  receiving his due  share.

That he is displeased."

"And what did you feel would correct this measure?"

"A  dedication,  Warmaster.  A gift.  Something  offered  to Yun-Yuuzhan

alone.  An entire  world devoted  to the  Creator and  his priests   and

concerns."

"But the priests of Yun-Yuuzhan have haven everywhere, among all domains

and colonies."

"Yes, Warmaster. I know you are correct. But who can know the mind of  a

god?  I  can only  interpret  the dreams  I  have, and  hope  that I  am

correct."

"I will consider this." With his radank claw, Tsavong Lah made a shooing

gesture, and the young priest withdrew.

As soon as the  priest's back was turned,  Tsavong Lah nodded to  one of

his trusted guards and  made a gesture that  only the warmaster and  his

personal  guards  understood. That  guard  followed Takhaff  Uul  to the

chamber portal; when  the priest was  well down the  corridor, the guard

spoke quietly to  another guard, then  returned to stand  behind Tsavong

Lah's seat.

The warmaster dealt  with another pair  of administrative matters.  Then

the guard who  had followed Takhaff  Uul returned and  presented himself

before the warmaster:

"Well?"

"He went to the chambers of Ghithra Dal, the shaper," the guard said.

Tsavong Lah sat in contemplation  for long moments. Ghithra Dal  was the

shaper who had attached his ra-dank claw.

Viqi Shesh might have been correct.

He would have to find out.

Borteias Occupation, Day 9

The fleet of Wyrpuuk  Cha slowed as it  entered the outer limits  of the

Pyria system.  The system's  distant sun  was visible  through the amber

colored shell that served the bridge as a viewport, but Wyrpuuk Cha paid

it no attention, concentrating instead  on the cloud of blaze  bugs that

hovered  in  the  black  hemispherical depression  at  the  rear  of the

chamber.

The insects, capable of hovering  in flight and glowing or  growing dark

at the mental  command of the  fleet's yammosk, formed  glowing patterns

and  shapes  within  that  depression.  A  spherical  cluster  of   them

represented the system's sun.  Others formed smaller balls  representing

the  planets  of  the  system. Numberless  glowing  mites  of  a related

species, too small to see but for their bluish glow, arrayed  themselves

to represent the crisscrosses of  ionic trails that decorated the  solar

system, indicating where the hated metal ships of the enemy had recently

made runs.

Other blaze bugs hovered singly or formed into small, irregular patches.

These, Wyrpuuk Cha knew, constituted groups of enemy ships. Knowledge of

their whereabouts came from  villip transmissions from the  Yuuzhan Vong

refugees on Borleias  and from the  gravitic senses of  the yammosk, but

the information was  incomplete; fleet elements  too near gravity  wells

would not be detectable, nor  would ships situated at distant  points in

or just beyond the solar system. The enemy could have hundreds of  ships

located here;  it would  take time  and sacrifice  to root  them out and

destroy them.

Time  he  had,  and  warriors  in  great  number  willing  to  make that

sacrifice. Depending on the enemy forces and commanders, it might  prove

a struggle, but Wyrpuuk Cha would be able to take this system.

The  question  was whether  he'd  be able  to  take it  swiftly  enough,

efficiently enough to please Warmaster Tsavong Lah. He could not  afford

to  spend  too  much  time or  expend  too  many  resources. He  needed,

strategically speaking, to  bare his belly,  invite his enemy's  attack,

and  gut  his opponent  while  that opponent  was  outstretched, out  of

balance, out of position. He could afford one feint, maybe two.

"They  have  not  reestablished shield  platforms  in  orbit around  the

planet." That was a female voice. It belonged to Kadlah Cha, a  military

analyst belonging to his own domain.

He spared her a look. Her facial tattooing was startling even by Yuuzhan

Vong  standards,  darkness  around  her eyes  and  below  her  lower lip

suggesting, at first glance, that those features were grossly oversized.

Her decorations were a mirror image of, and copied from, his own, though

his were accentuated by scarring from  warfare and a slit at the  center

of his upper lip, rising nearly to his nose, that acted as an artificial

harelip  and  perpetually bared  his  upper teeth.  "So  they will  have

situated a minefield around Borleias, and simulated a shield with  their

metal ships."

"No, Commander." She moved to the blaze bug depression and extended  her

hands into  it, waving  many of  the images  aside, waving the spherical

cluster representing Borleias toward her. The dismissed insects  swarmed

toward the sphere, expanding it, adding details representing vessels  in

orbit around the planet. "See?  They have capital vessels in  what looks

like geosynchronous orbit  above one point  on the planet,  not far from

the Domain  Kraal touchdown  point, and  other vessels  in more  typical

orbits. Nothing else. And the  Kraals report no buildup of  ground-based

shield generators except at this site."

"A  hardpoint defense  of one  location." Wyrpuuk  Cha considered  that,

reevaluating the situation. He reached into the depression and  gestured

to  return  the image  to  its previous  magnification.  "And see  here.

Recent, repeated travel to this  orbit above the sixth planet,  an orbit

corresponding to one of its moons. Yet no indication of ships here  now.

A hidden  base of  some sort?  They're not  protecting the primary world

from intrusions that could  drop planetshaping materials, so  they don't

care about  the world  itself... just  what is  to be  found at that one

site. We must find out what they protect there and on that moon."

The alarm jolted Wedge  and Iella out of  their sleep. It was  a shrill,

keening  thing,  not  the  sort   of  alarm  installed  in  a   military

installation; it had to be some sort of biological hazard alert that was

part of  this station's  original equipment.  Wedge groped  on the table

beside his bed for his comlink and found it was already beeping for him,

the sound drowned out by the alarm. "Antilles here."

"We have a major Yuuzhan Vong intrusion." The comm officer's voice was a

disinterested  drawl in  distinct contrast  with the  importance of  his

message.  "Dozens of  capital ships  entering the  system at  its  outer

fringes from Coruscant's bearing. No sign yet of coralskipper launch."

"Issue a systemwide alert  condition. I'll be there  immediately." Wedge

rose, mind already clear and focused on his task, and began to dress.

He saw that Iella was already one jumpsuit ahead of him. She sealed  her

suit's main seam and asked, "What's the plan for today?"

"Bad tactics. We're leaving a gap in our coverage of the sensor  station

on the  fourth moon  of Pyria  Six. We'll  beat back  whatever comes  at

Borleias but let them chase us off that moon. I'll be coordinating  from

the ground  so they  can detect  that I'm  coordinating from the ground.

Reinforces the  impression that  there's something  important down here,

too."

She helped him seal his suit and gave him a quick kiss. "I hate it  that

you're going to lose, even on purpose."

"Why?"

"Because you're such a bad loser."

He gave her a grin. "Ultimately, I intend to be a very, very bad loser."

SIX

Borleias Occupation, Day 9

Saba  Sebatyne, a  Jedi Knight  of the  Barabel people,  tapped her  way

through the power-up checklist of the Wild Knights' lead blastboat.  Her

fingers moved  deftly and  surely for  such a  large and bulky creature;

Barabels were reptilian, covered in scales, with large eyes protected by

heavy,  protruding  brow  ridges,  but  otherwise  somewhat inexpressive

faces.

Danni Quee covertly watched Saba.  Danni's position on the ship,  sensor

operator  and  sometimes  ship's  weapons,  didn't  call  for  as   much

preparation as Saba's.  Saba's efficiency and  speed with her  task were

undimin-ished, but Danni knew she  had  been through much pain  recently

the loss  of her  Jedi Master,  Eelysa, to  a Yuu-zhan Vong-bred monster

called  a voxyn  on Corellia,  and then  the loss  of two  of her   kin,

hatchmates to her  own son, during  Anakin Solo's successful  but costly

mission to destroy  the queen -  the source of  the voxyn. But  Barabels

were very different from humans in their expressions of pain and  grief,

inviting no sympathy, so Danni could offer her no condolences.

Saba came to the end of her checklist. "Pilot station ready," she said.

"Sensor station  ready," Danni  responded automatically,  and the  other

Wild  Knights  aboard  called   out  their  readiness.  Danni   was  not

technically  a  Wild Knight,  nor  technically a  Jedi  Knight like  the

others, but she had flown with them on many occasions now and found that

her  duty station,  when she  wasn't occupied  with critical  scientific

projects, was aboard the Wild Knights' blastboat.

Saba  called  in  the  squadron's  state  of  readiness  and immediately

received the unit's orders. With  a hiss, she turned her  attention away

from the screen before her as if rejecting its presence.

"What is it?" Danni asked. "If you can tell us, I mean."

"We are to defend, and lose, and quit the field," Saba said. "To act  as

a shield. Conservative tacticz. This one is a hunter. This one does  not

know how to defend or flee."

"This one is a scientist," Danni said. "This one didn't used to know how

to kill."

Saba regarded Danni levelly, then returned her attention to the  screen.

"Danni can return to using human grammar now," she said.

Twin Suns  Squadron, Rogue  Squadron, and  the Wild  Knights blasted off

from Borleias's surface. The fuel it  took to reach orbit, though not  a

substantial portion of the starfighters' capacity, could well be  missed

in the later stages of today's  battle, but Luke agreed with Wedge  that

allowing the Yuuzhan Vong to  detect the launch of three  preeminent New

Republic squadrons from the planet's surface would reinforce the enemy's

impression that this was a significant site.

As  they  reached high  orbit,  their astromechs  and  onboard computers

received detailed orders. Luke reviewed  them and nodded. Twin Suns  was

to stay  in geosynchronous  orbit above  the biotics  facility and  vape

anything that came at it. Rogue Squadron would set up above  Bor-leias's

moon and make a speed  run against any promising target  of opportunity.

The Wild Knights would move to reinforce the lunar station at Pyria  VI.

"Twin Suns on station," he announced. "Rogues, Knights, good hunting."

"Good hunting." That was Saba Sebatyne's voice, made even raspier by the

limitations of the comlink.  Her starfighters and blastboats  peeled off

for their run to Pyria VI. Gavin Darklighter responded with a mere click

of his own comlink before Rogue  Squadron looped away for the short  run

to Borleias's moon.

Luke glanced  behind him,  to port  and starboard.  To port, Corran Horn

waited with a calm  he had never enjoyed  as an X-wing pilot,  a calm he

had attained only after becoming a Jedi Knight. But to starboard,  where

Mara should  have been,  was Zindra  Daine. She  was a  Corellian pilot,

green as grass, barely out of her teens, not a Jedi. Luke winced at  the

thought  of himself  and Corran  having to  cover for  a novice.  Mara's

absence would be keenly felt today and in subsequent engagements. Though

he sympathized with her desire to stay with Ben, to protect him  against

all possible dangers,  he hoped Mara  would realize that  her desire was

irrational, her goal an impossible one  - and that her absence from  the

battlefield might just result in the loss of good people.

Wedge stood before the hologram at the center of the command room.  This

was an unlovely lozenge-shaped chamber  with a curved ceiling two  dozen

meters below the biotics building. It had once been intended as a  blast

shelter,  but  now  it  was  crammed  with  mobile  consoles  and  their

operators.

The chamber's  duracrete walls,  not well  designed for  acoustics, rang

with noise,  the voices  of military  officers doing  their duties,  the

beeps and chirps of computers demanding their operators' attention, live

sound feeds from unit leaders up there in the battle zone. Wedge ignored

them and concentrated on the continuously updated tactical holo.

It showed Pyria  at one edge,  Borleias a little  out from it,  Pyria VI

farther out, and the  fringes of the solar  system at the far  edge. Red

blips representing  the Yuuzhan  Vong invasion  force clustered  at that

edge and streamed toward the other sites.

"The Rogues are on-station," Tycho said. As chronically unable as  Wedge

was to run his  operations from a seated  position, he stood before  the

console devoted  to starfighter  coordination. "The  starfighters on the

target moon  are standing  by. Vong  intrusion there  anticipated in two

minutes."

"Have those  fighters launch,"  Wedge said.  "Make it  erratic. They can

form up in  time, but they  should look as  though they were  caught off

guard."

"Done." Tycho turned back to his screen.

Wedge's attention flicked across  the hologram. Some ships  lay dormant,

well away from the action, monitoring the situation with their  sensors,

ready to step  in should reinforcements  be needed. Frigates,  cruisers,

and other capital ships were situated above Borleias. Starfighter  units

maneuvered to head off the Yuuzhan Vong approach.

The main Yuuzhan  Vong force stayed  coherent, a reserve  fleet situated

not far from where it had entered Pyrian space. The units moving against

the New Republic forces were. Wedge knew, mere probes, sent out to  test

the strength of the defensive  forces. This battle wasn't about  winning

or losing; it was about gathering information on enemy capabilities.

"Pyria Six reports contact," Tycho said.

Captain Yakown Reth was not a happy man.

It  wasn't  enough that,  of  all the  up-and-coming  officers in  Wedge

Antilles's command, he'd been assigned the unpromising duty of  guarding

a shuttle  load of  scientists, engineers,  and construction specialists

building  a  subsurface  habitat  on an  airless  moon.  Yes,  he'd been

assigned two full squadrons of starfighters to defend the base. But  his

E-wings were not  equipped with proton  torpedoes - the  brass said that

these weapons were in short supply - and Reth wasn't even authorized  to

know what the scientific personnel were up to.

And now, as Yuuzhan Vong coralskippers hurtled toward him, came to  wipe

out this idiotic little facility, Colonel Celchu was micromanaging  him,

dictating that  wing pairs  launch only  as they  came ready after going

through a second checklist. His  forces were straggling into space  like

an  undisciplined mob.  If General  Antilles was  monitoring the  action

here, he'd assume that Reth was an idiot.

Finally, as the incoming blips  on the sensor screens reached  the outer

limits of his starfighters' range of fire, the last two E-wings of Green

Squadron struggled into formation and announced their readiness.

"Remember,  no individual  heroics," Reth  said. "We  have to  overwhelm

their defenses and overlap our own.  Break by wing quads on my  command,

three, two, one... now." He suited  action to words and spun down  a few

hundred meters toward the jagged and unappealing surface of the moon  he

was protecting.  Green Two  through Green  Four followed  him, in loose,

imprecise formation. This was not  surprising for a group that  had been

cobbled together  from units  shattered back  at Coruscant.  But it  was

aggravating. It made him look sloppy.

Coralskippers too distant to see opened fire; trails of glowing  redness

lanced out toward Green Squadron.  Reth nudged closer to Green  Two, his

wingmate,  and saw  Green Three  and Four  crowding in,  allowing  their

shields to  overlap. Reth  grimaced. Working  with unfamiliar  pilots in

such  proximity was  as distasteful  to him  as the  thought of  trading

unwashed clothing with them.

"Accelerate to full," he said.  "We'll punch through and come  back. Set

lasers to  stutterfire. I'll  designate a  target and  we'll all hit it.

Ready...  mark."   He  put   his  targeting   reticle  on   an  incoming

coralskipper, not the first in the line coming toward him but the third,

and fired a burst.

Red  laser  beams  erupted  from  his  E-wing's  nose  and  wingtips, an

irregular  drizzle  rather  than a  hard-hitting  burst  of concentrated

energy. Bursts from his wingmates followed his in, drenching his target.

Reth hated the new stutterfire configuration. He knew that it did damage

around the coralskippers'  blasted void defenses,  but it prevented  the

lasers from hitting with any sort of satisfying power.

An incoming stream of lava  balls angled across his formation.  Three or

four hit the overlapping shields of the E-wings, and the audible  sensor

interpreters of  his vehicle  noted the  impacts with  sharp bangs.  His

diagnostics didn't light up, and his sensors showed his target  followed

by a cometlike  tail consisting of  bits of yorik  coral chewed away  by

their laserfire.

Though that coralskipper was still sound, Reth switched targets, pouring

his damage and that of his wingmates on another skip. This coralskipper,

angling straight into the path of his lasers, was distantly visible, and

Reth saw  his unit's  lasers chewing  at it,  at its  edges, across  its

canopy;  though its  void flashed  in front  of much  of the  laserfire,

swallowing  it,  enough  curved  around  the  singularity's  edges   and

penetrated the skip's surface. That skip suddenly became as luminous  as

the distant Pyrian sun and then was gone.

Reth managed a tight smile. So far, so good.

"Sensors show a formation looping around the moon toward us." The voice,

quiet and controlled,  was Corran's, and  it came across  Luke's private

comlink, not the one built into his X-wing. Corran's X-wing was  several

hundred kilometers behind  the Twin Suns  Squadron's formation in  lunar

orbit, trailing it and acting as rear guard.

Luke nodded.  The main  sensor relay  from the  ground stations showed a

column  of  coralskippers and  frigate  analogs on  a  straight approach

toward Borleias, but the Yuuzhan  Vong had obviously detected Twin  Suns

and sent a detachment around the  moon to trap them between two  forces.

"Get back up here," he told Corran. "Prepare a shadow bomb to drop." The

other  pilots  of Twin  Suns  weren't Jedi  and  so weren't  capable  of

utilizing  the  shadow  bomb  weapons  -  proton  torpedoes  with  their

propulsion units removed,  shoved across space  merely by the  powers of

the Jedi mind - so he didn't  have to transmit these orders to them.  He

activated his snubfighter's comlink  on squadron frequency. "Prepare  to

follow me  in." He  switched back  to the  scrambled frequency he shared

with Corran  and Zindra.  "Thirty seconds  before our  pursuit gets into

firing  range, we  accelerate straight  toward the  enemy column...  but

Corran and I leave the shadow bombs behind."

Corran and Zindra responded with comlink clicks.

Sensors showed  Yuuzhan Vong  vessels far  ahead, crossing  the plane of

lunar orbit on their approach toward Borleias. Luke could distantly  see

the running  lights, or  whatever the  organic equivalents  were, on the

Yuuzhan Vong frigate analogs.  Corran was much closer,  approaching fast

from the rear, and now Luke could detect the first blips indicating  the

detachment coming up  behind Corran. "Drop  shadow bombs," he  said, and

kicked his accelerator into life as he dropped his own shadow bomb.

Twin Suns Squadron  roared out from  lunar orbit on  a straight approach

toward the main Yuuzhan Vong  column. Their course had to  be absolutely

straight if the trick was to work.

His Force perceptions irrelevant, Luke kept his eye on the sensors. They

showed the distant blip of  Yuuzhan Vong pursuers growing less  distant;

they showed the tiny, coded  comlink transmission from the shadow  bombs

left behind; they showed the alien column ahead, also getting closer and

closer.

"They're firing," Zindra said,  the high-pitched excitement of  a novice

in her voice, and Luke saw flashes of distant lava cannon misses in  his

peripheral vision.

Luke began juking and jinking, his attention divided between controlling

his X-wing and and the shadow bomb he had launched.

The  trailing  force of  coralskippers  numbered about  thirty;  at this

range, it was hard to get exact numbers. They were approaching the point

where  the Jedi  had 'dropped  the shadow  bombs and  were in  a  narrow

approach formation, a speed formation. Luke nudged the shadow bombs into

a line, each  a few kilometers  from the next,  and watched their  blips

separate and line up in anticipation of the approaching skips.

He didn't  feel the  coralskippers pass  the rearmost  shadow bomb;  his

Force perceptions couldn't detect them. But the sensors showed the  line

of skips reach  and begin to  superimpose itself on  the line of  shadow

bombs. He waited until the foremost skip reached the leading bomb,  then

reached out and squeezed with a small measure of his Force powers.

On the sensors,  the clean line  of coralskippers behind  became a fuzzy

mass,  then  began to  fade.  Where perhaps  thirty  skips had  been  in

pursuit, half that number now looped away from the detonation point,  in

search of whatever mystery ship must have attacked them.

Luke snapped  back to  the here  and now.  Zindra's X-wing  was directly

above him, its mass blocking his direct view of the fight, but he  could

tell that they were  in the midst of  the main coralskipper column,  had

maneuvered into the midst of the  enemy while most of his attention  was

locked up with the shadow bombs. Corran was still tucked in to port, his

shields overlapping Luke's  and providing additional  support, patiently

waiting for Luke to snap back to full attention so they could deal  with

the enemies ahead.

Zindra's voice crackled  over the comlink:  "Great shooting! Um,  are we

going to do anything about that frigate ahead?"

Luke suppressed the  urge to grind  his teeth. "Yes,  we are. I'll  take

lead."  He  goosed his  thrusters;  he and  Corran  maneuvered ahead  of

Zindra. "Follow me in."

Luke peeled off on a strafing run against the frigate analog. Corran and

Zindra followed.

Saba fired and a pulse from the Wild Knights' ion cannons washed  across

a tight formation of coralskippers, causing them to spin out of control;

the skips veered out of the main engagement area above the moon of Pyria

VI.

The  blastboat  shuddered.  Saba  checked  her  diagnostics  screen, saw

nothing, and glanced at Danni, who was on the main sensors.

Danni shook her head. "No damage. But... well... it's a good excuse."

Saba hissed in vexation, but said, "Do it."

Danni activated a control on  her console board. Saba, unhappy,  added a

little  wobble to  the blastboat's  motion as  it looped  around  toward

another patch of coralskippers.

"Wild  Knights One,  this is  Green Leader.  You're venting  atmosphere,

repeat, venting atmosphere. Can you hear me? Over."

Saba  stared unhappily  at her  controls. Of  course they  were  venting

atmosphere. They'd rigged the rear of the blastboat with a couple of new

valves to do just that -  to eject a compressed oxygen and  nitrogen mix

to suggest they'd been hulled.

Danni activated  her comlink.  "Green Leader,  this is  Wild One.  We've

taken major grutchin hits. Venting... they're chewing through toward the

engines..." Her voice sounded pained,  and she added a racking  cough to

her performance. "Smoke in the cabin..."

"Wild One, get out of here. Get to ground, now. We'll hold here."

"Thanks, Green Leader.  Wild Knights are  - " Danni  clicked the comlink

off and then added, unnecessarily, "away." She looked up at Saba,  guilt

in her expression.

Saba hissed again and banked around back toward Borleias.

Behind them, over the  next few minutes, the  other members of the  Wild

Knights would follow  suit. As each  took a minor  bit of damage,  he or

she'd behave  as though  the craft  had sustained  a major  hit and turn

toward home. Eventually the other units defending the moon over Pyria VI

would find their situation untenable and have to abandon their post.

That was  the plan.  But it  felt like  losing. It  felt like abandoning

comrades to the enemy.

And that was something Saba Sebatyne  did not do. Had she been  a human,

the pressure she exerted on the controls would have turned her  knuckles

white.

Captain Reth grinned after the departing Wild Knights leader. Certainly,

the blastboat's departure weakened their position. But the almighty Jedi

leader of  that famous  squadron was  fleeing the  battle zone, her tail

between her legs, and he, commander of the lowly cobbled-together  Green

Squadron, was still in the fight.

He returned his  attention to the  enemy before him.  It wouldn't do  to

receive his medals posthumously.

"Analysis," Wyrpuuk Cha said.

Kadlah Cha joined him again.  "We have caught their outpost  off guard,"

she  said,  and  gestured  at  the  engagement  zone  most  distant from

Borleias. "They supported it  with insufficient numbers. No  matter what

they choose  to throw  at us,  we can  bring units  to it  faster and in

better condition from the reserve fleet."

"Good. Go on."

She gestured at the main battle zone, above Borleias. "Here, matters are

not so promising. Their defense of  the hardpoint site on the ground  is

ferocious, and we are losing forces, coralskippers especially, at a  far

greater rate than they are losing analogous forces."

"Have they demonstrated any new tactics, new weapons?"

She shook her head.

"Good.  They're  fighting  with  spirit,  but  don't  seem  to  have any

surprises for  us. We  can break  their spirit."  He considered.  "We'll

continue until this outpost has fallen to us, and break off the  assault

on Borleias for now. We'll use the outpost as a staging area. Break  any

prisoners found  at the  outpost, and  arrange for  all information, all

memory, found there to be sent to the warmaster."

"It shall be done."

"Arrival in three... two... one... mark."

Right on the  navigator's spoken cue,  the swirl of  lines in Lusankya's

forward viewport straightened out and contracted into stationary  stars,

one of them barely near enough to be recognized as a sphere instead of a

mere pinpoint of light.

Commander Eldo  Davip, nearly  two meters  of space  navy gristle packed

into a bulging officer's uniform, shook his head, not satisfied with the

results. His bridge crew, most of  its members new to Lusankya, had  not

so far demonstrated reliable competence, and now they'd managed to  drop

his new command into the Pyria star system much farther from the  planet

Borleias than he had indicated.

Then  he   frowned.  Ahead,   some  stars   were  disappearing,   others

reappearing, as objects  moved into and  out of the  way. Did the  Pyria

system have an  asteroid belt? He  turned to his  navigator to ask  that

question, but suddenly  the bridge was  filled with alarm  bells and the

startled exclamations of officers.

"It's a trap!" That was the sensor operator, a male from Coruscant,  his

excitement not quite  concealing the clipped,  upper-class pronunciation

that betrayed his origin. "We're surrounded by Vong vessels!"

Davip whirled to face the sensor screen set up near his commander's post

at the rear of the  bridge's second-level walkway. It showed  Lusankya's

position with the blip  representing Millennium Falcon neatly  tacked in

beneath, but the two spacecraft  were surrounded by the blips  of dozens

of vehicles, mostly capital ships, all either enemy red or winking  from

unknown yellow to red.

The horror of the situation swelled in Davip's throat, choking him for a

brief moment. Then the commands he needed to utter, had to utter, forced

their way past the obstruction.  "All shields up! All batteries  fire at

will! Fire as you bear! Launch all squadrons!"

As soon as the drop out of hyperspace was complete, Han Solo frowned  at

his instruments. "We dropped a couple of seconds early," he said.

Leia,  looking  absurdly  tiny  in  the  Millennium  Falcon's  oversized

copilot's seat, pointed up  through the cockpit viewport.  The underside

of Lusankya hung there like an irregular ceiling. "It wasn't a  mistake.

Their nav computers must have sent us faulty data."

"No, I'm showing heavy gravitic  abnormalities here. We were pulled  out

of hyperspace by the presence of - " Han's eyes snapped wide open and he

yanked at the  Falcon's controls, sending  the onetime freighter  into a

rolling  dive  its  original  manufacturers  had  never  intended  it to

experience. Shouts of  surprise -   and a  couple of  thrill-rider  glee

erupted from the passenger compartment.

A  glowing trail  of fire,  ejecta from  a Yuuzhan  Vong plasma  cannon,

ripped through  space where  the Falcon  had just  been. Han pitched his

voice to  be heard  throughout the  ship: "Take  the guns!  We're in the

middle of a Vong fleet!"

Wyrpuuk Cha nodded, satisfied with the results he was seeing.

The blaze bugs flurried, rapidly changing position in the portion of the

depression representing  the reserve  fleet. Wyrpuuk  Cha frowned  as he

took in the changes. Something triangular, in the same approximate shape

as one of  the enemy's hated  Imperial Star Destroyers  but much larger,

was now situated in the midst of his fleet. Wyrpuuk Cha wondered if  the

blaze bugs' representation was actually to scale.

He glanced  out the  viewport of  his bridge.  There, to port, seemingly

close enough  to touch,  hung a  vast expanse  of darkness  decorated by

running lights in deep blue, a vastly oversized Star Destroyer.

Jolted by sudden panic, Wyrpuuk Cha opened his mouth to issue commands.

The Super Star Destroyer erupted as if channeling an internal  explosion

through innumerable tiny ports on its hull.

Wyrpuuk Cha didn't  know the numbers,  didn't know how  many hundreds of

laser batteries the vessel carried, had no idea how many hundreds of ion

cannons. All he knew was that as his voice had to rise to be heard above

the shrieks  of the  alarms emanating  from the  bridge's walls as their

inarticulate cries indicated  where and how  badly his matalok,  a rough

analog of the  toolmakers' hated Mon  Calimari cruisers, was  sustaining

damage;

that the bridge floor was shuddering under his feet; that nothing  could

be seen  outside the  port-side viewports  because of  the intensity  of

incoming fire from the enemy  monstrosity; that there was no  way, short

of a personal blessing  from the gods, that  the voids projected by  his

ship's  dovin basals  could protect  his matalok  from the  incalculable

damage being directed against it.

He  turned to  shout a  command to  his chief  pilot, an  order to  turn

directly away from the enemy vessel  and present all voids to the  rear.

Before  he  could  speak, there  was  a  bright flash  of  light  in his

peripheral vision and  all noise ceased.  Wyrpuuk Cha turned  toward the

bow again.

There was nothing there, only stars  and flashes of fire from the  ships

of his fleet. The seats where his yammosk interpreter and villip officer

had been were gone, as were the floor, walls, and ceiling of the bridge,

all missing from a point a mere pace in front of Wyrpuuk Cha's feet.

And it wasn't true that all noise  was gone. There was a roaring in  his

ears, a pain -  just none of the  sounds of battle that  had filled them

mere moments ago.

He was cold, suddenly so cold that he involuntarily curled into a  ball,

and  abruptly  he found  himself  floating forward,  past  the last  few

handspans of bridge, out into starry emptiness.

"Wild Knights are  out of the  engagement zone," Tycho  said. He reached

into the  hologram representing  the battle  zones of  Pyrian space  and

gestured at one bright cluster of colorful, swirling blips. "The Yuuzhan

Vong  are  concentrating  their  effort  on  Pyria  Six's  moon. They're

cautious,  not  trying  anything  particularly  bold,  just  a  standard

attritional assault."

"Very well,"  Wedge said.  He stood  beside his  chair, knowing that his

voice was carrying very little  expression, that his features must  look

blank at  the moment  -  that  was the  way it  always was  when he  was

calculating things on  a strategic scale.  Focusing like this  seemed to

make him distant, inhuman.

But he couldn't focus. Something was wrong, some noise out of place, and

Wedge turned from Tycho to pinpoint the incongruity.

There  it  was, one  of  the communications  officers.  During the  last

minute,  her voice  had risen,  taken on  a tone  not of  alarm but   of

confusion,  as she'd  dealt with  the faraway  unit leader  who was  her

assignment. But now Iella stood leaning over her shoulder while the comm

officer waited. Both women wore perplexed expressions. Wedge didn't like

things that could perplex Iella.

Iella looked up  and caught his  eye. She raised  her voice to  be heard

over the chamber's clamor.  "Super Star Destroyer Lusankya  reports that

she's insystem with the Millennium Falcon. They're in the middle of  the

reserve Yuuzhan Vong forces. Lusankya has inflicted heavy damage on  the

enemy and  is taking  damage. She  needs an  escort to  get through  the

enemy."

The volume of voices in the chamber dropped by a measurable  proportion.

Wedge heard Tycho's shout of "What?"

Then   Wedge   got  his   own   voice  under   control.   "Confirm  ship

identification," he managed, and moved to stand by Tycho. "Bring up that

portion of the battle zone."

Tycho  manipulated controls  on his  console and  the area  of space  it

displayed contracted and panned to one side. The effect was that of  one

portion of the battle zone  suddenly swelling to dominate the  hologram.

Wedge could see that the tight formation of the enemy reserve fleet  had

blurred, diffused, and that in the  midst of all the red blips  were one

large green and one small green marker.

"Identities  confirmed,"  Iella  called.  "Millennium  Falcon,  Han Solo

swearing up a storm. Lusankya, Commander Davip commanding."

"Commander  Davip?"  Wedge shook  his  head and  bit  back on  his  next

question:  Why was  Davip, a  ship captain  whose career  had long  been

characterized by strong-willed indecisiveness, a commander instead of  a

galley cook now? And why wasn't a ship of Lusankya's military importance

under the command of a full admiral? "Who's closest to this  engagement?

Never mind that. Who's unengaged and far enough out from the sun to make

a microjump into that engagement zone?"

"Mon Mothma," Tycho said, not bothering to refer to the hologram or  his

console. "Rebel Dream. In  one to two minutes,  we can have another  six

ships ready to jump."

"Danni Quee reports  detection of two  yammosk kills," Iella  said. "One

minute apart. The Yuuzhan Vong are not battle-coordinated now."

"Very well." Wedge lowered his voice. "Of course, they don't need to  be

coordinated to destroy Lusankya and the Falcon."

Tycho nodded.

The tactic he needed clicked into Wedge's mind. In the span of a second,

he  evaluated  it,  tested  it  for  major  weaknesses,  dismissed   the

weaknesses as irrelevant because of the Yuuzhan Vong's current state  of

confusion, and decided  that he   could probably  use the  tactic  again

once - at a later time.

He reached into the hologram and indicated an area of space next to  the

Yuuzhan Vong reserve fleet, just on the far side of that engagement zone

from the  direction of  Borleias. "Have  Mon Mothma  make a microjump to

appear here.  When she  arrives, she's  to broadcast  a homing beacon on

open fleet group  frequencies and defend  herself. One minute  after she

arrives, she's to activate her gravity-well generators and keep them  up

for one minute. Issue that to Mon Mothma directly."

Tycho turned to his console.

Wedge turned to the room. "Attention," he said, and the clamor dropped a

couple of notches. "All ships and hyperdrive-equipped starfighters  that

can get  clear of  enemies within  the next  two minutes  are to  do so.

Inform Rogue  Squadron and  Twin Suns  Squadron that  they're to abandon

their current action and get clear.  They'll jump in the direction of  a

homing beacon they're about to detect. Gravity-well generators will pull

them out of hyperspace in  the Falcon's and Lusankyd's engagement  zone.

Their orders  are to  form up  on Lusankya  and escort  her to Borleias.

Let's do it, people."

Tycho straightened from his console. "Mon Mothma has jumped."

"Good."  Wedge sighed  and lowered  his voice.  "Tycho, we're  about  to

achieve a tremendous victory we don't want."

Tycho gave him a thin smile. "We'll put that in your biography.  General

Antilles was so good he couldn't fail when he tried to."

"Thanks."

SEVEN

Bortelas Occupation, Day 9

Han put the Falcon into a dive toward Lusankya. It was like diving  into

an erupting volcano;  Lusankya's hull was  incandescent with firing  ion

cannons and laser batteries, making nearspace around her a blinding kill

zone.

But her kill zone was safety compared to what was on the Falcon's  tail:

half a dozen coralskippers, their pilots determined and vengeful. Plasma

cannon ejecta flashed  by the Falcon's  viewports and hammered  into her

stern shields.

The Millennium Falcon's own guns fired, sending their damage aft against

the  coralskipper pursuit.  From the  shouts bouncing  forward from  the

gunport accesses,  it sounded  as though  Ganner and  Alema Rar  were in

control of the guns.  He thought the other  Jedi in the passenger  area,

all  survivors of  Anakin's raid  on the  Yuuzhan Vong  worldship  above

Myrkr, were cheering them on.

As the Falcon dipped in closer to Lusankya, Han could no longer hear the

cheering - laser blasts and  explosions flashed by close enough  to rock

her, to batter her shields. Somewhere astern, machinery came free of its

housing and smashed to the Falcon's deck, and as Han continued to  roll,

juke, and dive, he could hear the distinctive sound of shrapnel  impacts

as components of the machinery began slamming into bulkheads.

"Sounds expensive," Leia said.

Han shot her  a betrayed look.  Then they were  clear of the  kill zone,

astern of Lusankya,  where the Super  Star Destroyer's lasers  no longer

crisscrossed over their heads.

The  sensors showed  no skips  on the  Falcon's tail,  though more  were

incoming, several seconds from being close enough to fire. Han  breathed

out  a sigh  of relief.  "If we  pick up  more pursuit,  I'm going  back

through," he said. "Those guys are good."

Leia frowned. "Who?"

"The gunners on Lusankya. They picked  off our pursuit and didn't put  a

scratch on us."

"Han, they were trying to kill us, too. I saw those batteries traversing

to follow us.  We're nothing more  than another blur  to them. You  just

outflew them. The skips didn't."

"Oh." Han looped around to  port, away from the incoming  coralskippers;

he circled  Lusankya at  an almost  safe distance  and watched  the Star

Destroyer's cloud of starfighters  engaging the Yuuzhan Vong.  "Then I'm

not going back."

"Right."

"Do you have an exit vector for us?"

She consulted the sensor board again. "We're almost smack in the  middle

of their fleet. The thinnest screen  between us and clear space is  back

that way - " She gestured  out along the course by which  they'd arrived

insystem. Then she peered more  closely at her screen. "I  have friendly

signals there. One Star Destroyer and more ships arriving."

Han snapped the Falcon around toward that course so sharply that he  and

Leia,  and  presumably  all   those  aboard,  were  mashed   into  their

acceleration couches.  Belatedly, he  shouted over  his shoulder,  "Hang

on!"

Luke led Twin Suns Squadron away  from Borleias high orbit at top  speed

and felt his smile withering away.  A moment ago, he'd been as  close to

happy as one can be when caught in the middle of a firefight. The  enemy

had suddenly become uncoordinated, sure sign that their yammosk had died

and that they'd  have to quit  the battlefield, and  Luke hadn't lost  a

pilot in the engagement. He'd hoped  their job was almost done. But  the

unusual nature of his new orders suggested it was barely started.

A  beep from  R2-D2 alerted  him that  Mon Mothma  was broadcasting  her

beacon. Luke looped around to be oriented straight toward that broadcast

location while  his astromech  plotted that  direction as  a hyper-space

jump  course.  He  clicked  his  comlink  over  to  squadron  frequency.

"Announce readiness," he said, and added, "Leader ready."

"Two." Corran tucked his X-wing in to Luke's port.

"Three." Zindra moved up to Luke's starboard.

"Six."

"Four."

When all other  eleven pilots had  acknowledged, Luke set  a five-second

timer and broadcast it to  coordinate it with his other  pilots. "Clench

'em if you've got 'em," he said.

The counter dropped  to zero. The  Twin Suns jumped  into hyperspace and

then dropped almost immediately back into realspace, a jump duration  of

far less than two seconds.

Ahead, Luke saw Mon Mothma, her pointed bow aimed back in his direction,

Borleias's  direction. Little  gouts of  red from  the Star  Destroyer's

vicinity suggested  that she  was being  harassed by  coralskippers, but

before Luke  could direct  his squadron  against them,  R2-D2 beeped  to

indicate incoming orders.

Luke glanced at  the text scrawl  and led his  squadron in a  tight loop

around toward the  Yuuzhan Vong fleet  behind them. "All  right, people.

"We're to get to Lusankya and punch  a hole for her. Anyone gets in  the

way, discourage him."

Rogue Squadron  dropped out  of its  microjump close  to Mon Mothma. The

Star Destroyer's  complement of  starfighters already  had space  secure

around her;  some of  them were  accelerating into  the engagement  zone

toward Lusankya.

Gavin led the Rogues in a tight loop in the same direction.

His comlink crackled. "Aww,  Twin Suns is there  ahead of us." That  was

Volu Nyth, a human woman from Kuat, a new Rogue.

Gavin put some snap into  his voice. "No unneccessary chatter!"  Then he

lowered his tone. "Besides, we had to travel farther to get here."

Han bit back a curse as he sent the falcon through a bewildering  series

of side-to-side and up-and-down maneuvers, designed to throw off the aim

of his -pursuers. All eight of them.

It wasn't just  the danger to  his ship, his  wife, his passengers  that

made him unhappy.

He was getting tired.

Twenty years ago, a fight like this would have just loosened him up  and

made  him ornery.  Now sweat  was pouring  from him  and he  could  feel

fatigue in his arms.

"Friendlies ahead," Leia  said. She had  to shout to  be heard over  the

continuous firing of the Falcon's guns.

Han glanced at his sensors and  made a minor adjustment to their  course

minor, but so abruptly executed  that it slammed Leia rightward.  If not

for the copilot's harness, she would have been hurled from her seat.  He

grimaced. He still needed to get that seat replaced with something  made

to human scale. "Sorry," he said.

The friendly signal ahead broke into four smaller signals, each of  them

made up of three blips - shield trios, meaning it was probably an X-wing

unit. As the  Falcon neared them,  they spread out  in attack formation,

but not very far apart, and then opened fire.

Their lasers flashed  close enough to  the Falcon, Han  thought, to peel

paint from her hull. Then the X-wings were gone, and so were four of the

pursuing coralskipper signals.

Five. The Falcon's upper gun turret scored a kill, and suddenly  pursuit

was down to three coralskippers. "Who was that?" Han shouted.

"Me!" The voice was female. So it was Alema in the top turret, Ganner in

the bottom.

"Three we can handle," Han said. This time he remembered to shout, "Hold

on!" Then he set  the freighter into a  painfully tight loop upward.  He

was  pushed  hard  back  into  his  pilot's  couch  as  the acceleration

compensator failed to keep up with the maneuver.

In the midst of the maneuver, when the acceleration forces were at their

height, he glanced at his  wife, expecting her to be  crushed motionless

against the  back of  her chair,  but she  was actually  sitting forward

against  the  tremendous  acceleration. She  gave  him  an amused,  even

superior, look.

A Jedi technique,  it had to  be, something on  the order of  levitating

rocks. He tried  to keep jealousy  from his expression,  and called over

his shoulder, "Alema, wait for the booms before firing, one-two-three."

"Understood!"

As the three remaining coralskippers  came back into view, Han  saw that

they were only  just beginning to  rise in pursuit  of the Falcon  - his

maneuver, executed  so soon  after the  Rogues had  cut their numbers in

half, had confused and delayed the Yuuzhan Vong for a fatal moment.

Han armed  the Falcon's  concussion missile  launcher and  fired at  the

foremost coralskipper.  At this  distance, he  could fire  again at  the

second and once more at the rearmost before the first missile hit.

Then  it did,  an explosion  that should  have shattered  the skip  into

flinders of yorik coral but  was instead sucked into the  void projected

by the vehicle's dovin basal.

But Alema Rar's  shot with the  turret laser flashed  past the void  and

sheared through the skip's coral armor. The coralskipper exploded as its

internal mechanisms were  superheated, their fluids  converted instantly

to steam and gas.

The second missile detonated, with  the same result, and Alema's  second

shot punched through  the amber-colored canopy.  The canopy blew  out as

though the pilot were about to eject, but Han knew the skips didn't have

ejection seats. There was no pilot left behind, just a blackened  crater

where his body and seat had been.

The third skip pilot, fast on  the reflexes, turned and dived away  from

the Falcon, presenting a narrower  profile to aim at, maneuvering  to be

below the top turret's angle of fire. The concussion missile's explosion

flooded into the void at the skip's rear... and then Ganner's laser shot

penetrated the skip's lower hull, shearing through the vehicle, emerging

through  the  top  hull amidships.  Amazingly  still  flyable, the  skip

accelerated away,  trailing cloudy  debris that  had to  be body  fluids

flash-frozen by exposure to vacuum.

"The Rogues? " Han asked. He felt out of breath.

"Reaching  Lusankya," Leia  said. "We  have a  friendly ahead."  Indeed,

there was another Imperial Star Destroyer in their path, an older  model

than Mon Mothma;

it  was  maneuvering  around  from an  outbound  course  to  turn toward

Lusankya.

"What say we tuck into her launching bay and rest for a minute?"

She smiled. "You're the captain."

"I notice you never say that to me when you disagree with something I've

said."

As  they neared  the Star  Destroyer, Leia  let out  a little  noise  of

surprise. "Han, she's the Rebel Dream."

Han looked, startled, at the ship before them. Rebel Dream had once been

Leia's flagship - not her command, since naval officers always captained

her, but a vessel at her beck  and call, chosen to lend credence to  her

importance as she  conducted negotiations between  the New Republic  and

unaligned planetary systems. The  Millennium falcon had rested  for some

months in one of Rebel Dream's cargo holds while Han had led a  military

campaign against a rogue warlord.

Leia's expression was  open, thoughtful, and  years seemed to  drop away

from her as she revisited those long-ago times. "What do you think, Han?

She looks like she's in wonderful condition."

"Yes, she does."

Leia glanced over  and realized that  her husband wasn't  looking at the

ship. She flushed but looked amused. "Han. Get your mind back on work."

"Sorry. Getting old.  Easily distracted." Han  kept his exultation,  his

victory from  his face.  For one  moment, he'd  distracted Leia from the

ache that had consumed her since Anakin and Jacen were lost. Maybe if he

could do it again from time to  time, the poison of that ache would  not

claim Leia, would not take her from him too. "Sure. Old. Of course."

"Lusankya  has  her escort,"  Tycho  said. "And  with  them keeping  the

Yuuzhan Vong fighters and frigate  analogs at bay, she's ripping  a seam

right through their fleet."

Wedge nodded. The hologram bore out Tycho's statement.

No new friendlies had appeared in Mon Mothma's vicinity for a couple  of

minutes; she'd finished with  her interdiction field generators.  "Order

Mon Mothma to bring up the rear of our force there, and tell her to tuck

in  close. The  Vong will  fall on  any stragglers;  they don't  need  a

yammosk to tell them to do that."

The hologram showed  the Yuuzhan Vong  fleet, which had  grown large and

diffuse, gradually contracting as it moved against the group centered on

Lusankya. But without yammosk coordination, the Yuuzhan Vong were unable

to mount any sophisticated tactics  or manage any real concentration  of

fire on the New Republic's capital ships. As Wedge watched, the  Yuuzhan

Vong numbers began  to thin. Wedge  felt a professional  impatience with

the enemy commander,  or whoever had  taken charge of  their fleet after

their designated commander had died; if he didn't acknowledge defeat and

order a retreat, he stood a good chance of losing his fleet.

Then it came. First a matalok-class cruiser analog peeled away from  the

engagement,  then  a  frigate  analog  and  two  or  three  coralskipper

squadrons, and suddenly the battle was essentially done, all the Yuuzhan

Vong capital ships outward bound, only a few coralskipper-on-starfighter

duels  continuing  as  some  Yuuzhan  Vong  pilots  chose  a  futile but

honorable death over retreat.

"Issue  the order,"  Wedge said.  "Set up  for the  fleet's return."  He

offered Tycho  a bitter  little smile.  "We also  need to  celebrate our

victory."

Tycho looked at him, expressionless. "I'm giddy already," he said.

Han Solo marched down the Falcon's ramp, one arm around Leia's waist and

the other raised in a wave  as he acknowledged the cheers of  pilots and

crew in Borleias's main docking bay. "Why are they so happy? I mean, I'm

happy, but they're acting like I won this one single-handed."

Leia gave him a little smile,  the best she'd been able to  manage since

Han turned  his thoughts  away from  the memory.  She said, "You dropped

into the middle of a Yuuzhan Vong fleet and came out without a  scratch.

The famous Han Solo. You've just reminded them that they can win."

"Ah."

"Besides, you win every one of your fights single-handed. Just ask  your

admirers. I'll find you a historian who knows how to appreciate a bribe,

and tomorrow you'll  be the  man who  told Lusankya  to drop  out of  hy

perspace where she did, the man who blew up the enemy flagship with  his

blaster pistol."

"Don't you dare."

Ahead of them, the Falcon's  passengers moved through the crowd,  led by

one of Wedge Antilles's officers. Many of them were Jedi, but not all of

them  had  ever been  the  object of  a  rambunctious crowd's  attention

before.

Ganner, the dark-haired and  all-too-handsome Jedi Knight, was  first of

them. He waved at  the crowd with all  of Han's poise but  none of Han's

self-aware irony, and the smile he  turned on some of the ladies  in the

crowd was nothing if not brilliant. Beside  him was Alema Rar, the  blue

skinned Twi'lek Jedi; a proficient organizer of rebellion and espionage,

she had spent long periods disguised as a dancer, and she demonstrated a

dancer's ease and poise now as she smiled at the crowd. Next were  Zekk,

the former street urchin who had  trained as a Dark Jedi before  joining

Luke's academy on Yavin 4, and Tesar Sebatyne, male Barabel offspring of

Saba.

Last but for Han  and Leia were Tahiri  Veila and Tarc, two  worries for

the  Solos. Han  shook his  head. No,  they weren't  worries; they  were

genuine heartaches.

Tahiri, a  slender blond  Jedi student,  had been  one of  Anakin Solo's

closest friends.  In recent  months and  weeks, they'd  been closer than

friends, had been on the verge  of becoming something more. It had  been

Anakin who had rescued her  from Yuuzhan Vong captivity; Anakin  who had

helped her overcome the brainwashing that nearly convinced her that  she

herself was one of the Yuuzhan Vong.

And then Anakin had died. Han could no longer maneuver his thoughts away

from the memory. He felt something grip his heart and squeeze; the  pain

almost caused  him to  stumble. He  spared a  glance for  Leia; she  was

looking at Tahiri, too, and the bleakness Han felt was reflected in  her

eyes.

Though dressed  in Jedi  robes, Tahiri  was characteristically barefoot.

There was little  strength or pride  in her posture  now; Anakin's death

had hit her hard,  possibly as hard as  it had hit his  parents. She was

silent; once  upon a  time, there  would have  been no  way, short of an

order from Luke Skywalker, to shut her up.

Tahiri had one  arm around Tarc,  guiding him, lending  him reassurance.

Tarc was  twelve, a  boy of  Coruscant chosen  as part  of Viqi  Shesh's

kidnapping  plot  against  Ben  Skywalker.  Viqi  had  chosen  him  as a

distraction because of his extraordinary resemblance to the Anakin of  a

few years before, a resemblance so distressingly close that Han felt his

stomach lurch each time he saw the boy's perpetually mussed brown  hair,

icy blue eyes, and open expression.

It hurt  merely to  see the  boy, but  it would  be cruel  and wrong  to

abandon him, to reject him. It  was a problem Han couldn't solve  with a

blaster or fancy flying.

Han glimpsed  a head  of blond  hair bobbing  up and  down as  its owner

pushed through the crowd. "Incoming flier," he said.

And then Luke Skywalker  was on them, embracing  both Han and Leia,  his

grin youthful and  infectious. "You picked  a good time  to visit," Luke

said.

"Your sister's fault,"  Han said. "We  broadcast on the  HoloNet to find

out if  you were  still on  Borleias. We  got both  confirmation and  an

invitation to accompany  Lusankya. 'Let's go  with Lusankya,' she  said.

'More safety for our passengers.' "

Leia  gave  him  a cool  look.  "You  really need  to  enjoy  these rare

occasions when you're right." Then she caught sight of something and her

expression  brightened again.  "Mara!" She  pulled free  to embrace  her

late-arriving sister-in-law.

"Listen," Luke said. "Wedge is getting quarters set up for you. You have

time to clean up a little. But we all need to talk to you."

Han gave him a curious look. "Who's 'we all'?"

"The Insiders."

In as few  words as they  could afford, Han  and Leia told  the story of

their time in the Hapes  Cluster  after the departure  of Luke and  Mara

ofJaina's terrifying  drift toward  the dark  side of  the Force and Kyp

Durron's unexpected help  on her behalf,  of the skirmish  that had left

Han with  a skull  fracture from  which he  had barely recovered, ofTa'a

Chume's attempts to displace  daughter-in-law Teneniel Djo and  persuade

Jaina Solo to wed Teneniel's husband, holder. "The situation there isn't

resolved," Leia said.  "But Han and  I couldn't make  it any better.  We

have to trust Jaina to make the right choices."

They were in the biotics building's mess hall rather than the  Insiders'

usual conference room. With Han and Leia were Wedge, Iella, Luke,  Mara,

and Lando, a comfortable group of intimates. They seemed pleased to  see

Han and Leia, but otherwise somewhat tense and distracted.

"You're  not  acting  like  someone  who's  won  a  substantial military

victory. Wedge," Leia said.

Wedge made a glum face. "It's the  sort of victory that can cost us  the

war. We were hoping to get  a Yuuzhan Vong commander of average  skills,

with an  average fleet,  and I  suspect that  we did.  We were  going to

string him along for as much  time as we could, but circumstances  today

dictated that  we wipe  him out  right away.  The next  one they send is

going to be much tougher, and that's going to make things more difficult

for all  of us.  But you  two have  come at  a good  time. We  need your

skills."

"Leia's skills, you mean," Han said. "Without her, I don't think there's

any way the New Republic can hold together."

"Both your skills,"  Wedge said. "Because  the New Republic  is dead. An

oversized  hulk with  a decentralized  nervous system;  the  extremities

don't realize that the heart isn't beating anymore."

Leia and Han exchanged a glance. "Let's hear it," Leia said.

EIGHT

Yuuzhan Vong Worldshlp. Coruscant Ortlit

Maal Lah  paused outside  the barrier  leading into  the tracer spineray

chamber. He glanced at the guard who had conducted him here as though to

ask. Are  you certain  he is  here? But  the guard  avoided eye contact,

whether because he dared not look into the eyes of a superior or because

he knew what fate waited beyond the barrier, Maal Lah could not say.

As  Maal Lah  advanced, the  barrier retracted,  a fishlike  mouth  that

parted before him, and he stepped into the chamber.

It was a  place of knowledge  and of training.  The tracer spineray  was

close kin to  the provoker spineray  that was capable  of tracing neural

pathways  as  its  subjects thought  about  certain  topics... and  then

directing  pain  into  those  pathways  to  prevent  the  subject   from

reexamining those thoughts.  The tracer, too,  traced neural paths,  but

had only related  functions: to determine  how efficiently signals  were

transmitted along those  pathways, and to  issue pain to  receptors with

micromillimeter precision, allowing the  subject to gauge the  degree to

which  tissues  remained  injured  or  imbalanced  once  healing  seemed

complete.

The chamber was poorly lit, bioluminescent glows reflecting from red and

black  coral walls  suggesting thick  deposits of  half-dried blood.  It

featured  one  central  table  with  a  gray  oval  top,  the  carefully

engineered  terminus of  the tracer  spineray, tilted  so that  one  end

nearly touched the floor.  A male of the  shaper caste stood beside  the

table; Tsavong Lah lay atop it, his feet toward the ground. He was fully

clothed, but his  left arm lay  bare against the  leatherlike surface of

the  table, and  Maal Lah  knew that  the warmaster's  visit was  purely

medical; the tracer spineray had  to be evaluating the condition  of the

radank claw grafted onto his arm. It looked no worse than the last  time

Maal Lah had seen it, but no better. Perhaps the warmaster wished him to

see that it had not deteriorated,  so that he might inform others,  head

off speculation about Tsavong Lah's possible rejection of the graft.

Tsavong Lah  glanced at  him without  moving his  head and beckoned. The

shaper moved to the  side so that they  might speak privately, but  Maal

Lah could feel that one's eyes on him.

"I  require   your  insight,   my  servant,"   Tsavong  Lah   said.  "An

interpretation of events."

Maal Lah nodded, not speaking. He preferred not to speak much before his

warmaster. Those  who did  inevitably said  too much  and earned Tsavong

Lah's ire;

Nom Anor was constantly on the receiving end of that displeasure.

"I dispatched Wyrpuuk  Cha's fleet to  Borleias to retrieve  it from the

infidels. We had  assumed that the  garrison there was  simply intent on

dying well.

"It was, however, a  trap. The infidels demonstrated  unusual precision,

daring, and savagery in a brilliantly conceived and executed plan.  They

dropped their largest spacecraft, one that  we did not know was part  of

the fleet there, into the heart  of Wyrpuuk Cha's formation and used  it

to destroy both yammosks. That spacecraft became a lure for our  fleet's

other ships, which descended upon it, allowing enemy reinforcing vessels

to  arrive almost  unnoticed and  fall upon  them from  all sides."  The

warmaster  was  silent  for  a  long  moment.  "That  fleet  is  all but

destroyed. The designated successor to Wyrpuuk Cha's command leads  many

of  the  survivors  back  to  us  now.  A  pilot  of  Domain  Kraal  has

commandeered some of the survivors to bolster his efforts to harass  the

infidels. Of course, those survivors  disobeyed a direct order from  the

designated successor when they chose to remain with him.

"I have settled on  a plan of action,"  the warmaster concluded. "But  I

welcome your thoughts."

Maal Lah  remained silent  for long  moments. It  would not  do to offer

half-considered ideas, and Tsavong  Lah neither disparaged nor  was made

uncomfortable by long silences.

Finally  he said,  "If the  ambush was  as precisely  conducted as   you

describe, it was  unquestionably the work  of their greatest  tactician,

Garm bel Iblis."

"No.  Bel Iblis  appears to  be in  command of  an entire  fleet  group,

elsewhere. The vessels in Pyria system seem to belong to the command  of

Wedge Antilles."

Maal Lah fell silent again as he recalculated. "I will need to  evaluate

the reports  of the  survivors. But  it seems  inevitable that bel Iblis

planned  that  ambush. Meaning  that  he is  working  very closely  with

Antilles. Meaning that there is great importance to that site. Before we

destroy it,  we must  learn what  that importance  is. And  then we must

destroy it so savagely that every infidel who once smiled at the success

of that ambush will flinch in dread."

"Yes."

"Which means,  in turn,  that you  must personally  lead the conquest of

Borleias."

Tsavong Lah shook his head. "I cannot. It will be too great a demand  on

attentions  needed  elsewhere.  But  you are  correct.  It  does  need a

warmaster's touch."

Maal  Lah  frowned,  not  understanding,  then  he  straightened  as the

significance of Tsavong Lah's words hit him. "He will not do it."

"He will."

"I think he  is the finest  possible choice. If  he can be  persuaded to

go."

Tsavong Lah nodded. "Prepare a ship to take me to Domain Lah."

"It shall be done."  Maal Lah took the  warmaster's tone as a  dismissal

and turned away.

Old  scars on  his back  began to  itch, scars  dealt by  the one  whose

services Tsavong Lah was about to employ.

When Maal Lah was gone, the warmaster gestured for the shaper to  resume

his duties, and said, "What do you conclude?"

Master Shaper  Ghithra Dal  took a  moment to  compose his answer before

offering it. "There is  no sign of change.  The tissue where the  radank

claw joins your original flesh continues to decay, continues to heal."

"There is no sign of rejection with my other implants?"

"None."

"What does that mean to you?"

"I do not know."

"Where  your shaper's  knowledge fails  you, you  still have  instincts,

opinions.  I want  them. Do  not fear  my anger  on this  point. I   can

distinguish between fact and opinion."

"Were I to offer an opinion, Warmaster, it would be that the true  cause

of this malady does  not lie with the  shapers' science... but with  the

will of the gods."

Tsavong Lah  felt a  little thrill  as another  piece of reality clicked

into place  in the  pattern Viqi  Shesh had  suggested. "Which gods?" he

asked.

Ghithra Dal  cocked his  head, his  gesture suggesting  that he  was not

sure. "Any god could manifest anger  this way. But in my experience  the

one most  likely to  do so  is Yun-Yuuzhan.  Still, if  I might  dare to

suggest a course of inquiry for you to take..."

"Show me no fear, Ghithra Dal, and make your suggestion."

"I would recommend that you speak to the priests of all the myriad  gods

and ask them which among the great beings might be angry with you. It is

a question for priests, not shapers."

Except, Tsavong Lah thought, when the priests are in collusion with  the

shapers. What will  your reward be?  A generous portion  of land on  the

world the Yun-Yuuzhan priests receive? A continent, perhaps?

"I will consider this," the warmaster said. He rose and allowed  Ghithra

Dal to bring him his garments. And I will seek a second opinion. I  will

find someone who can speak as  a shaper... but does not owe  any loyalty

to the main orders of shapers.

I will bring Nen Yim to me.

Borleias Occupation, Day 11

Luke Skywalker sat cross-legged on the floor of the Millennium  Falcon's

forward cargo hold, which was empty of cargo. It was one place, in  this

overcrowded military base, where he could be alone, one place where what

he was doing was less likely to distress his son.

He opened himself to the Force  and floated within it. He did  not think

of the question he hoped he would answer - thought was counterproductive

to intuition.

But this time, the currents of the Force took him where he wanted to go.

He could feel  an enduring manifestation  of the dark  side. It was  not

waiting for him, not beckoning to him; it had an agenda that had nothing

to do with Luke Sky-walker. And  in the brief moment before he  lost his

awareness of it,  he knew that  it still roamed  the broken pathways  of

Coruscant.

Han Solo watched his wife come slowly back to life.

Not  long  before, the  loss  of Anakin  and  Jacen had  shattered  her,

convinced her that all her works and efforts were meaningless. Once  she

had realized, at an intellectual level  at least, that this was not  so,

their daughter  Jama's troubles  in the  Hapes system  had reminded Leia

that she had  duties, obligations. She  began to carry  them out in  her

customarily  brisk  and  efficient  manner,  but  without  the  spark of

enthusiasm or the wicked humor that were  so much a part of the Leia  he

loved.

At any time of  day or night, her  thoughts might return to  Anakin, the

way  he  had  suffered and  died  on  his mission  to  the  Yuuzhan Vong

worldship above  Myrkr. Her  breath and  color would  leave her  and she

would have to lean into Han's arms or curl into a ball wherever she  was

sitting until the pain eased. Han, too, felt the stab of Anakin's  loss,

but held himself upright, trying not  to show it - he was  determined to

be there  for Leia,  to never  again let  her down  the way he had after

Chewie's death.

But now,  as Leia  spent her  time with  her datapad  linked to  various

ships' libraries and her personal archives aboard Millennium Falcon  and

Rebel   Dream   -   -cataloging  politicians   who   owed   her  favors,

reconstructing the  measures she  and the  other founders  of the  Rebel

Alliance had  taken when  laying the  groundwork of  their movement more

than two  decades before  - a  semblance of  enthusiasm was returning to

her.  The  pain  from   Anakin's  loss  and  uncertainty   from  Jacen's

disappearance were still  there, undiminished... but  when they did  not

completely occupy her, she seemed more vital, more alive. More herself.

Han welcomed the change without entirely understanding its cause; as far

as he could tell, she was merely doing the sort of political work  she'd

been doing for decades.

Leia's exclamation startled him out of his studies:

"What happened here?"

He turned and grinned  up at her, at  the blank expression she  directed

toward the  open space  where Chew-bacca's  seat had  been. "I'm  having

something Leia-sized put in today." The grin was half genuine  amusement

at her surprise, half mask to hide his own lingering feelings of dismay;

replacing  Chewie's chair,  one of  the last  tangible mementos  of  the

Wookiee's life,  had been  among the  hardest things  Han had ever done.

"Are you through reorganizing the galaxy for now?"

She shook her  head, finally turning  her attention to  her husband. She

moved up beside him. "I still have some solar systems to move, and  I'll

be laundering the Hapes Cluster - "

"It could use it." Han dragged her over and onto his lap. "We can  start

with Isolder, the walking headache - "

But Leia's attention  was focused elsewhere,  on the planetary  data now

displayed on the Falcon's computer screens. "Han, what's this?"

"Coruscant."

"I know it's Coruscant. I mean, what are you doing studying it?"

He shrugged as though he didn't know the answer, a delaying tactic as he

tried to  sort among  any number  of lies  he could  tell. None  of them

seemed likely to fool her.

Finally he said, "It's the twins thing, Leia. Twins are sacred to  them.

They think Jacen and Jaina have meaning to their gods, and that means if

you're right that  Jacen is still  alive, then he's  going to be  in the

hands of  their most  important people.  Their command  worldship is  at

Coruscant. You don't have to be  a genius to figure out that  Coruscant,

either on the planet or in that worldship, is the most likely place  for

Jacen to be."

She looked him in the eye, all levity gone from her expression.  "You're

not going to go in there after him."

"I might," he said. I am, he told himself.

"Han, no. Listen to me." This was not Leia's voice of command; it was  a

plea. "You can't help him. If you go, I'll lose you, too."

"I'm as hard to lose as a bad reputation."

Leia didn't bite, didn't respond with any of a dozen glibly  appropriate

responses, one more sign of her seriousness. "You have to understand.  I

can't see  the Yuu-zhan  Vong in  the Force,  I can't  see Jacen  in the

Force... but I'm not cut off  from the Force. It still shows  me things,

offers me visions, from time to time. When I see either of us going back

to Coruscant while  it's in Vong  hands, I see  us failing there.  Dying

there."

Chilled by the tone in Leia's voice, Han shook his head. "Someone has to

go."

"Luke.  Luke has  to go.  He has  a chance.  We don't."  Leia seemed  to

deflate, as if the admission that she could offer no help, no comfort to

her missing son had reduced her in volume. But she straightened again in

a moment. "You can't help Jacen, but you can help me."

"How?"

"With politics."

"You know how I feel about politics. You know how good I am at it."

Her smile returned.  "The Resistance means  it's time for  new politics.

The  kind where,  if the  fellow smiling  at you  is planning  to put  a

vibroblade in your back, instead of smiling in return, you shoot him."

"Really?" He thought about  it. "Shoot him just  once, or as often  as I

want?"

"As long as your blaster's batteries hold out."

"Sounds wonderful. What's the catch?"

"I've  accepted  the  assignment Wedge  talked  about  the other  night.

Pending you signing on, that is. Once we've got a plan worked up,  we'll

be traveling from system to system setting up Resistance cells.  Calling

in favors.  An extension  of the  Jedi Underground.  Probably blundering

into Yuuzhan Vong forces and Peace Brigade units."

"And shooting them."

"Yes."

He opened his mouth to ask if this is what she really wanted to be doing

while one of their surviving children  was missing and the other was  in

unknown circumstances on an almost hostile world, but then he caught the

look in her eye, the gleam  that had often graced Rebel Alliance  leader

Leia Organa's expression in the darkest  days of the first war with  the

Empire.

The darkest days brought out the best in some people... people like Leia

Organa Solo. Now the days were dark again. Now, in spite of the pain and

uncertainty she struggled through, Leia was at her best again.

She was back.

"I'm signing on, lady."

"Good. We need a scoundrel like you."

"I don't have to be a nice man anymore?"

She shook her head and leaned in for a kiss.

From behind them, the singsong voice of C-3PO blared, "Master Solo!  The

mechanic with your new copilot's chair is here."

Han and Leia both jolted, then Leia dissolved into silent laughter.

Han  glared  at  her.  "As  a  reactivated  scoundrel,  I  get  to shoot

Goldenrod, too, don't I?"

She shook her head.

"So that's the catch."

"That's the catch."

Danni Quee jumped and straightened in her seat, and in the brief  moment

after she awoke, she couldn't  remember what had awakened her.  But then

it came again, a knock at  the door. "Come in," she said  automatically,

and brushed hair back from her face.

The door slid open and Tam Elgrin stood there, hands held before him  as

though he wasn't  sure quite what  to do with  them. He put  them on his

hips, thought the better of it,  crossed them before him, and leaned  on

the  doorjamb. The  door hissed  partway closed,  recognized him  as  an

obstruction, and hissed open again.

"Tam. Hello. I didn't think you could be on this corridor."

He  offered  her  an  uncertain smile  and  gestured  at  the identichip

adhering to the  front of his  shirt. "I'm, uh,  doing repairs with  the

civilian repair group. So I can be here."

"Ah."

"Do you have anything you need repaired?"

The door tried to close again. Tam ignored it.

Danni  shook her  head. "Not  really. I've  been doing  most of  my  own

maintenance."

"Oh. Right. Well,  if you ever  get shorthanded, be  sure to, you  know,

contact me."

"I'll do that."

Tam  waited there,  through one  more cycle  of the  door attempting  to

close, before appearing  to realize that  the conversation had  probably

run its course. "Um, can I get you something? To eat or drink?"

"No, that's all right. Thank you anyway."

"Well, then. I'll be going."

"Good-bye."

"Good-bye." Tam's  expression graduated  to perplexed,  then pained.  He

stood back  from the  door and  reached up  to rub  one of  his temples.

"There's that headache ag - "

The door slid shut, cutting off his last word.

Danni slumped. This was the third  time in three days that Tam  had gone

out  of  his way  to  talk to  her,  in his  inimitably  clumsy fashion.

Obviously, he'd  developed an  interest in  her, and  that was  the last

thing she needed.

Oh, it wasn't that she disliked him. But her duties, analysis of Yuuzhan

Vong technology, came first. Then there was her as-time-allowed training

in the use of the Force, her occasional missions with the Wild  Knights.

She had meetings with the Insiders and lengthy consultations with others

who were knowledgeable in  Yuuzhan Vong technology, individuals  such as

Cilghal,  the Jedi  healer from  Mon Calamari.  She had  sleep, now  her

favorite hobby,  appreciated because  of its  scarcity. She  just didn't

have time  for the  legions of  male pilots,  officers, technicians, and

civilians who  thought that  she surely  must be  interested in spending

some time with them.

It was  even worse  with Tam,  who stared  at her  with big,  needy eyes

filled with an emotion she couldn't quite interpret. It wasn't love,  or

affection, or admiration. It was something like longing, only worse.

If she didn't know better, she'd have said it was desperation.

She rubbed her eyes in the vain hope that it would allow them to  focus,

then turned her attention back to her instruments.

Preparing  for bed,  Iella asked,  "Wedge, do  you have  any reason   to

distrust Luke and Mara? Or does Tycho?"

Wedge  lay back  on the  bed and  winced in  anticipation of  the  day's

accumulation of aches and pains assaulting him. "Of course not. Why?"

"A  couple  of days  ago,  I found  a  listening device  planted  in the

Skywalker quarters. It was an amateur job, attached with a little  patch

of duracrete to a water pipe  in their refresher. So it would  only pick

up conversations  taking place  in that  one-person refresher,  and only

when water wasn't flowing through the pipe."

He gave her a curious look. "Sounds like we're being spied on by someone

who hasn't seen enough holodramas."

She  slid  into  place  beside him.  "Today  I  found  the corresponding

listening device. In Tycho's quarters."

Wedge chuckled. "So you suspect  Tycho of wanting to listen  to fourteen

hours a day of crying baby?"

"Certainly not. But I'm taking it seriously because I don't know what it

represents. I know what to do  when I find signs that a  competent agent

is working against us. This, this is just confusing."

"Maybe our enemy has two listening devices. One to listen to and one  to

plant to throw blame on Tycho."

"That's a good guess."

"So what did you do about it?"

"I left the listening device, and told Luke and Mara not to talk in  the

refresher, and  why. I'll  script up  some false  leads for  them to say

within its range and see what comes of it."

"Problem solved." Wedge reached over to switch off the bedside light.

Borleias Occupation, Day 15

It  had been  nearly a  week since  Lusankyd's arrival  had smashed  the

Yuuzhan Vong  fleet. Since  then, squadrons  and even  smaller units  of

coralskippers, now based out of  the captured lunar station above  Pyria

VI, had harassed the  New Republic ships in  orbit and made some  daring

runs against the biotics station on the ground, but these attacks seemed

little more than probes testing for weaknesses.

Luke Skywalker  and a  man named  Kell Tainer  worked on  Luke's X-wing,

patching  up the  damage done  during the  last attack.  The damage  was

mostly minor, hull scoring and  components shaken loose, but if  allowed

to accumulate it would gradually render the snubfighter useless.

Tainer was  tall and  in shape,  the leanness  of his muscles suggesting

that they were for use rather than for show. His brown hair was receding

from  his  forehead but  long  in back  and  braided. He  wore  a droopy

mustache and a close-trimmed beard. He looked like nothing so much as an

asteroid miner or backworld mechanic, but Luke knew better.

"I thought you  were Intelligence," Luke  said. A needle-thin  stream of

lubricant sprayed from the  engine he was working  on, the one at  lower

starboard, and left a zigzag  red-black mark on his cheek  and forehead.

He tightened the clamp over  the perforated hose and mopped  ruefully at

the fluid on his face. "A Wraith, right?"

"You're not supposed to know that." Kell's voice was muffled. His  upper

body  was  wedged into  the  snub-fighter's tiny  cargo  compartment; he

dangled from the waist down out of the access hatch at the underside  of

the X-wing's bow. It looked as though the X-wing had decided to begin  a

career as a carnivorous beast  and Kell had been its  first, unresisting

prey. "Now I have to kill you."

Luke grinned. "What are you doing working with the mechanics?"

"Used to be a mechanic. Worked for a while in a Sluis Van refitting shop

that Admiral Thrawn's  forces eventually blew  up, in fact.  But I could

ask you the  same thing. Thought  you were a  Jedi Master. What  are you

doing working with the mechanics?"

"Same  answer, more  or less.  I had  to maintain  all my  machinery  on

Tatooine when I was a kid and many times since. And this is my X-wing."

"Get in there, you little - all right. Your ejector mechanism should  be

working again. Let me get this panel dogged down so your feet don't drop

into the cargo compartment."

"I'd appreciate that. Not that  my feet always reach the  floor anyway."

Luke  finished sealing  off the  second of  two valves.  He removed  the

damaged tubing in between and began attaching its replacement.

Kell slid out from the compartment as though the carnivorous X-wing  had

decided he just wasn't worth  swallowing. He landed on his  feet, nimble

for such a big man. "Want to test it?"

"No, thanks."

"Go ahead, hop  in and fire  it off. That's  the only way  to be sure it

works."

Luke glanced up  at the drooping  metal docking bay  ceiling five meters

above their heads. "No, thanks."

"Spoilsport." Kell grabbed the lip of the hull beside the cockpit -  the

canopy  was raised,  allowing him  the grip  - and  heaved himself   up,

leaning over into cockpit, his upper half disappearing from view again.

"You're Tyria Sarkin's husband, aren't you?"

"Aha, that's how you knew I was a Wraith. Yes, I am."

"How is she doing?"

Kell was silent for long moments. Luke heard the ratcheting sound of the

man's hydrospanner. "She's doing  well," Kell said. "Mostly  she travels

with our boy, Doran. Teaching him  the ways of the Jedi. She  travels so

far afield... she  probably doesn't even  know how bad  the Yuuzhan Vong

invasion  has  gotten. We  have  pretty much  a  long-distance marriage.

Months   of   separation  alternating   with   extravagant  welcome-home

celebrations. Back when you confirmed her in her rank as a Jedi  Knight,

that thrilled her for months. Years."

"She earned it." Luke finished fitting the second tube end and  reopened

the valves. The tube stiffened a little as lubricant coursed through it,

but it held.

Tyria Sarkin walked a strange and  solitary path for a Jedi, Luke  knew,

but it was a path he was familiar with;

it had been his own. He'd  tested her about twenty years ago,  when he'd

first heard of her, a New Republic pilot candidate with Force abilities,

but discovered that her powers were weak, her self-discipline inadequate

to the  task of  shaping her  into a  Jedi. He'd  let her  down easy and

suggested that she concentrate on  her piloting skills. But sometime  in

the next few years she'd found the discipline she'd needed and  resigned

from the military to learn the ways of the Jedi. She'd learned mostly on

her  own,  traveling  and  exploring,  experimenting  and investigating,

reading communiques and advice Luke had sent her but spending no time at

Luke's Jedi academy on Yavin 4. The fortunate thing, Luke reflected, was

that  she  had never  rejected  Luke's guidance  and  authority the  way

disaffected Jedi like Kyp Durron  had; she had simply progressed  in her

own way, at her own rate.

Kell dropped to the ferrocrete floor again. "All done."

"Here, too, just about." Then Luke felt a new presence and glanced  over

at the docking bay entrance.

Iella  Wessiri  stood  there.  "Thirty  standard  minutes,"  she   said.

"Insiders meeting."

"The bantha crows at dawn," Kell said.

Iella blinked at him. "What?"

"You know.  The bantha  crows at  dawn.' What's  the countersign?"  Kell

aimed his hydrospanner at her as  though it were a blaster. "Or  perhaps

you're not Section Head Iella Wessiri at all? Pull that ooglith  masquer

off, or I open fire."

She gave him a thin smile. "My husband never really told me how annoying

you  were." She  turned to  Luke. "Thirty  minutes. There's  news."  She

turned and left.

Kell adopted  an expression  of disdain.  "No countersign,  indeed. What

sort of holodrama is this, anyway?"

"You're going to do what?" Mara asked. Her voice had not risen to  carry

through  the doors  and into  the conference  room, but  it had   become

sharper. It was loud enough to  startle Ben, but the baby merely  looked

up from  her arms,  gurgled, looked  at Luke,  and reached  out for  his

father. Luke gave him the pinkie of his natural hand to grasp.

Luke steeled himself. "I'm going to Coruscant."

"Your visions?"

"They're getting worse and  more frequent. Whatever is  happening there,

it's  building.  Getting  stronger.  Or going  to  build,  going  to get

stronger - I don't know if I'm seeing the present or the future."

"Or the past.  You could be  seeing something about  Palpatine's rise to

power."

He  shook  his  head. "There  wouldn't  be  a sense  of  urgency  to the

visions."

"Well,  send  someone  else.  This  is  an  Intelligence-style  mission.

Sneaking around in the dark. Not exactly suited to a fighter pilot  with

a glowing sword."

"Maybe  you're  right. Maybe  I  should invite  some  Intelligence types

along. But  since it's  a matter  of the  Force, there  has to be a Jedi

there." He gave her a reassuring grin. "Everything's better with a  Jedi

around."

"Where did you learn that smile? Have you been practicing in front of  a

holo of  Han Solo?  Listen, I'm  not objecting  to a  Jedi going on this

mission. But it can't be you. You can't go."

"Why not?"

"Because I can't go. I have to stay with Ben."

"It has  to be  me, Mara.  With the  galaxy falling  apart and  the Jedi

needing leadership, and with  so many of them  looking at anyone but  me

because they believe I'm some sort of passive, prematurely ancient  wise

man on a moun-taintop, I think it would be a good thing for them to hear

that  I've led  a mission  into Coruscant.  They'll have  to rethink  my

outlook and my opinions." It  occurred to Luke that Leia  would probably

be pleased  with the  political slant  of his  reasoning... and  then he

realized  that he  was once  again playing  in Leia's  battlefield,  the

universe  of politics,  where she  was a  master and  he was  usually  a

floundering novice.

"Don't do this, Skywalker."

"I have to. Come with me."

"I'm needed here."

"That's what  your feelings  are telling  you. What  does the Force tell

you?"

Her eyes flashed. "It doesn't tell me anything."

"Then you're not open  to it. You're afraid  of where it will  lead you.

You're afraid  it will  tell you  that you  need to  step away from Ben,

however temporarily."

Mara's face closed down, allowing no emotion to escape beyond the  event

horizon of her features. "I'll tell  you what I'm afraid of. I'm  afraid

that my husband is  be coming some sort  of dried-up desert mystic,  cut

off from human emotions."

Luke  sighed  and abandoned  the  argument. "The  offer's  open until  I

leave." He cocked his head toward the conference room door. "We need  to

join the rest."

Luke took his  customary chair beside  Wedge at the  head of the  table.

Mara, still stony-faced, sat beside Han and Leia.

No one was talking; instead, everyone watched Iella Wessiri as she moved

the length  of one  wall, slowly  and rhythmically  waving an electronic

device beside it. The lights on  the device blinked a steady pattern  in

white.

Wedge waited until  Iella finished. She  nodded at him  to indicate that

the chamber was free of listening devices.

"Two hours ago," Wedge began, "a refugee ship arrived from the direction

of the Hapes Cluster. It had been part of a fleet heading toward  Hapes.

The fleet had  been assembled in  considerable secrecy, but  the Yuuzhan

Vong intercepted  it, and  this ship  was the  only one  to escape. This

coincides with word we've received from Talon Karrde today that the Vong

are becoming much more adept at tracking refugee traffic.

"I suspect that the New  Republic fleet groups, under direct  control of

the Advisory Council, are going  to be unable to devote  their resources

to this problem. So  I'm going to devote  some of ours. I'm  looking for

ideas."

"The first step," Luke said, "has  to be to figure out what  the Yuuzhan

Vong are  doing. How  they're getting  their accurate  information about

refugee ship movements. It could be that they've infiltrated one of  the

Yuuzhan Vong into the refugee ship network... in which case you'll  want

a Jedi to travel on some of  those voyages to try to find a  crew member

who can't be detected in the Force."

"Good point," Wedge said. "Anyone else?"

Danni Quee waved from  the back of the  room. "They could be  using some

sort of tracking creature."

"Also a good point," Wedge acknowledged. "What do we do about that?"

Danni considered.  "Tracking creatures  will probably  be using gravitic

fluctuations to signal  their presence. I  can build a  detection device

similar to what I'm using to track yammosk activities. If we mount it on

a refugee vessel,  it can record  gravitic flux and  determine whether a

creature like that is aboard. But if the vessel doesn't survive the trip

and we can't retrieve the recording, that does us no good."

Corran Horn spoke up. "So we make sure that the vessel survives. We  put

together a surprise  for the Vong  and then run  the vessel on  missions

until  they decide  to take  it. This  has an  additional benefit;   the

Yuuzhan  Vong are  preying pretty  much at  will on  refugee ships.   If

Yuuzhan Vong vessels assigned to this duty start disappearing, they  may

have to rethink their operations."

"Good," Wedge said.

Corran continued, "But if the Yuuzhan Vong aren't using gravitic tracker

creatures,  we still  have to  figure out  where the  holes are  in  the

security of the refugee network. We'll have to root out the problem  the

old-fashioned way."

"Well, it looks  like we have  some tactics to  employ," Wedge said.  "I

think  we'll  need  a  volunteer to  coordinate  this  effort,  and that

volunteer can work with me and Tycho to assemble a mission. Anyone?"

Lando's hand was, to  the surprise of the  others, first in the  air. "I

think it's about time I  made a lot of Vong  look bad," he said. "In  my

own inimitable way, of course."

"Of course." Wedge grinned at him.

"I'll  need communications  access to  Talon Karrde,  Danni's device,  a

starfighter squadron, maybe a Jedi or two, and a lot of brandy. I  can't

stress the brandy part enough."

Wedge  gave him  a dubious  look. "I  think we've  accomplished what  we

needed to here. Does anyone have anything else?"

"I do."  Luke gave  Mara an  apologetic look.  "I'm going  to Coruscant.

Something's happening  there, something  outside the  activities of  the

Yuuzhan Vong, and I have to look into it. I suspect that once I'm there,

I can find a way to get offworld,  but what I don't know is how I'd  get

to the planet's surface."

"Intelligence can get you there," Iella said. "We've been thinking about

putting a team on the ground there - we need to set up Resistance  cells

on Coruscant. We can  combine the two missions."  She gave him a  wicked

smile. "I'll give you that extremely annoying mechanic."

"Thank you so much," Luke said, deadpan.

Domain Lah Worldship, Myrkr Orbit

He was a warrior of the Yuuzhan Vong, his face so thoroughly scarred and

tattooed  that the  decorations all  but hid  his wrinkles  of age,  his

augmented  vonduun  crab  armor   concealing  the  leanness  of   active

venerability. In his hands, coiled  like a long rope, was  an amphistaff

of  unusual type  - far  longer, much  more slender  than the   standard

Yuuzhan Vong weapon.

One did not often see a Yuuzhan Vong warrior this old. Most had gone  to

a noble death long before achieving this age.

He walked behind the black coral benches of his teaching chamber, behind

the rows of his students,  warrior-officers clad only in loincloths.  At

the head of the chamber, blaze bugs took on the form of a planet, of its

defensive platforms and screens, of attacking Yuuzhan Vong forces.

"See there," he said. "The upper right quadrant of the world  Coruscant.

The  stream of  ships against  the visible  screen, how  it flares  into

incandescence and  disappears. These  ships held  our enemies' refugees,

and they  disappeared because  we ordered  them into  a region  of space

protected by  the enemy's  passive defenses.  When they  could no longer

bear the  notion that  their innocent  relatives were  being consumed by

their own defenses,  they lowered those  defenses, and we  entered their

world-sanctuary." The blaze bugs altered their configuration so that the

stream of  ships passed  through the  shield, now  accompanied by colors

suggesting Yuuzhan Vong attack craft. "Now, what was the most  important

piece of information we needed to implement this plan?"

For a moment there was silence. Then a young warrior, his body  scarcely

graced by scars or  tattoos, stood. He remained  rigid, his back to  the

elderly  instructor. "We  needed to  know where  their passive  defenses

were."

The  elderly Yuuzhan  Vong drew  back his  coil of  amphistaff and  then

snapped it forward. The pointed  tail cracked out and stabbed  into that

warrior's back, punching a hole into the flesh over his shoulder  blade.

As the elderly one yanked his living whip back, the hole bled.

"Sit," said the old one. "What you have just received is a Czulkang  Lah

pit. Everyone who studies with  me receives several. They become  badges

of honor, a sign that  you have survived instruction with  Czulkang Lah.

But the more hopeless among  you receive many pits, countless  pits, and

rather than it being  a badge of honor,  such scars tell other  officers

that you were  an idiot. I  recommend you not  gather unto yourself  too

many. Now, who will answer the question I asked?"

No one stood or spoke.

The old warrior sighed. "All stand, all but the one who had the  courage

to venture an answer."

All the  students, except  the one  still bleeding,  rose. Czulkang  Lah

lashed out at  them, methodically and  rhythmically cutting two  pits in

each back.  The warriors  he struck  did not  cry out;  none offered any

sound more dismayed than a grunt.  But they would remember this day  and

how  their  fear  of  offering a  wrong  answer  had  earned them  their

teacher's ire.

When he was halfway  through the group of  thirty students, one who  had

not yet been  struck spoke up,  saying, "We had  to know that  the enemy

would sacrifice all to save a few. We had to know how they thought."

"You, sit." Czulkang  Lah continued his  whip-cracking, sparing the  one

who had last spoken.  When all but that  one had bloody backs,  he said,

"All sit.

"Now, all  think. Tudrath  Dyn is  correct. We  had to  understand their

weaknesses... and their strengths. Their ability to train great warriors

despite their daintiness concerning  death and pain. Their  hateful love

of  machinery...  and  their  correct  evaluation  of  that  machinery's

effectiveness. We had  to know. Else  we would not  have beaten them  on

Coruscant. Else we would not beat them elsewhere."

A warrior with a bloody back stood. "May I ask a question, Warmaster?"

"I am not Warmaster," Czulkang Lah  said. "Not for a lifetime. Yes,  you

may ask. I punish wrong conclusions... not curiosity."

The warrior asked, "How can one understand the ways of the enemy without

learning to think like  the enemy? And if  one learns to think  like the

enemy, is that one not infected  with his thoughts, and a danger  to the

Yuuzhan Vong?"

"A good question. Sit." Czulkang  Lah walked around to stand  before his

students. "The answer is as  you suspect. For our theoretical  tactician

to think like  the enemy is  to be infected  with his wrongness.  If the

infection  is  not  too  great,  the  tactician  can  cure  himself   by

reimmersion in our ways.  If the infection is  too great, he can  find a

way to die honorably, knowing that his sacrifice has enriched us. So his

infection is not a problem unless  he  passes it on to others.  Remember

and this is the lesson that  the  enemy on Coruscant did not  understand

individual survival  is not  important. As  soon as  you dispassionately

place yourselves  among those  whom you  are willing  to send to certain

death, you take another step  toward strategic wisdom." He glanced  past

the ranks of his students at  the figure, a distant silhouette, who  had

just entered the coral-lined chamber. "We are finished for now. Go."

They rose  and marched,  nearly silent  on bare  feet, from the chamber,

glancing but not staring  at the visitor, who  remained at the rear,  in

the shadows, wrapped in a voluminous cloak.

When they were gone, Czulkang Lah moved forward. "Is it you?"

Tsavong Lah unwrapped himself from his cloak. "Father."

Czulkang Lah offered a nod of acknowledgment. "Son. Or is your visit  as

warmaster?"

Tsavong Lah moved to stand beside his father. "As warmaster and son.  As

son I ask, how do you fare?"

Czulkang Lah bared his teeth; their irregular and broken lines had  been

glimpsed  through  his slitted  lips  previously, but  were  now clearly

revealed. "How do  you think? I  am old. But  for my augmented  armor, I

could barely  move. Aches  befall me  that have  nothing to  do with the

marks I  have put  on myself  over the  years. And  I am  little but  an

honored prisoner here, unable to lead, and begged by my son not to die."

"This has changed."

"You no longer wish me to teach?"

"I wish you to lead."

Czulkang Lah did not bother to conceal his surprise. He leaned away from

his son as if the few centimeters of additional distance would give  him

a better view. "Tell me."

"We have been somewhat embarrassed by a garrison defending a world at  a

hyperspace crossroads. Borleias, I am sure you know her."

"Pyria system. Staging point for the assault on Coruscant."

"Correct.  The garrison  defends the  world with  savagery and  tactical

brilliance. We are not sure  why. Examination of one of  their technical

facilities in the system we captured indicates that they are  developing

something there, some  new weapon to  use against us,  but unfortunately

their scientists were able to  destroy most of the evidence  before they

fled. The resources  they bring to  bear, tactics I  cannot explain, all

suggest that something is afoot there. I need someone to go there,  root

out the mystery, and then destroy the garrison... and to do so in such a

way that our embarrassment is forgotten and theirs is legendary."

"No. Find someone else."

"Why?"

"When I succeed, it  will have been just  a bittersweet taste of  what I

once knew.  I will  not do  this unless,  once all  is done,  I retain a

command, return to what I know best."

Tsavong Lah hesitated, and Czulkang Lah continued. "You fear that I will

bind the loyalties of officers, of  whole domains, to me, and take  from

you the rank you once took from me. But I will not. I opposed you  years

ago because I opposed coming  to this galaxy, attacking these  infidels.

But we are here now, I have  no reason to oppose you, plot against  you.

All I demand is that you give me a reason to continue living."

His  son hesitated  a moment  longer, then  nodded. "When  Borleias  has

fallen, you will retain command, and the stories of new exploits will be

added to your  legend, as they  should be. For  now, I wish  you to take

Domain Hul and all her resources to the Pyria system and do what I  have

described."

"It will be done."  After a moment, Czulkang  Lah added, " I  am pleased

that you came in person to ask."

"No matter  what our  disagreements, you  remain a  hero to  the Yuuzhan

Vong, and to your son. I owe you no less."

NINE

Deep-Space Rendezvous Point

The Gallofree  personnel transport  Jeolocas dropped  out of  hyperspace

exactly where she was supposed to, so far from any star system and  from

any widely  known hyperspace  route that  the only  thing her  occupants

should have seen was the surrounding expanse of stars and nebulae in all

their color and purity.

Instead, as  the whirling  lines of  hyperspace travel  straightened and

then foreshortened and Jeolocas dropped into realspace, clearly  visible

from the bridge  was a Yuuzhan  Vong frigate analog,  an oblong mass  of

glistening red-and-black yorik coral, less than twenty kilometers  away,

easy firing distance.

Jeolocas's captain, a young  man from Corellia who  had grown up on  the

exploits of  famed Corellian  pilots like  Han Solo  and Wedge Antilles,

suddenly felt the kinship he'd always known with those heroes fade  away

to a cold recognition  of his own mortality.  For the first time  in his

life, he felt no  ambition to see an  enemy spacecraft in his  targeting

reticle, to dogfight with enemy pilots in the thick of battle. In  fact,

the merchant  corps he  served suddenly  seemed more  dangerous than  he

could endure. "We're dead," he said, his voice a croak.

The officer next to  him, a Twi'lek female  with pale blue skin,  merely

smiled. "Not unless you want to be."

"What?" He stared at her, looking for any sign that she was  distressed,

confused, surprised in the least. He  saw none. He didn't know her  well

hadn't known her prior  to a day ago,  when she'd been assigned  to this

mission on the direct  recommendation of  the Talon  Karrde organization

and now he understood that everything he had known about her, her  name,

her service record, all had to  be a lie. He looked around  the interior

of the command pod  and realized that she'd  sent the other five  ship's

officers off on various duties just prior to arrival, leaving the two of

them alone here. "You knew they'd be here."

"That's right."

"You're Peace Brigade, you sold us out - "

"It doesn't  matter who  I am.  It only  matters that  you do  as you're

told."

He drew his service blaster. He'd practiced his draw for years until  it

was as smooth as shimmersilk and faster than the eye could follow.  He'd

practiced it until Han Solo himself, had he ever met the man, would have

been impressed with his speed and deadliness.

As he brought the weapon up, he felt a sharp pain in his wrist.

He  looked down.  His hand  was empty,  bent back  at a  bad angle.  His

blaster was in  the Twi'lek woman's  hand and tucked  barrel-first under

his chin. She looked slightly  more serious now, as if  deciding whether

to forgive him for  the minor transgression of  trying to kill her.  The

pain from his  wrist jolted up  to his elbow,  then made more  leisurely

progress up to his shoulder while he stared, uncomprehending. He cradled

his injured hand.

"Do you want to live?" the woman asked.

He nodded.

She  smiled  again. She  reached  up with  her  free hand  and  took the

captain's cap from him, settling it down on her own head. "Then go hide.

Don't come out until I call for you."

He turned and marched, his legs stiff, from the bridge. From the  corner

of his eye, he could see, through the viewport, the Yuuzhan Vong frigate

launching a shuttle of some sort.

Suddenly, the thought of being less dashing than Han Solo didn't  bother

him as much  as it used  to. He could  happily be less  dashing than Han

Solo for the  rest of his  life... so long  as the rest  of his life was

measured in years rather than minutes.

The air lock opened and the armored warrior led his unit of Yuuzhan Vong

into the hateful metal corridors of the transport.

Waiting for him was  a single ship's officer,  a female of a  species he

had seen before, a species whose name he could not recall; her skin  was

a pleasing blue two shades lighter than the bags under his eyes, and her

hairless head separated in back into  two fleshy tails. She wore a  blue

uniform jumpsuit and cap, both decorated in gold trim. A blaster  pistol

lay at her feet.

"I am Bastori Rak," he said. "Who is captain here?"

"I am." The  female offered him  a respectful nod  but did not  meet his

eyes. Nor did she exhibit fear.

Bastori  Rak  hesitated  for  a moment.  His  usual  tactic  during such

boardings  was to  instill pain  and fear  into the  ship's officers  to

eliminate  any  possibility  of  defiance,  but  no  defiance  was being

offered. It was obvious that the  female already knew she was a  subject

of the  Yuuzhan Vong.  He briefly  considered striking  her anyway,  but

decided to test the extent of her willing obedience instead.

He drove  the pointed  end of  his amphistaff  into the blaster pistol's

grip, shearing through it and  into the deck plating beyond,  then shook

the blaster's remains free from  his weapon. "What is your  destination,

and what do you carry?" he asked.

"We are  bound for  the Hapes  Cluster with  a cargo  made up  mostly of

refugees,"  she said.  "We carry  seven crew,  three hundred  twenty-six

refugees - three hundred forty if  you count the ones who are  in hidden

compartments - as well as  food, personal effects, trade items,  andJedi

training materials. Shall I give you the codes to our computer  security

now?"

"Yes, and then you will follow - Jeedai training materials?"

"Yes."

"What sort of materials?"

"I'm not sure. I saw only the contents of one barrel. They include holos

of training regimens, holos  of Jedi history and  philosophy, infectious

agents that transform normal beings into Jedi, a lot of lightsabers from

their new manufacturing plant, that sort of thing."

For a moment, Bastori Rak could only gape at her. Visions of his  future

passed briefly before his eyes. A find of this significance would result

in  his  advancement,  in  his  name  accumulating  long-deserved  fame.

Finally, he managed, "Are there Jeedai here?"

The woman considered. "I don't think  so. Though if there are, I  expect

they'll be back with the training materials, destroying them."

"Take us there at once."

She  shrugged  and  turned  down  the  long  corridor  leading  into the

transport's depths.

Two  levels down,  in one  of the  forward holds,  Bastori Rak  and  his

warriors looked  with distaste  at the  tall stacks  of nearly identical

cargo containers, obviously the result of mechanical manufacture, as the

female led  them between  aisles of  the things.  "There," she said, and

pointed.

Set out  in an  open area  between two  stacks were  barrel-shaped metal

containers, a bit  over a meter  tall and nearly  a meter wide  at their

thickest point,  arrayed in  four rows  of four.  Each was  labeled JEDI

ACADEMY PROPERTY. DANGER. DO NOT OPEN.

Bastori Rak felt light-headed. "Can we move them without harm?"

"I don't think so,"  the woman said. She  held her hand up,  palm toward

the ceiling,  a gesture  that suggested  she was  begging for something.

"Here, let me show you."

Bastori Rak looked at her. She  now met his eyes, her expression  one of

mocking humor.

In his peripheral vision, Bastori  Rak saw something silver moving  from

above. It smacked down into the woman's palm.

The hilt of a lightsaber.

She said, "Embrace the pain, scarhead," and ignited the weapon; a bright

silver blade of energy shimmered into existence.

The weapon's distinctive snap-hiss noise jolted Bastori Rak into action.

He swung up his amphistaff in a blocking motion.

Her strike,  a lateral  slice, danced  around his  parry. It  sliced the

miniature villip from his shoulder and seared into his neck between  the

vonduun crab armor on his torso  and his helmet. He felt blinding  pain,

pain too great for him to accept or ignore, and the amphistaff flew from

his nerveless fingers as he collapsed.

But he was not dead, and  could still see. He saw his  second-in-command

strike at the woman, saw her graceful parry, heard her laugh. He saw the

tops of the Jeedai barrels bulge as their contents stood up within  them

and smashed through the thin metal sheets sealing them.

Their contents  were droids,  war droids,  weapons at  the ready.  Their

blasters opened up, chewing through his warriors.

There was  blinding whiteness  to his  vision now.  He struggled to stay

focused but could  not. He died  watching his warriors  jittering in the

concentrated fire coming from the hated war droids.

Colonel  Gavin Darklighter,  sitting in  darkness relieved  only by  the

glows from  his instruments,  hit his  comlink. "That's  the signal," he

said. "Launch."

The darkness above his head parted as his X-wing's camouflage - a  cargo

container bolted  to the  transport's top  hull, immediately  before the

command pod -  parted and folded  down to either  side. All around,  the

other eleven snubfighters  of Rogue Squadron  were also being  released,

also hitting thrusters as they hurtled toward the Yuuzhan Vong frigate.

The Yuuzhan Vong were quick on the uptake - Gavin could allow them that.

Almost as soon  as Rogue Squadron  cleared the transport,  the frigate's

plasma  cannons  were  opening  up,  directing  streams  of  superheated

material at  his X-wings.  "S-foils to  attack position,"  he said, "and

fire at will."

The wings of the twelve snubfighters opened into their characteristic  X

shape. Before Gavin's were even  locked into place, Nevil and  two other

Rogues had fired proton torpedoes.

Gavin  and the  rest waited  for a  handful of  seconds, slewing   their

snubfighters around in  an effort to  keep the plasma  cannon trails off

them,  then opened  up with  their lasers.  Twelve sets  of  quad-linked

lasers flashed, sending their destructive energy across twenty klicks of

space in an  instant, bypassing the  proton torpedoes, hurtling  against

the frigate -

Hurtling into the voids projected before the frigate. The vessel's dovin

basals, responding to the threat of the first attacks to arrive, created

their gravitic singularities in front of the laser attacks and swallowed

the majority of their energy.

They  were  still swallowing,  in  fact, when  the  late-arriving proton

torpedoes  flashed  between them  and  struck the  frigate's  hull. They

detonated, one, two, three brilliant explosions, and as the last of them

began to fade Gavin  could see the mighty  frigate cracked in two,  each

half spitting forth flaming debris.  The plasma cannons no longer  aimed

their  energies at  Rogue Squadron;  two of  them still  fired,  sending

burning blobs randomly into space.

"Confirmed  kill,"  Gavin  said,  "no  friendly  losses.  Do  you  read.

Gambler?"

Lando Calrissian's smooth tones  were preserved across the  comlink. "We

read, Rogue Leader. Likewise,  no friendly casualties here.  A beautiful

execution all around."

"We'll see  you back  at base,  then. Rogue  Leader out."  Gavin led the

Rogues in an easy loop around until they were oriented toward  Borleias.

A few moments later, his squadron made the jump into hyperspace.

Lando looked  over the  battlefield that  had been  a cargo hold. Twenty

Yuuzhan Vong warriors lay dead,  some of them no longer  recognizable as

bipedal humanoids, all over the deck plating. Lando's fifteen war droids

and Alema Rar, the Twi'lek Jedi, moved among them, dispatching wriggling

amphistaffs and the occasional  thud bug and razor  bug set free by  the

blaster damage that had killed  their owners. Alema whistled to  herself

as she worked.

Lando  consulted  his  datapad.  He sent  a  signal  to  query a  device

elsewhere in the vessel. "Not good. Danni's device isn't indicating  any

weird  gravitic  fluctuations.  Meaning  that  there  probably  isn't  a

tracking creature on this vessel."

Alema  nodded and  switched her  lightsaber off.  "Refugees have  to  be

turning  one another  in. I'm  not sure  for what.  Violence  threatened

against  their  loved  ones,  maybe.  Maybe  some  sort  of  bribe." She

shrugged. "We'll figure out what they're doing."

Lando turned his attention to his droid aide. "One-One-A, let's get this

cleaned up. Get  rid of the  biological remains only,  don't worry about

the blaster scorches. Load representative weapons and gear into a barrel

and seal it tight, then load it onto the shuttle."

One-One-A saluted. "Acknowledged."

"Would you like to celebrate?" That was Alema. She wore a curious smile,

artificially demure.

Lando turned back to her. "What did you have in mind?"

She just continued smiling.

"Oh." He gave her his best  smile in return, modulated his voice  to its

smoothest register. "I find myself flattered. But I am a married man."

She cocked her head as though the answer were incomplete.

"So I have to decline," he concluded.

She shrugged as though  it were of no  concern. "I'll prep the  shuttle,

then."

When she was gone,  Lando turned back to  1-1A. "Remind me again  of the

rewards of being virtuous?"

"I have never reminded you of this before."

"That was a rhetorical question."

"Nor have I ever told you of such rewards prior to not reminding you."

"It  was  still  rhetorical.  I really  need  to  give  you an  upgraded

conversation module if you're going to be talking all the time."

In the distance, they  heard Alema calling, "Captain,  captain, wherever

you are! You can come out now!"

Borleias Occupation, Day 30

Han came awake  with Leia shaking  him. Their chamber  was dark, and  he

could feel that only a few hours had passed since they'd gone to  sleep.

Grogginess lay over him like a  second blanket. It occurred to him  that

perhaps Borleias had never become  a true colony world because  everyone

who lived there was continually sleep-deprived. "What, what?"

"The control center  just reached me  on the comlink,"  Leia said. There

was a breathless excitement to  her voice, a happiness Han  hadn't heard

in a long time. "Jaina's in-system and headed this way. Get - "

Han  was  suddenly  on  his  feet,  the  groggmess  evaporated  like   a

snubfighter  shield  hit  by  a  laser  cannon.  He  lurched  toward the

footlocker that held his clothes.

"- dressed."

Luke watched them  spiral down from  the sky, a  battered-looking X-wing

and a disk-shaped  Hapan freighter, landing  in the same  portion of the

field that had briefly served the Advisory Council's vehicles.

Jaina Solo - heir  to some measure of  her father Han's lankiness,  with

features  as  deceptively  delicate  as  her  mother's,  her  brown hair

clinging  to  her  scalp  after  hours  in  a  helmet  -  descended  the

freighter's boarding ramp and was immediately enfolded in the embrace of

her parents. Behind her was Lowbacca, nose lifted as if trying to  scent

friends among the crowd; he offered a rumbling Wookiee growl of  welcome

as Tahiri,  Zekk, and  other academy  friends bolted  from the fringe of

onlookers to embrace him.

Kyp Durron descended from  the X-wing cockpit. Slender  and dark-haired,

with sharp features that seemed sculpted to convey anger and  discontent

but  currently were  calm, he  was, for  once, not  dressed in   stylish

civilian clothes, but instead wore an anonymous pilot's jumpsuit.

Luke moved up to join Kyp. Mara didn't keep pace with him; Luke knew she

was waiting for an opening to  talk to Jaina. Luke gave the  problematic

Jedi a nod he hoped looked friendly. "Kyp."

"Master Skywalker." Oddly,  there was neither  irony nor anger  in Kyp's

voice.

"You seem tired."

"No, I don't," Kyp said. "Just different."

They brought out  a dark-hours meal  for the latecomers  and heard their

story - a free-form recounting, to be sure, made somewhat random by  the

way  Jaina,  Kyp, and  Lowbacca  tended to  interrupt  one another  with

corrections and elaborations - of the days the three had spent on  Hapes

after the  departure of  Han and  Leia. Wedge,  acting more  or less  as

master of ceremonies for the meal, brought in one more participant; Luke

was startled to see Jag Fel enter the chamber.

Fel was a  tall, wiry young  man with close-cropped  black hair, a  scar

running from his right eyebrow upward  and then being echoed in a  white

lock of hair. He was  Wedge's nephew and, not surprisingly,  a brilliant

pilot, having inherited reflexes from both the Antilles and Fel families

and having been raised among the militaristic, blue-skinned Chiss, among

whom his parents had chosen to live. Fel's black uniform harked back  to

those  of  old-time  Imperial  TIE fighter  pilots,  but  was  cut along

different lines, with  red piping along  tunic and pants.  Luke had been

aware that Jag had been on  Hapes with Jaina, but thought he'd  departed

from there for distant regions of space.

Han tried to  find seats near  Jaina, but, curiously,  Leia chose places

far enough away to give her  a little distance, a little perspective  on

their daughter.

"So the Yuuzhan  Vong are clustering  around Hapes, but  Tenel Ka is  in

charge there as  Queen Mother," Luke  summarized. "Some good,  some bad.

Even with her  fleets so badly  reduced and her  danger so close,  Hapes

could be a strong ally for us. We'll need to offer her whatever  support

we can manage to keep the Vong from making any further inroads there."

Kyp made a sour face. "I don't think Hapes can ever be sorted out." Then

he looked thoughtful and added, "On the other hand, I'm the last one who

ought to be offering that kind of opinion."

"We're lucky things turned  out as well as  they did there," Luke  said.

"Ta'a  Chume could  still be  in charge,  could still  be making  things

harder for all  of us." He  turned to Jaina.  "Seriously, you understand

that  I wasn't  questioning your  decision. I  wasn't hinting  that  you

should  throw  yourself on  the  thermal detonator  that  a marriage  to

Isolder would represent."

Jaina offered him  an unperturbed smile.  "I know what  you meant. Uncle

Luke. I made the right choice."

Han leaned rightward so he  could whisper to Leia. "She's  changed. Just

in the days since we left Hapes."

Leia nodded, imperceptible to all  but him. "She's settled something  in

her mind.  I think  she's come  through one  of the  conflicts that  was

eating at her." She sagged just a little. "But whatever she settled,  it

wasn't about  me. She  didn't quite  relax when  I was  holding her  out

there."

"She'll find the right course through what she's dealing with. Give  her

time."

Wedge, focused  on Jaina,  asked, "So,  what are  your plans now? You're

still on Rogue Squadron's reserve roster, but your situation is  unique,

so I'm not going to call you up for duty if you and Luke feel you'll  be

more useful  elsewhere. I  can put  you in  touch with  one of the fleet

groups if that's what you want... but we could really use your  piloting

skills on Borleias."

Jaina looked around. Han saw her gaze click to a stop, ever so  briefly,

on him, Leia, and, curiously, Kyp and Jag. "I'd like to stay," she said.

"But I want to do something. I want to form a new starfighter  squadron,

if I  can put  together enough  pilots and  materiel, and  practice some

tactics involving the Force. Force-based coordination."

Luke's eyebrows rose. "Sort of like whatJoruus C'baoth did for Thrawn."

Jaina  shrugged. "I'm  not talking  about ancient  history, I'm  talking

about now." She glanced around at the winces and dark looks she received

from everyone present who was over  the age of thirty. She offered  up a

calm smile. "No,  I didn't mean  it that way.  I meant, I'm  not talking

about something on  the scale that  C'baoth used. Just  within a fighter

squadron. The Yuuzhan Vong  think that I'm  associated somehow with  Yun

HarIa, their goddess of trickery. I'd  like to play on that... and  this

means coming up with methods of trickery. Or what seems like trickery to

them. That means the Force to  me. The Force, and maybe the  best advice

from the best pilots, like Uncle Luke and General Antilles."

Wedge  considered. "I've  heard a  little about  this Trickster  goddess

thing. I think it has  real potential for psychological warfare.  So I'm

inclined to move on  this idea. But, Jaina,  if we're going to  have the

Yuuzhan Vong believe you're tied to this Yun-HarIa, we're going to  have

to treat you like a goddess."

Jaina turned her smile on him. "That sounds terrible."

"I'm not joking. I  suspect it means special  treatment to the point  of

isolation. You'd  have to  be seen  getting benefits  and considerations

that you haven't earned, which will cause bad feelings among pilots  who

have earned them. You'd only be able to talk freely with people who were

in on the secret, and only in areas that Intelligence has certified  are

free of listeners. It's going to distance you from people."

"That won't be a problem."

Luke leaned forward. "I  also think this is  something that ought to  be

done. Anything new  we can do  to keep the  Yuuzhan Vong off  balance is

worth exploring.  And since  I have  another mission  priority now,  why

don't I just hand command of  Twin Suns Squadron over to her?  With your

approval, Wedge."

Jaina's head turned as  though it had been  snapped around by a  Wookiee

wrestler. "You mean that?"

"I do. And I don't think the symbolism will be lost on die Yuuzhan Vong.

Luke Skywalker gives up his personal squadron - "

"A squadron with the word twin in the name," Jag said, his tone low.

"Good point," Luke said. "It  was actually named in memory  of Tatooine,

but they don't know that."

Wedge  nodded. "Jaina  could use  some command  experience, and  I  know

something she  doesn't -  which is  that Corran  Horn has rejoined Rogue

Squadron. Meaning that we'd have two starfighter squadrons with Jedi  in

them. That  might allow  us some  even more  extravagant experiments  in

tactics."

"I brought in a fighter squadron from Hapes," Jag said. "But the  notion

of learning tactics involving Force coordination - and playing with  the

minds of our enemies  - is an intriguing  one. I think I'd  like to join

your Twin Suns Squadron."

"I  would, too."  That was  Kyp Durron.  Han saw  a momentary  flash  of

surprise in Luke's eyes.

Wedge didn't  bother to  conceal his  own surprise.  "You're both  sure?

About  taking orders  from a  squadron leader  with a  lot less  command

experience than you have?"

"Yes," Jag said. "I know how to take orders as well as give them. And my

second-in-command, Shawnkyr Nu-ruodo, is certainly qualified to lead the

squadron I brought."

Kyp nodded.  "I suspect  I'd benefit  from analyzing  and advising for a

while instead of  leading. If I  start to chafe,  I can always  transfer

out."

Han felt Leia's  breath on his  ear, heard her  whisper, "It looks  like

Jaina's not the only one who went through changes."

"Obviously a fake Kyp," he whispered back. "You distract him. I'll shoot

him under the table."

Wedge turned a smile, tinged just slightly with amused malice, on Jaina.

"There you go. An instant squadron  for you to reconfigure as the  honor

guard of the  manifestation of a  Yuuzhan Vong goddess.  This means that

the very first thing you  get is bureaucratic personnel matters  to deal

with. I'll see if I can round  up an Ewok pilot candidate to throw  your

way just to make things more difficult. You'll be my age in no time."

Yuuzhan Vong Worldship, Coruscant Orbit

Nen Yim stood over the warmaster as he lay on the table. She was uneasy,

for her life hung in  the balance, and everything, including  the simple

fact that she stood while Tsavong Lah lay before her, was wrong.

She was a woman of the Yuuzhan  Vong. A member of the shaper caste,  she

wore  the  living  headdress  of  the  shapers,  and  among  her  living

decorations and mutilations was her right hand, not the one she was born

with. It was an eight-fingered shaper's hand, each of the digits  acting

as a tool useful to her profession. Her teacher, Mezhan Kwaad, had  been

a heretic, disobedient to the  rulers of the Yuuzhan Vong,  contemptuous

of the gods, but Nen Yim had learned many secrets of the shapers' craft.

She was soon called by Supreme Overlord Shimrra himself, as his personal

shaper, who had temporarily released her to the warlord.

Under a  curved lens  - a  living creature  that adjusted  its shape and

therefore magnification at its operator's touch - was Tsavong Lah's left

arm. Nen Yim carefully studied it, noting the appearance of the flesh at

the join of Yuuzhan Vong arm and radank claw, observing the behavior  of

the carrion-eaters upon it. They were  huge in this view, the size  of a

thumbnail, possessed  of spiky  hairs, sharp  angular legs,  and pincers

adept at digging through flesh.

"Well?" the warmaster said.

Nen Yim considered her reply, but  she had little to lose by  presenting

him with the naked truth, so her delay was not long. "There is little  I

can tell  you after  one brief  examination. But  I can  give you  these

facts.

"First, what is happening here is not like any implant rejection I  have

ever seen."

"Why?"

"These creatures  are bred  to consume  dead flesh.  They are useful for

cleansing wounds. They  are attacking the  necrotic flesh of  your join.

But there should be little or no necrotic flesh there, because both your

natural arm and the radank claw are regenerating. In a normal rejection,

such as we  see with the  Shamed Ones, one  part or the  other begins to

fail to regenerate,  and carrion-eaters spread  through that portion  of

the unfortunate's body until  the connection between original  flesh and

new flesh is gone."

The warmaster  did not  interrupt, so  Nen Yim  felt safe in continuing.

"Second, because  your Yuuzhan  Vong flesh  is regenerating  at a slower

rate than the radank flesh, and because only your Yuuzhan Vong flesh  is

becoming necrotic at  the join, the  effect is that  the radank claw  is

increasing in  size, occupying  a greater  portion of  your arm  as your

original flesh diminishes."

"I can see that."

"But it  is unnatural.  It is  especially unnatural  because, third, the

radank claw, as it grows, appears to be developing characteristics of  a

radank as it would appear farther up the leg, as if someone were  slowly

re-creating the entire creature through the absorption of your body.  It

is an odd pathology."

"If it were  deliberate on the  part of a  shaper, why would  it be done

this way?"

Nen Yim lifted the optical  device away from Tsavong Lah  and positioned

it over a surface littered with  tissue samples she had taken from  him.

"If I were to guess, I would say that the presence of the carrion-eaters

is required to convince casual onlookers and those who are not expert in

shaper  techniques  that  rejection  is  imminent;  this  requires   the

sacrifice of flesh to the parasites. But your arm is essentially  sound,

meaning that if the process can be stopped, it will be as functional  as

if it were transplanted without difficulty."

"In other words, it promises rejection without harming me extensively."

"That's correct, Warmaster."

"Could you do this? Could you cause an implant to act this way?"

"I believe so. I've  never turned my mind  to such a task...  but out of

different techniques,  techniques designed  to accomplish  other ends, I

believe I could find a way to do this."

"What would you have to do to your victim?" Tsavong Lah sat up, wrapping

his cloak about himself, and once again towered over the lowly shaper.

"I would have to engineer the  attachment point of the implant to  react

to  certain  substances.  Then,  after  the  implant  was   successfully

attached, I would have to maintain a supply of those substances into the

join."

Tsavong  Lah shook  his head.  "There is  no way  I could  be fed   such

poisons. The measures I take to keep my food pure are too extreme."

"Does he touch you?" The words  left her before she could contain  them,

before she could remind herself that one at her lowly level did not  put

a direct question  to the warmaster  without first performing  a complex

series  of ritual  statements. She  swallowed against  sudden fear,  but

persisted. "I apologize for my lack of manners. But it occurs to me that

if I were to examine such  an injury routinely, I could introduce  these

substances  through   direct  handling.   Or  perhaps   through  use  of

specialized creatures resembling the carrion-eaters, bred to carry these

substances and die rather than consume dead flesh."

The warmaster ignored  her breach of  protocol. "He does  touch my flesh

and that  of the  implant in  his examinations.  Can you  counteract his

efforts?"

"I do  not know.  I do  not even  know for  certain that  these are  the

actions of a shaper.  This could be the  signs of a god's  displeasure."

Nen Yim sensed the warmaster's  impatience with her answer, and  pressed

on. "But assuming that this is the work of a shaper, I would first  need

to examine your arm immediately after the shaper's next visit, so that I

might  detect  any  new  substances  or  parasites  that  he  might have

introduced."

"It will be done  as you say." Tsavong  Lah gestured for her  to take up

the  voluminous cloak  she had  hidden her  features within  when  being

brought to this chamber. "You will be taken to quarters. Assemble a list

of what you will need. If anyone  asks why you are here, tell them  that

you  will  be preparing  my  infidel servant,  Viqi  Shesh, for  certain

experiments." As if  divining Nen Yim's  thoughts, the warmaster  added,

"No, you will not be  experimenting with her. But this  deception should

placate the curious."

"As you wish it, Warmaster." She bowed and retrieved her cloak.

Borleias Occupation, Day 37

"What am  I supposed  to be  seeing?" Iella  asked. She  was in  Danni's

office, and a little annoyed because Danni was taking up time she needed

for Intelligence matters.

Danni tapped a key on Iella's datapad. The image began again - a view of

Yuuzhan  Vong warriors  in a  dimly lit  corridor. They  charged  toward

whoever  was carrying  the holocam,  their war  cries terrifying,  their

movements just slightly alien. "This  is Tam Elgrin's recording. He  was

with a  group of  people in  a Coruscant  building when  a Yuuzhan  Vong

patrol saw and  pursued them. He  was at the  rear of his  group when he

recorded this. Then he switched off the holocam so he could  concentrate

on running, and he got away. Most of the other people didn't."

"So?"

"There's something wrong with the  recording, and with Tam himself.  Tam

behaves kind  of oddly,  more than  is normal  for someone  who is  just

socially maladjusted, I  think, so I've  been trying to  figure him out.

I've played this recording over and over again, first looking for little

bits  of  information about  Yuuzhan  Vong hunting  tactics,  then about

Tam...  and I  finally realized  that this  feeling of  wrongness I  had

didn't have anything to do with the Yuuzhan Vong."

"You've lost me."

"I kind of went behind your back  and asked the Wraiths to look into  it

for me. To do analysis on the recording in their spare time."

"They have spare time? I don't remember issuing them any spare time.  So

what did they find out?"

"There are nine sets of footsteps echoing in that hallway. You can count

eight Yuuzhan Vong visible in the recording, so the other one has to  be

Tam."

"Eight Yuuzhan Vong and one human." Iella looked at the recording again.

It played on continuous loop. "Meaning that Tam wasn't with a group."

"Right."

"Why would he lie?"  The answer was in  place before Iella finished  the

question. "Because  if he  admitted he  was alone,  he'd have  to have a

really good explanation of how he got away from those warriors."

"Right again."

"Meaning he didn't get away."

Danni shrugged. "That's my guess. But I'm not in Intelligence."

"You want to transfer?"

Danni smiled. "I don't think they'd let me."

Iella extracted the data card from her datapad. "Mind if I take this?"

"Go  ahead. I've  copied the  recording. Multiply."  "That's good  work,

Danni." Iella rose and moved to the  door. "You let me know if you  ever

want to get into the Intelligence analysis business."

"Twin Suns Leader ready," Jaina said.  "Four lit and in the green."  The

vibration from her X-wing's engines, the whine of engines from all  over

the special operations docking bay, cut into her, a familiar and welcome

sensation.

"Twins Two, ready." That was Kyp. "Going to shield me a goddess."

"Twins Three, ready." That was Jag, and, as Jaina predicted, he  omitted

any quip or irrelevant remark.

"Record Time, ready to lift."

Moments  later,  they  lifted  off,  two  X-wings  and  Jag's  clawcraft

comprising a  shield trio,  with the  Record Time,  the troop  transport

damaged during  the taking  of Bor-leias  and subsequently  patched back

together, lumbering after them. They moved easily out of the docking bay

and lifted toward the starry sky, just starting to blur with dawn, above

them.

Jaina  spared  a look  out  the starboard  side  other canopy  at  Jag's

clawcraft. This variant  form of TIE  starfighter had the  basic cockpit

sphere  and  twin   ion  engine  pods   of  classic  TIE   fighters  and

interceptors, but  from the  point the  engines met  the cockpit emerged

four forward-sweeping, talon-shaped solar array wings. Jaina didn't know

whether to be pleased or  irritated at the artistic incongruity  of that

style of vehicle being included in her mostly X-wing squadron, and tried

to think as a Yuuzhan Vong goddess would.

After a few  minutes, long after  they'd cleared Bor-leias's  atmosphere

and were  headed to  a patch  of Pyrian  space well  away from any naval

activities, she  keyed her  comlink. "Kyp,  remind me  to issue an order

that all starfighters in this squadron are to be individually  decorated

by their pilots. No uniformity. Their astromechs, too."

"Will do. Goddess."

Jag said, "Coming up on practice zone in ten, nine, eight..."

Moments later  the starfighters  slowed to  a stop,  relative to distant

Borleias, and hung drifting in space as Record Time caught up to them.

Jaina asked, "How are you going to decorate your fighter. Jag?"

"Black ball," he  answered immediately. "The  claws the color  of silver

metal, with bloodred  splashes on them.  As though the  whole thing were

some sort of claw  weapon. The metal, of  course, is to annoy  the Vong;

otherwise I might use a more naturalistic claw color."

"You came up with that just in the time since I decided everyone  should

decorate their starfighter?"

"No. I decided on this design days ago, when I calculated that you'd  be

issuing that directive."

Days ago? Jaina  felt a flash  of surprise and  irritation. How dare  he

attempt to predict her this way?

How dare he do it successfully?

But she tamped down  on the feeling. Jedi  Knights needed to be  serene.

Squadron leaders shouldn't let their pilots get to them. She needed  not

to be caught  off guard, even  when caught off  guard. She just  smiled.

"Well, it's a good design. I approve."

"Thank you." There was the slightest touch of mockery to his reply,  and

Jaina felt her mood  sour slightly. It wasn't  true, as some of  the New

Republic pilots  thought, that  Jag Eel  always acted  as though he were

superior.  What  was true  was  that he  always  seemed to  see  through

deceptions, always seemed to know  the truth behind what was  being said

to him.  No one  liked to  have their  falsehoods ignored,  their images

pierced.

On the other hand, this meant  Jag would have a harder time  behaving as

though he were  serving a goddess  made flesh. Jaina  smiled to herself.

She'd be able to find some  way to make him uncomfortable, to  penetrate

his unflappable manner.

"Record Time  coming on-station."  The announcement  blaring through her

comlink jolted Jaina out of her reverie.

"Deploy targets," Jaina said. "All right, Kyp, let's show Jag how  Force

users do it."

From one of  Record Time's bays  streamed a series  of cargo containers.

They were the most-damaged of the containers that had been used to bring

garrison supplies into the Pyria  system, too badly crushed or  corroded

to stand up to further use. Now each had two red target zones painted on

each  long side;  sensors were  attached to  the targets.  They  tumbled

through space at Record Time's arrival velocity.

Jaina led her  flight in  a loop  that would  bring them  up at a ninety

degree course to the containers' path.

"I'm open, Goddess."

Jaina suppressed  a grimace.  She should  have known  that Kyp  would be

ready for the Force link they were trying. She should have felt it.

But she had been keeping herself a little closed off. It was better that

way. She didn't want to be so closely tied to Kyp that he would feel  it

through the  Force, be  tortured by  it, when  and if  she followed  her

brothers into death.

When, not if.

So, though she  let him help  her back from  the dark side  path she had

recently followed,  though she  even acknowledged  him as  a second Jedi

Master - though no one would ever  replace Mara as her true Master -  it

was best to keep him at a certain distance.

But she couldn't do so all the time, so, feeling a touch of unease,  she

extended her Force perceptions toward Kyp, found him, merged with him in

a sense.

It was neither as close nor as effective a bond as the one between  Luke

and Mara. But then, she didn't want it to be. That sort of closeness led

to no good.

She frowned at that thought, wondering where it had come from, wondering

if Kyp had picked it up. But  there had been no flicker of emotion  from

him. Doubtless he hadn't. "All right,  Jag. Kyp and I are going  to pick

and  hit a  target. The  sensors will  tell us  how close  together  our

strikes are, how well we're  coordinating through the Force. For  fun, I

want you to  see how long  it takes you  to punch a  hole in the  target

directly between our two strikes."

"Consider it done."

They angled in toward one target,  Jaina and Kyp moving together with  a

precision possible only through the Force. Jag stayed with them,  tucked

between and slightly behind them,  his maneuvers as fast and  precise as

it was possible for them to be without Force coordination.

Jaina picked her target - a container both tumbling and spinning on  its

long axis, two containers starboard of the one they were heading  toward

- and fired. Her quad-linked lasers and Kyp's burned off at what  looked

like  exactly the  same instant,  hitting the  red target  zones of  the

container simultaneously,  reducing the  container's two  ends to molten

slag. A fraction of  a second later, Jag's  blast hit the center  of the

spinning mess, cleaving it in two.

"Not bad."  Jaina consulted  her comm  board. "Four  one-hundredths of a

second between our shots,  Kyp; yours hit second.  We need to get  those

numbers down. Jag, you were twenty-six one-hundredths of a second behind

Kyp. Pretty good, considering you didn't know which container was  going

to be our target."

"Actually, I did. I  knew it wasn't going  to be the one  our course was

aimed at. Given a fifty-fifty directional choice, you go starboard  more

than half the time.  I figured you wouldn't  choose the first target  of

opportunity in that direction, so  I centered on the second.  Of course,

if I'd been wrong,  it would have taken  me a much bigger  fraction of a

second to hit the target you'd chosen."

Jaina heaved a sigh. Jag was determined to annoy her with his efforts to

predict her. But she schooled her emotions once more into something like

serenity and  merely clicked  her comlink  in acknowledgment.  "Let's go

around again," she said.

The second run was much like the first. Jaina's and Kyp's shots remained

separated by a few hundredths of a second. Jag's follow-up shot was,  if

anything, faster than it had been on the first target.

"You guessed I'd go left of our course, one target out," Jaina said.

"Yes."

"Let's do it again."

As Luke finished packing his bag for the day's activities, Mara  entered

their quarters. Ben was awake in her arms, grasping at her hair, pulling

it into his mouth, but all  of Mara's attention was on Luke.  "I'm going

to Cor-uscant with you."

That stopped Luke  cold. "What changed  your mind?" "Time.  Time to calm

down, time to figure things out. Understanding that there's nobody  more

suited than you are to stopping the enemy that menaces Ben, and  there's

nobody better than me at watching your back." She shrugged, then  looked

down into the face of their son.

"Ultimately, it was figuring out that if I wait until Ben's enemies  are

right in front of me before I kill them, I've already failed him."

Mara's expression was so melancholy that Luke felt his throat constrict.

"Listen, I'm about to go out into the jungle with Tahiri to plant a  few

gravitic sensors. Care to come along?"

Mara nodded. "Do you think Leia would baby-sit for us?"

"I suspect she'd be very happy to."

Luke, Mara,  and Tahiri  moved through  the jungle  a few hundred meters

from the start  of the kill  zone. They'd entered  the jungle, had  gone

through  a  series  of  steps  to  shake  off  any  likely  Yuuzhan Vong

observers, and now reached the first of their target zones.

Luke set down his backpack. From within it he drew a short-hafted  heavy

hammer. "Behold," he  told Tahiri, "the  favorite weapon of  Jedi before

the invention of the lightsaber."

She  frowned at  him, green  eyes confused  beneath her  bangs.  "You're

kidding."

"Of course I'm  kidding. C'mon. The  Jedi sledge-hammer? "  Grinning, he

turned to his wife. "Mara?"

From her own backpack she drew a stake, two-thirds of a meter long, made

of metal, very broad at the top. She obligingly set it point-first  into

the ground. "Go ahead. I've  always thought that menial labor  involving

hitting  heavy metal  things with  other heavy  metal things  was  man's

work."

With quick, hard blows, Luke pounded the thing until its head was  flush

with the ground. Then he spread dirt and leaves over it.

"And that's  going to  transmit gravitic  fluctuations?" Tahiri  sounded

dubious.

"Uh-huh." Luke  replaced the  hammer in  his backpack,  then picked  the

backpack up. It weighed less,  several kilograms less, than it  had when

he set it  down. He pretended  not to notice,  or to recognize  that the

ground beneath the  pack was stirred  up, when it  had been smooth  when

he'd set the pack down. "Ready?"

"Ready," Tahiri announced. Mara just nodded.

As they moved from the site, Luke whispered, "Well?"

"I think we  were being watched,"  Tahiri whispered back.  " I mean,  it

felt right. From the Yuuzhan Vong perspective. But I'm not sure."

"I'm sure," Luke said. "Couldn't you feel the insect life go quiet  just

east, ahead of us?"

"I..." Tahiri  looked embarrassed.  "I could  have been  able to  if I'd

thought about it. But I didn't."

"Don't feel bad. You were thinking Vong - "

"Yuuzhan Vong."

"- Yuuzhan Vong instead of Jedi.  I suspect it's not easy to  think both

ways at once. Is it?"

Tahiri shook her  head. "They're ahead  of us, then.  That won't be  the

same group that was watching us, I expect. That group hasn't had time to

get into position ahead of us."

"Good work," Mara said. "When do we expect it?"

"They'll wait until we can't hear what the first group is doing back  at

the site we just left," Tahiri said. "But they'll be impatient. It'll be

pretty soon after that. Such  as... now." Tahiri thumbed her  lightsaber

on; its snap-hiss heralded the lengthening of its glowing blade just  in

time for that blade  to intercept a thud  bug. The thud bug  flared into

incandescence and disappeared with a crackling sound.

Luke brought his lightsaber up but turned away from Tahiri. He saw,  out

of the corner of  his eye, Mara doing  the same, turning the  other way.

The three of them stood back  to back as the Yuuzhan Vong  warriors came

spilling out of the jungle.

There were five of  them, and the first,  coming in at Luke,  was moving

too fast, committed to  the charge, depending on  the first thud bug  to

distract the Jedi.  Luke spun his  lightsaber to intercept  his cracking

amphistaff,  then  rolled  over backward,  propelling  the  Yuuzhan Vong

warrior past him in an uncontrolled tumble. Yours, he thought.

Barely looking, Mara brought  her own lightsaber blade  around, plunging

it into the hurtling warrior's face as he tumbled past.

The next one in came at  Tahiri, amphistaff rigid in a two-handed  grip.

She parried his first  strike, his second, and  kicked him in the  knee,

but the impact of her bare foot on his vonduun crab armor slowed him not

at all.

Two, timing it as a single  attack, leapt out from a screen  of dangling

fronds at Mara. She reversed her lightsaber so that the butt of the hilt

was next to her thumb, the blade oriented down, and directed it back and

forth against their  low amphistaff attacks,  using the lightsaber  as a

defensive umbrella. As one went high to bring his weapon up and over her

defense, she kicked out, a  beauty of a full-extension kick  that caught

him under the jaw and tumbled him backward into the fronds.

The last  one came  in at  Luke. He  was slower,  more patient  than his

comrades. Luke struck, a  feint, then began a  reverse strike as he  saw

his opponent raise the amphistaff  to parry... then something about  the

warrior's pose and motion set off an alarm in Luke's mind. Luke  dropped

to one knee and the poison spat by his foe's amphistaff went  harmlessly

over his head.

It wasn't entirely harmless. Luke  saw it arc toward Tahiri's  side. She

withdrew a step,  drawing her enemy  forward, and the  poison splattered

against that warrior's mask, dribbling through the eyehole. The  warrior

gurgled, clamping down on a shout of pain or dread.

Luke rose to a crouching position and then continued the motion, leaping

up and over his opponent, inverting as he went, swinging his  lightsaber

with blurring speed at his foe's head. His enemy caught the blow on  his

amphistaff and was shoving the staff's pointed tail at Luke even as  the

Jedi Master  landed. Luke  caught the  thrust on  his lightsaber  blade,

deflected it mere centimeters, and kept the energy blade scraping up the

amphistaff's  length. His  opponent jumped  away before  the  lightsaber

could sever his fingers.

Tahiri's enemy  was down  now, poison  flowing from  one eye  socket and

smoke rising from the other, and she moved into position just in time to

intercept Mara's  second foe  as he  returned from  the verge of fronds.

Caught off  guard by  her flurry  of attacks,  the Yuuzhan  Vong warrior

allowed himself to be forced into retreat; both of them disappeared into

the fronds.

Luke's foe  flicked the  serpent head  of his  amphistaff forward.  Luke

sidestepped  and  the  poisoned  thing  snapped  to  full  extension   a

hairsbreadth from his side. Then Mara's hand closed around it, over  the

head,  and yanked.  Luke's foe  stumbled forward,  off balance  for  one

deadly moment,  and Luke  swung his  lightsaber into  the vulnerable gap

beneath  the warrior's  helmet. Flesh  boiled and  severed. The  warrior

fell.

Luke spun. Mara  was flinging the  captured amphistaff into  the face of

her foe;  the warrior  contemptuously brushed  it as'de  and raised  his

weapon.

Luke flung his own lightsaber spinning toward the warrior, then added  a

deft touch with the Force  to make its flight eccentric,  unpredictable.

The warrior batted it aside as  well, but the distraction was too  long;

Mara drove in with her lightsaber, punching through the warrior's  right

arm socket, shearing  his arm completely  off. As he  fell, she followed

through with a thrust to the face.

Luke beckoned and his lightsaber, depowered, flew back into his hand. He

snapped it on again. "Tahiri?"

"Here." She emerged from the screen of fronds, unhurt. " Look what  mine

was carrying." In her hand was a metal stake.

Luke frowned. "Is that the one we just planted?"

"No, a different one."

Mara smiled. "Success."

"Let's go," Luke said. "Before any more decide to visit."

They headed on to their next planting spot. There, they'd hammer another

stake in  - a  stake that  did contain  sensor equipment,  but which was

designed to be found and removed by the Yuuzhan Vong.

For the real sensors  were in Luke's bag.  Each was a little  droid, the

size of  the ubiquitous  little utility  droids found  all over  capital

ships. These contained the same gravitic sensors as the spikes, but also

burrowing motivators that allowed them to exit the slit at the bottom of

Luke's backpack and dig their way into soft soil. The Yuuzhan Vong might

see every spike  planted, might remove  every one... but  odds were good

they wouldn't detect a single burrowing droid.

Luke had  fought against  many sneaky  people, but  was usually happy to

have sneaky people on his side.

As  they  executed  kills  on target  after  target,  Jaina  became more

proficient at choosing targets Jag couldn't anticipate; the time between

Kyp's  shot and  Jag's grew  until it  averaged nearly  half a  standard

second. Jaina felt she'd achieved a slight measure of victory. At  least

Jag couldn't remain confident in his ability to anticipate her thinking.

But the  gap between  Jaina's firing  time and  Kyp's remained about the

same.

"I have an idea on that," Jag said. "About your Force coordination."

Jaina almost  laughed. "Jag,  you don't  know anything  about the Force.

You're as Force-blind as your uncle."

"Yes, and my uncle would figure this out, too. I'm looking at your Force

link as though  it were some  sort of neural  interface between you  and

Kyp. Assuming  it allows  speed-of-light communication  of impulses,  we

have your impulse to fire essentially triggering both your firing reflex

and Kyp's. Correct?"

"Maybe."

"So perhaps the  difference in your  times is roughly  the difference in

your physical reaction times. You're years younger than Kyp. Perhaps you

should either hesitate -  for as short  a time as you can manage -  once

you've made  the decision  to fire,  or you  should let  Kyp choose  the

targets and follow his lead."

Jaina  looked over  her shoulder,  through the  canopy, to  where  Jag's

clawcraft floated beside and behind  hers, and gave Jag a  dubious look.

"All right, sure. Let's give it a try."

On their next  run, the difference  between Jaina's and  Kyp's shots was

one one-hundredth of a second, still in Jaina's favor.

Kyp whistled. "Good  thinking, Fel. Let's  do this a  few more times..."

His voice trailed off.

Jaina felt it, too. She stared  off into space, in the direction  of the

star Pyria.

"What is it? "Jag said.

"Something..." Jaina switched her comlink to fleet frequency and brought

up her navigation program. She oriented her X-wing toward the source  of

her disquiet  to give  her a  close reading  on the  course toward  that

distant point. "Twin Suns Leader to Control."

"Control here."  It was  a man's  voice, decorated  with a disinterested

drawl.

"Do you have anything going on  in the spinward side of the  system, say

on an approximate course toward Arkania?"

There was a delay of a few seconds. "Negative on that."

"Something's up... my flight is going  to head that way. Keep your  ears

open for  us." She  switched back  to her  squadron frequency. "Come on,

mortals."

"As you wish. Goddess."

Jag responded with a comlink click.

TEN

Borleias Occupation, Day 37

Jaina  and her  pilots flashed  across Pyrian  space as  fast as   their

thrusters  would take  them; they  angled in  close to  the star  Pyria,

picked up a little gravitational  momentum from that close passage,  and

flung themselves toward  the source of  disturbance Jaina and  Kyp could

both sense.  That disturbance  didn't abate.  If anything,  it grew more

clear, more strong.

Within minutes, Iella  Wessiri took over  the comlink at  Control. "What

have you got?"

"Not sure. Just a sensation in the Force."

"It can't be Yuuzhan Vong, then."

Jag said, "It can be Vong-related."

"True."

Jaina said, "Can you direct your sensors along our course to see  what's

out there ahead of us?"

"Negative on that. There's a little matter of a sun between us and  your

course. However, we're  maneuvering Rebel Dream  into position to  track

you and anticipate  your course.   She should  be coming  on-station  in

she's on-station  now." Iella  grew silent  for a  moment. "Rebel  Dream

reports one  large signal,  multiple smaller  signals incoming. Gravitic

anomalies suggest it's Yuuzhan Vong. General Antilles requests that  you

take a look, but be careful."

"We're on it."  General Antilles requests.  Jaina shook her  head. Wedge

had  been right.  All this  goddess deception  was going  to take   some

getting used to.

Soon enough, the  distant anomalies showed  up as blips  on her sensors,

and then she began to pick them up on her visual sensors.

Nearest was a Yuuzhan Vong frigate analog with a screen of  coralskipper

escorts.  Behind  it, some  distance  away, surrounded  by  a screen  of

Yuuzhan Vong capital ships...

Jaina keyed her comlink. "Control, it's  a worldship, a big one even  by

Vong standards." She  felt her mouth  go dry. This  wasn't the worldship

that was in orbit around Myrkr, the worldship where Anakin and Jacen had

died, but just seeing another of the vast living craft so soon made  her

feel sick.

"Understood, Twin Suns Leader. Suggest you return."

"Negative." Jaina made a slight  course correction to put her  flight on

an  intercept course  with the  oncoming frigate.  "We need  to see  why

they're starting out with such a small probe."

Jag's voice came over the squadron frequency. "That small probe includes

a frigate. It's big enough to cause us some trouble."

"Yes, but that's  where I'm feeling  the disturbance in  the Force." The

disturbance,  she  decided,  didn't  have  the  feral  hunger  that  was

characteristic of a voxyn. No, it felt like pain.

Then they could see the  frigate and its escort. Three  coralskippers, a

quarter of the screen, peeled off from the formation to head their way.

"Three?" Kyp sounded  insulted. "They expect  three coralskippers to  be

enough for us?"

"No." That  was Jag.  "They're just  supposed to  slow us  down. We  can

either  ignore them  and take  some plasma  cannon fire  up the  exhaust

ports, or deal with them and let the frigate past."

"We deal with them," Jaina said. "Then catch up."

The coralskippers came on, firing.

"Let's play with the new tactics." Jaina extended her Force perceptions,

found Kyp's waiting for her like an outstretched hand. The three of them

settled  into  their  earlier  formation,  the  two  X-wings  ahead, the

clawcraft behind and between. Almost  as one, they twisted, rolled,  and

sideslipped,  always  eluding  the  oncoming  plasma  cannon  fire,  the

oncoming grutchins.

Jaina chose their target, the coralskipper at starboard rear. Kyp  chose

the moment  to fire.  The skip's  dovin basal  created its void directly

before  Jaina's shot,  but Kyp's  smashed into  the coralskipper's  bow,

annihilating the dovin basal. Then Jag's lasers stitched their way along

from the bow to the cockpit canopy, punching burning holes all the  way.

That coralskipper  continued on  a dead  ballistic course  as the others

flashed past the Twin Suns pilots and looped around for another attack.

Jaina looked at her sensor board, at Jag's attack delay. "Three-quarters

of a second! Jag, you guessed wrong."

"Rather, I've taught you to be a little more unpredictable."

She managed an amused smile. Trust Jag's personal shields to deflect her

criticism. "Let's  do it  again. Maybe  with fifty-fifty  odds. Jag  can

guess right this time."

The Yuuzhan Vong frigate's course took  it close to the star Pyria,  the

reverse of Jaina's outbound course,  as it headed toward Borleias.  Once

Jaina, Kyp, and Jag  finished with the three  skips sent to delay  them,

they blasted along in the frigate's wake, catching up rapidly.

The frigate cleared the star's orbit and began a straight-line  approach

to Borleias. Jaina's sensor board showed Rebel Dream vectoring in on  an

intercept  course;   comm  transmissions   indicated  that   starfighter

squadrons were launching both  from planetside and from  Lusankya. There

was no  way the  frigate would  get close  enough to  Borleias to do any

harm.

"Frigate's slowing," Kyp reported. "Vectoring. It's changing course.  It

knows it's a futile attempt."

"Wait, wait," Jag said. "Put your visuals on its underbelly."

Jaina did,  and saw  a long  slit appearing  in the  frigate's underside

hull. It was a moist-looking opening, as unlovely as a Butt's mouth that

had been pressed shut and was slowly beginning to gape.

As she watched, the gap began issuing shapes, tiny irregular things that

spilled forth, streaming along the frigate's original course.

Jaina grimaced. The shapes were wiggling. More organic weapons. Probably

worldshapers of some sort, if they were being released at this  distance

toward Borleias in general instead of at a military target in specific.

Then  she realized  that the  disturbance she'd  felt in  the Force  was

traveling with  those shapes.  She felt  her stomach  sink. She put more

power into acceleration,  roaring toward the  cloud of wiggling  shapes,

ignoring the frigate and coralskipper escort as they vectored away.

In moments, she could see what the Yuuzhan Vong had discharged.

People. Mostly humans, the occasional Sullustan or Rodian or Devaronian.

They were male and female, of all ages, naked -

No, not quite naked. As she got closer, Jaina could see the  transparent

covering on their bodies, a  transparent sac inflated over their  heads.

They were  wearing some  variation of  the ooglith  cloaker, the Yuuzhan

Vong environment suit; doubtless it  would give them a few  more minutes

of life as they soared through  space. They might freeze to death,  they

might run out of air, they might reach Borleias's atmosphere and burn up

in reentry. But  they were all  minutes from death,  a score of  them or

more.

A Sullustan female saw Jaina's X-wing approaching. The Sullustan twisted

her  head around  and looked  at Jaina,  her eyes  wide with  fear,  her

expression imploring. Jaina could only stare back, helpless.

She became aware that Jag was talking.

"... ejected hostages. They appear to be in some sort of ooglith cloaker

suits. They're on ballistic approach toward Borleias. I don't think  the

planet's  microgravity is  perceptibly accelerating  them yet.  I  can't

estimate the  survival time  their suits  give them.  I read twenty-two,

repeat two-two of them. Standing by."

The words, so calm, so clinical,  snapped Jaina out of her reverie.  She

looked after the departing coralskippers and frigate.

"Don't do it." That was Kyp's  voice, and she felt it through  the Force

as much as she heard it  over the corn-link. "They're trying to  dictate

your responses."

"Serenity," she whispered. She felt as though if she spoke more  loudly,

the volume would tear open a hole  in her and let out the anger  growing

within her. "The way of the  Jedi is serenity." She reached out  through

the Force, found the Sullustan female, and tugged at her.

She  could detect  no change  in the  Sullustan's velocity.  She  tugged

harder. "Kyp, can you save any of them?"

"Maybe. That's a tremendous amount  of kinetic energy to absorb."  Kyp's

presence in  the Force  diminished as  he turned  away from  her to  the

problem at  hand. On  her sensors,  she saw  one of  the hurtling shapes

begin to slow down.

She pulled  harder at  the Sullustan  and was  finally certain  that the

female  was slowing.  "Jag, you  can't do  anything here.  Get back   to

Borleias, escort some shuttles up - "

"I've called for  shuttles. And I'll  let you know  when I'm useless.  I

recommend you follow my  lead and discontinue trying  to slow them to  a

stop."  Jag's clawcraft  darted ahead  of the  X-wings, maneuvered  with

delicacy  into  the  cloud  of  victims,  matching  and  then   slightly

surpassing their speed.

Then, with skill that was on  the wrong side of impossible, Jag  rotated

his clawcraft and sideslipped it until it was mere meters to the side of

a dark-skinned human male. Jag  flicked his thrusters and the  clawcraft

slowed. The clawcraft slammed into the human at somewhere between twenty

and thirty  kilometers per  hour; the  man, stunned  but not  completely

incapacitated, flailed around frantically  as he was vectored  away from

Borleias.

The clawcraft rotated; as soon as that victim was clear of any  possible

ion wash. Jag touched his  thrusters again, and maneuvered until  he was

alongside a second  victim. That one,  too, he rammed,  as delicately as

possible, an impact that appeared  to hurt the Twi'lek woman's  arm, but

sent her  off at  an angle  that would  not propel  her into  Borleias's

atmosphere.

Jaina's flight was  able to vector  every one of  the twenty-two ejected

victims away from entering Borleias's atmosphere. They couldn't save all

twenty-two;  four died  from exposure  before the  shuttles could  reach

them,  and the  remainder were  all removed  to the  biotics  facility's

medical ward, in varying stages of  cold exposure. But none ended up  as

gruesome meteors flaming into incandescence in the planet's atmosphere.

The flying it took to save  the survivors was remarkable enough to  draw

applause from  the ground  crews when  Jaina's flight  and the  shuttles

landed just after midday, but the pilots waved off the appreciation  and

did not lose their grim demeanor.

Word came that  the Yuuzhan Vong  worldship had taken  up distant orbit,

beyond  the orbit  of Pyria's  farthest planet.  It remained  on-station

there, its capital ships and coralskippers clustered near it.

Through the special ops docking bay's holocam feed, Wedge watched  Jaina

and her pilots arrive; then he switched off the view. "I was right,"  he

said. His voice was  pitched low enough that  it would not carry  far in

the perpetual babble of sound that was the operations center.

"You were right," Tycho  said. "The Vong have  brought out big guns  and

someone with a certain amount of personal style to fire them."

"Have the recovered victims, including the ones who didn't make it,  and

anyone who  has been  in direct  physical contact  with them  go through

decontamination. Have Danni  or Cilghal supervise  the decontam. I  want

the  surface  of  Pel's  clawcraft  to  be  checked  out  and  similarly

decontaminated. They might have anticipated Jag's tactics, so they might

have booby-trapped all of the victims."

Tycho nodded. "I'm on it."

One  more  thing." Wedge  caught  Tycho's eye.  "You  were listening  to

Jaina's comm traffic. Her desperation to save those people."

"Yes."

"That's not dark-side behavior, at  least as I understand it.  I queried

Kyp privately, and  he's pretty sure  that she's bouncing  back from her

brush with the dark side."

"Meaning," Tycho said, "is she trustworthy? Maybe even enough to be  one

of the Insiders?".

"Right."

Tycho's face revealed no emotion other than careful consideration of the

question. Finally he nodded. "The brain and the gut are in agreement.  I

think she's worth our trust. She's a Solo."

"I think so, too. She goes on the list."

Yuuzhan Vong Worldship, Pyria Orbit

The  Yuuzhan  Vong  pilot  with  the  absurdly  human  forehead  and its

concealing tattoos remained bowed with  his arms crossed over his  chest

in salute until  Czulkang Lah gestured  for him to  straighten. Czulkang

Lah said, "Your name?"

"Charat Kraal."

"And you are  a pilot of  Domain Kraal and  its colony on  this system's

most habitable world?"

"Iam,Warmaster."

"Do not call  me warmaster. My  son is warmaster.  And answer this:  Why

have  you  seized  elements  of  Wyrpuuk  Cha's  fleet,  suborning those

elements to mutiny against his designated successor?"

Charat Kraal  stared back  unblinking. "My  goals and  his diverged. His

goal was to save the remnants of his crippled fleet. Mine was to improve

the Yuuzhan Vong situation within  this system. I believe that  mine had

precedence."

"You had best  establish that you  have done considerable  damage to the

infidels' warriors  and machinery  with the  resources you commandeered,

then."

"I would say that I have  done negligible damage to them. My  intent was

to do negligible damage to them."

Czulkang Lah suppressed  a smile. Charat  Kraal was marching  toward his

execution with  the plain  speech and  courage appropriate  to a Yuuzhan

Vong pilot. "Explain."

"Both before and  after the arrival  of Wyrpuuk Cha's  fleet, I used  my

forces to harass the  infidels - not because  I imagined I could  defeat

them with  the resources  I had,  but because  this harassment  revealed

information about them, about  their intentions." Charat Kraal  gestured

toward the pilot who had accompanied him, the blameless pilot who would,

if things went badly, conduct word of his death back to the Kraal.  That

pilot brought  him the  recording villip,  a spongy  creature nearly the

size of a Yuuzhan Vong torso. " If I may."

Czulkang Lah gave him a curt nod.

Charat  Kraal lay  the recording  villip on  the floor  of the   command

chamber and gave it a stroke to awaken it. It flattened into a disk  and

then began to glow with a  harsh yellow light. The light flowed  up from

it until  it illuminated  the air  above it,  then began coalescing into

three-dimensional pictures.

Charat  Kraal  continued stroking  and  prodding the  creature,  and the

pictures changed  above it.  First was  an image  of a  grashal habitat,

doubtless the primary home of Kraal on Borleias, then images of  infidel

spacecraft performing planetside attacks, images ofnighttime  spacecraft

launches, images of infidel capital ships in orbit.

Finally  the  image  settled  on   an  aerial  view  of  the   infidels'

headquarters, a tall curved building with many outlying buildings and  a

burn zone that, close to  the constructions, was thick with  spacecraft.

"This is their habitat," Charat Kraal said. "Their general and his staff

live here.  He conducts  all operations  from here  instead of  from the

comparative  strength and  safety of  one of  his triangle  ships.  Many

Jeedai live here, and constantly patrol the jungles around the site."

"How many Jeedai?"

"Unknown... perhaps a  dozen. The numbers  slowly increase. Two  of them

are Luke Skywalker and his mate

Mara."

"What of Jaina Solo?"

"She is  here. I  think perhaps  there is  some change  in her  stature.

Before,  Luke  Skywalker seemed  to  be the  preeminent  Jeedai. Now  it

appears to be her."

"Continue."

"The infidels'  interest in  this site  initially puzzled  me, but now I

think  I  understand.  When   the  Kraal  first  occupied   this  world,

interrogation of prisoners who once  defended it revealed that it  was a

site where secret medical  projects were conducted. New  life-forms were

created.  It  was,  in  short, the  infidels'  equivalent  of  a shaping

facility, and they defend it so  fiercely that I suspect they are  doing

some shaping now."

"Of what?"

"I do not  know. It seems  to me that  whatever they are  doing would be

safer on one of their triangle  ships, so the project obviously must  be

done here. This suggests that either the equipment they are working with

is too  delicate to  move, or  the creature  they are  designing must be

created upon a living world. And since they are masters at creating  and

operating equipment, the latter possibility seems more likely."

Charat  Kraal  advanced  the images  above  the  villip through  several

sequences of  spacecraft takeoffs,  then slowed  to show  an odd-looking

craft leaving the biotics facility. It did not have the smooth lines  of

most infidel machinery. It looked like a segment of metal pipe, tall  as

a human and  twenty meters long,  bent at the  middle in a  right angle,

with another  pipe, a  meter in  diameter and  five long,  bisecting the

angle. A twin-seat cockpit that  appeared to have been liberated  from a

starfighter was attached to the point of the bend, facing away from  the

smaller pipe, and  thruster engines had  been mounted on  the two larger

portions of pipe,  oriented in the  same direction as  the smaller pipe.

The pipe ends were capped with  a device that looked as though  it would

iris open.

"There are three of these," Charat Kraal said. "And a fourth with  three

protrusions  that  extend  at  even,  identical  angles  and  a   fourth

protrusion that extends at a right  angle from all of them; I  have seen

it but  not been  able to  record it.  My scouts,  who eavesdrop  on the

infidels  whenever  they  can  get close  enough  to  do  so, call  them

'pipefighters'  and   say  they   are  part   of  an   operation  called

'Starlancer.'  All three  fly very  badly. They  go up  into space   and

situate themselves at  very precise points  in relation to  one another,

far apart from one another, so that the three craft like this are points

of a triangle and the fourth craft is at the center of their array. Then

they communicate for several minutes. I do not know why."

"Speculate."

Charat Kraal hesitated. "I am only a pilot, not a shaper, and not one of

their infidel scientists. But I had one of my advisers, who  understands

their mathematics better than I,  analyze what they are doing.  She says

that if the center craft's  right-angle protrusion is precisely a  right

angle  from  the  triangle  represented  by  the  other  three   craft's

positions, then it traces a course back to the Coruscant system. Perhaps

it is a spy device, a communications device, or a weapon aimed at  their

old capital."

"Interesting." Czulkang Lah evaluated the pilot for a moment.

"Great One, if I may... if it  is your intent now to order my  death for

my presumption,  I ask  that you  order me  to kill  myself, rather than

having me executed. That way I  will have achieved a great ambition:  to

serve, even for a moment, Czulkang Lah."

The old Yuuzhan Vong allowed  impatience to show in his  expression. "Be

quiet. Charat Kraal, I am advancing  you to the rank of wing  commander.

Your forces will be replenished  to full fighting-wing status. You  will

perform special  missions for  me, often  in association  with the other

fighting wings. One of your tasks  will be the capture of Jaina  Solo; I

will issue  you other  orders, as  well. You  will report  to me. Do you

understand?"

"I  do. Great  One." Charat  Kraal's face  twitched as  he struggled  to

retain an impassive expression.

"Go."

Borleias Occupation, Day 39

The pilots of  Twin Suns Squadron  piled out of  their X-wings, E-wings,

and one clawcraft. They drifted off through the special ops docking bay,

toward the main  building, joking and  recounting, pleased to  have gone

through a  mission  with  no casualties.  They'd  escorted  the  cobbled

together Operation Starlancer pipefighters  up into space, had  escorted

them to their precisely plotted  positions while their pilots ran  a few

tests, and had come home without loss. Coralskippers had maneuvered  out

to  take  a  look at  what  they  were doing,  but  had  not attacked...

suggesting  that they  were studying  the activities  of the  Starlancer

ships but were not yet ready to move against them. The betting was that,

no matter how  slow moving and  cautious the new  Yuuzhan Vong commander

was, he'd take action against the Starlancer ships soon.

Jaina lingered behind in the docking bay, putting some distance  between

herself and her pilots. A supposed goddess can't be too chummy with  her

servants, she told herself. And a  voice from deep in her thoughts,  one

she listened to when no other  Jedi was around to detect it,  whispered.

And a doomed woman shouldn't get too close to people who might miss  her

when she's gone.

She leaned  against her  X-wing, ignoring  the sounds  of the  mechanics

around her.

There was something within her, an alien thing she Couldn't seem to  rid

herself of. It was a cold hatred of the enemy. Perhaps it had been  with

her since the  start of the  Yuuzhan Vong invasion,  since the death  of

Chew-bacca and its  effects on her  father and her  family, but she  had

only truly become aware  of it when Anakin  died. Then the arrival,  two

days ago, of  the worldship, and  the attempted showering  of Borleias's

atmosphere with innocents, had caused it to swell within her.

Hate wasn't the way. It was wrong  for a Jedi. And it was pointless  for

someone who was not likely to survive long in this war, not with all the

enemies she was accumulating; she had better things to spend her time on

than hating.

On the other hand, perhaps hate was right for a fighter pilot; it  could

keep her focused, give her an intensity she needed in combat.

But it was still emotion, still painful. She didn't want it. Didn't need

it. She pushed it down, tamping it under the weight of her logic.

As she  calmed, as  she opened  herself again  to the  Force, she felt a

familiar  presence,  a  reassuring  one.  Well,  it  was  meant  to   be

reassuring; it was projecting an aura of reassurance.

Jaina turned to see Tahiri approaching. She gave Tahiri a smile, but she

knew it to be uncertain.

Tahiri had been on  the verge of becoming  closer to Anakin, might  even

have  become a  Solo someday.  Now that  would never  happen, and  Jaina

sometimes thought Tahiri  might just drift  away like a  planet that had

suddenly escaped its sun's gravity. Jaina knew she was supposed to care,

but that was just  more emotion to pile  on top of what  she was already

trying to  rid herself  of. One  more relationship  to maintain when she

knew it was better to begin trimming those away.

Tahiri's clothes and the skin of  her arms and legs were decorated  with

patches  of  green -  stains  from leaves  and  grasses, Jaina  decided.

"You've been on patrol?"

Tahiri nodded. " I  spent a couple of  hours playing hide and  seek with

some Yuuzhan  Vong warriors  out there.  I never  really caught sight of

them. They must have seen me once,  since I had to knock a thud  bug out

of the air. When I got back, I heard that your squadron was coming down.

I thought maybe you'd want to talk."

"No, not really."

"Or  maybe  you'd want  to  get in  some  relaxation. A  bunch  of Rogue

Squadron  boys have  converted a  bio-reactor tank  into a  heated  tub.

They're off on patrol, so it's unguarded - "

Jaina shook  her head.  " I  don't have  time. I  have a session with an

Intelligence   group,   the  Wraiths,   coming   up.  We're   discussing

psychological warfare  and Yun-HarIa,  the Vong  Trickster goddess.  And

then I have something to do I don't want to."

"What's that?"

"Talk to Kyp Durron. I'm going to hand Twin Suns Squadron over to him."

"You just took command, and already you're giving it up?"

"For a  few weeks  only, I  hope. I'm  going to  - you  know about Uncle

Luke's expedition."

"Yes."

"I'm going to invite myself along."

Tahiri was  silent for  a few  moments. Then  she said,  "Jaina, I don't

think that's such a good idea."

"I expect everyone to tell me that. But Dad and Mother think Jacen's..."

Jaina suddenly lost the breath to speak.  Why was it so hard to say  the

word  alive?  She knew  the  answer as  soon  as she  asked  herself the

question; it  was because  she desperately  wanted to  believe what Leia

believed, and couldn't bring herself  to. She couldn't allow herself  to

hope. She had a  Force-bond with her twin,  and it had been  severed. He

was dead, and to dream otherwise  was just a way of distracting  herself

with delusion at a time when distractions could be fatal. She found  her

breath and continued, "They think  Jacen's there. I have to  go there...

to prove that's not where he is."

"Don't do it," Tahiri said. There was quiet urgency to her voice.

"I have to."

"No, you don't. In fact, you stand a greater chance of getting Luke  and

Mara killed."

"You don't think very much of my skills."

"Yes, I do." Tahiri didn't sound apologetic or contrite. "But if it were

just a matter of  skills, or power for  that matter, you'd be  trying to

send Kyp Durron, wouldn't you?"

"Kyp would never  work. He and  Luke have too  much disagreement between

them - "

"Exactly. Which makes  my point. Just  skills aren't the  only thing you

have to look at."

"So what are you looking at?"

"Well, there's  this whole  twins thing.  The Yuuzhan  Vong want you and

Jacen together, and  whatever they plan  for you can't  be good." Tahiri

looked away for a moment. "Jaina, all I have to do is to think a certain

way and I become Yuuzhan Vong, for as long as I can stand to. This thing

about twins, it's not a casual interest. It's an obsession. Where  twins

are, the eyes of the gods look down. Twins distort reality around  them.

It's a sacred thing."

"So what?"

"So, let's  say Jacen  is alive.  I hope  he is.  Let's say  you go with

Master Skywalker to Coruscant. You're seen but not captured. The Yuuzhan

Vong suddenly know that both the twins are on Coruscant. They'll  devote

a lot  more resources  to finding  Jaina Solo  than they  would to  just

finding a party of  invaders, even Jeedai -  Jedi -  invaders. Right  or

wrong?"

"Well... right. But they might not recognize me."

"True. So you're going to risk Luke and Mara on a 'might not'?"

Jaina felt a growing  sense of desperation. It  was like so many  of her

fights in early Jedi training with her Uncle Luke. She'd press hard, put

him  on  the defensive...  and  then realize  the  degree to  which  his

superior skill was turning her lunges into awkward, off-balance,  losing

strategies.

She was losing this argument. Losing  to Tahiri, who was both years  her

junior and all bottled up in pain because she'd lost Anakin.

"Luke and Mara  aren't as close  to Jacen as  I am. I'm  his twin." Deep

down, she knew that the statement was insupportable, that Luke and  Mara

had skill, experience, and Force  sensitivity enough for this task.  But

it was the argument she'd chosen, so she stubbornly stuck with it.

"So I'll go instead of you."

"You?"

Tahiri nodded, solemn.  "Other than you,  who'd be better?  I don't know

Jacen as well as you  do. I can't feel him  in the Force as well.  But I

know him better than  any Jedi who wasn't  in a Force-bond with  him the

way we were on  that Yuuzhan Vong worldship.  And no one, no  one, knows

the Yuuzhan Vong, at least the way they think, better than I do."

Jaina just looked at her, unable  to argue that point. "I think..."  She

felt the heat  of her argument  slip away from  her. She dropped  almost

effortlessly into a reflective state. She was sure Luke would approve of

the transition.  "I think  you'll let  your emotions  get the  better of

you."

"I could  say the  same thing  about you.  Which brings  us back  to the

point. Does neither of us go, or do I go?"

Jaina sighed, defeated. Oddly, the defeat didn't anger or irritate  her.

She just felt more tired than before. "You go." She felt Tahiri begin to

lean forward for an embrace,  but Jaina turned away before  that feeling

could be translated into action.  She didn't want Tahiri to  feel closer

to her. It would  only hurt Tahiri more  once she was dead.  "Thanks for

caring."

"You're welcome...  but you  may not  want to  thank me  after the other

thing I have to say."

There  was something  in Tahiri's  voice, some  reluctant warning,  that

caused  Jaina  to  turn  back to  look  at  her  more closely.  Tahiri's

expression was an odd mix: concern, apprehension, a reluctance to hurt.

"All right," Jaina said, dubious. "Let's hear it."

"First, believe  me, I  understand that  what I'm  saying is  none of my

business. But I  have to say  it anyway." Tahiri  took a deep  breath to

compose herself. "I think you should stop avoiding your mother."

"Avoiding her?" Jaina offered  Tahiri an incredulous expression.  "She's

everywhere. I bump into her a dozen times a day."

"You  know  what  I mean.  You're  not  avoiding her  as  a  defender of

Borleias. You're avoiding her as your mother."

"That's ridiculous. I haven't started calling her 'Leia' or 'Hey,  you,'

or 'What's-your-name, Han's wife.' "

"You have started calling her 'Mother' instead of 'Mom.' "

"Have I?" Jaina frowned, trying to remember.

Tahiri just stared at her, and Jaina had the uneasy feeling the girl was

staring right through the screens of logic she'd erected for herself  as

though they were the most highly polished transparisteel.

Jaina relented. "Look," she said. "I love my mother. But we don't  have,

I don't know, the kind of connection most mothers and daughters have. We

were apart so often when I was a kid... she was trying to hammer the New

Republic government into shape, andJacen,  Anakin, and I were on  lonely

little worlds with Chewbacca, or Winter, or on Yavin Four."

"Did that keep you from having  a connection, or did it simply  make you

mad at her?"

"That's a stupid question."

"If you say so. But  you can reach out to  her at any time, and,  click,

you'll be connected  again." Tears filled  Tahiri's eyes and  she turned

away. ^"There's a point where you realize that you've had the last  talk

you're ever going to  have with someone you  love. That he's gone.  Have

you realized that about your mom? Has she realized that about you?"

Jaina's own  vision blurred  with tears.  Her resolve  finally gone, she

reached out for Tahiri  and pulled her close.  "It's not that way,"  she

said, the words having a hard  time working their way around the  sudden

knot in her throat. "It isn't."

"If you say  so." Tahiri held  her in return  for several long  moments,

then pulled away, not  meeting Jaina's eyes. "I  need to go get  cleaned

up."

ELEVEN

Borleias Occupation, Day 39

"My name," the man said, "is Sharr Latt. I'm a Wraith."

He was a bit over average height, with hair that was just a few  degrees

of color away from  pure white, worn in  a slightly shaggy haircut.  His

eyes were blue and  amused; his features belonged  to the sort of  comic

entertainer who abused his audience and got laughs from it. He wore  red

pants and  vest, a  sky-blue long-sleeved  shirt and  boots; a broad red

swath of cloth, more decorative  than functional, served him as  a belt,

and a  matching headband  circled his  brow. His  accent belonged to the

lower-class humans of  Coruscant, and the  smile on his  face could have

been interpreted as insincere or mocking -  or both.

Jaina turned to the man's companion. This being was a Gamorrean, one  of

the  thick-bodied,  snout-nosed,  tusk-mouthed  humanoids  to  be  found

fighting battles or doing low-complexity jobs all over the galaxy.  This

Gamorrean wore anonymous brown garments  of human styling. "And is  this

one a Wraith, too?" Jaina asked, joking.

"I am," the Gamorrean answered. Jaina jumped. Many Gamorreans understood

Basic, but their vocal cords were not adequate to let them speak it. The

Gamorrean  continued,  "My name  is  Voort saBinring.  You  can call  me

Piggy."

There was  a certain  mechanical inflection  to Piggy's  voice that  led

Jaina  to  believe his  speech  was artificially  augmented.  That would

explain things. To cover for her sudden discomfiture, she shook each  of

their hands in turn, then asked, "So, what are we doing today?"

Sharr pointed through the blue-tinted window out into the jungle  beyond

the blackness of  the kill zone.  "We're going out  there. We'll find  a

pool fed  by cool  underground springs.  We'll bathe  one another  while

Piggy stands guard, and see what develops from there." He shrugged. "Or,

we can talk  about psychological warfare  and how it  is applied to  the

Yuuzhan Vong."

"I'll take the psychological warfare."

He nodded.  "That's pretty  much what  I figured.  And since Piggy won't

need  to  guard  us,  I  expect  he'll  be  tutoring  you  in small-unit

starfighter tactics."

She gave Piggy a narrow look. "Did you used to be a starfighter pilot?"

The  Gamorrean nodded,  causing his  jowls and  rolls of  belly fat   to

wobble. "I did. I served your father on one campaign."

"I think he told me about you  when I was very young. One of  those 'you

can be whatever you  want when you grow  up' stories. The Gamorrean  Who

Became a Fighter Pilot.' I thought he'd made it up."

"I  have kept  a low  profile since  those days.  I have  not done  much

flying."

"That sort of suggests  that you might not  have much to teach  me about

small-unit tactics."

The  Gamorrean  smiled,  a  broadening and  curving  of  his  mouth that

revealed  more  teeth  -  teeth far  cleaner  and  straighter  than most

Gamorreans enjoyed,  Jaina saw.  "I think  I will  surprise you,"  Piggy

said.

"Your work in the Hapes Cluster was pretty good," Sharr said. The  three

of them were now on top of the bi-otics building. Below them in the near

distance were the landing fields; beyond, stretching to the horizon, was

jungle. The afternoon  sun bore down  upon them, but  Jaina welcomed the

heat after  the coldness  of space  she'd experienced  in the  morning's

mission.

They were in  clear sight of  any Yuuzhan Vong  observers that might  be

lurking at the jungle's edge, but the Yuuzhan Vong traditionally did not

employ snipers.

"'Pretty  good,'" Jaina  said. "Meaning  you think  it could  have  been

better." She lay facedown on a blocky du-racrete protrusion, staring off

into  the ship  berthing area  of the  killing field,  and watched   the

mechanics working on the Record Time. The surface she lay upon vibrated;

within it was air-circulation machinery.

Sharr,  leaning  with  his back  against  a  smaller protrusion  housing

pumping  equipment,  kept  his  attention  on  his  datapad  and  nodded

absently. A few meters away, Piggy lay sprawled on his back on the  roof

surface, hands behind his head, eyes closed, enjoying the sunlight.  His

shirt was off, his belly expansive enough that Jaina suspected she could

probably set  a landspeeder  down on  it. She  entertained the notion of

painting landing stripes on it.

"How?" she persisted.

"Your tricks were good  ones," Sharr said, and  met her gaze. "But  they

weren't layered. You'd have one trick, and it would baffle them and kill

them, and that would be it. Sometimes two. You need to have trick  after

trick available,  so there's  never any  end to  them; that's  what they

expect of their Trickster goddess.

"The second problem is that the Yuuzhan Vong could eventually figure out

how you  performed your  tricks. That  bit with  the tracers, where each

Yuuzhan Vong  ship broadcast  the distinctive  signal of  your ship,  so

they'd fire on one  another - good thinking.  But if you'd had  a little

charge  in each  one that  would detonate  it, leaving  behind a  scorch

pattern like a  laser hit -  then they'd never  have understood how  you

caused them  to fire  on one  another. And  it's incomprehension,  never

figuring out the trick, that fills them - or us, for that matter -  with

supernatural dread."

"I like the sound  of 'supernatural dread,' "  Jaina admitted. It was  a

pleasing  enough  thought  that  she  didn't  take  offense  at  Sharr's

criticism of her efforts.

"We want them to  suspect, not that  you're somehow associated  with Yun

HarIa, not that you're a priestess or something, but that you are  her."

Sharr closed his data-pad and  tucked it into a pocket.  "Everything you

do should  promote that  impression, even  in extremely  minor ways.  In

fact, you're doing it now."

She gave him a curious look. "How?"

"A goddess does not work. And here you are, lounging around, being  lazy

in clear  view of  all the  pilots and  mechanics in  the field below. A

goddess does not fear. And here  you are, in plain sight of  the Yuuzhan

Vong, unconcerned. A goddess is  superior to mortals. And here  you are,

resting  on  a  higher  level  than  your  two  companions.  Speaking of

companions,  goddesses have  strange ones.  Hence a  Gamorrean and  some

idiot in nauseat-ingly bright colors."  Sharr looked down at his  outfit

and shuddered.

"I get it," Jaina said. "This is why Piggy is here even though he's  not

talking about starfighter tactics yet."

"Very good." Sharr nodded. "From now on, you're on stage every minute of

every day. We're not going to say you're a goddess. We're just going  to

treat you as though you are one, and you're going to act accordingly."

"Never ask when you can order," Piggy said.

"Never work  - except  the work  Yun-HarIa would  perform," Sharr  said.

"Putting  together tricks,  that is.  Don't carry  things for  yourself.

We'll get you a porter if you don't have someone who'll do it for you."

"Don't be subtle in your motions," Piggy said. "Big, generous  gestures,

as though you were used to conducting an orchestra."

Jaina grimaced.  "People are  going to  hate me.  They're going to think

I've become horribly stuck up."

"That's right."  Sharr gave  her another  smile, this  one more genuine,

though still definitely tinged with mockery.

"But in private - "

"In private,"  Piggy said,  "you continue  the illusion.  Though you can

tell anyone you trust absolutely."

"No, she can't," Sharr said.

"Yes, she can."

"I'm the psychological warfare expert here, and I say she can't."

"I'm three times  your mass, and  can take off  your head with  a single

bite, and I say she can."

"Excuse me?"  Jaina let  a little  shrillness creep  into her voice. "In

case you haven't noticed, I'm still here."

Piggy opened  his eyes  to glance  at her,  then he  and Sharr exchanged

looks.

"She has us on that one," Sharr said to Jaina.

"She is indeed still here."

"Listen, Great One," Sharr said.

"Don't call me that."

"I need to. We all do. The thing about telling people -  inevitably, the

Yuuzhan Vong will have  spies here. In our  camp, in our base.  The more

people who know that you're not  really becoming as arrogant as a  Kuati

merchant-princess, the more likely it  is that those spies will  notice.

Tell whomever you want - but be aware that every extra person means  the

chances increase that the truth will spread."

"General  Antilles has  already broken  Twin Suns  Squadron out  of  the

normal command structure," Piggy said. "Which makes sense, as a  goddess

wouldn't have a formal rank within New Republic hierarchy."

"Good point." Sharr  pulled out his  datapad and keyed  in a few  words.

"That means  we can  arrange for  your pilots  to be  called by whatever

maximum rank they've  attained, since it  has no bearing  on your unit's

command  structure.  Colonel Jagged  Pel.  Jedi Master  Kyp  Durron." He

frowned. "No, not just Jedi Master. Kyp Durron, the Destroyer of Worlds,

is  subordinate  to   Jaina.  To  the   Yuu-zhan  Vong,  that   will  be

significant." Then  he returned  his attention  to Jaina.  "What do  you

think?"

She gave him a smile. She hoped that, to some distant observer  watching

her through organic optics,  it would look as  wicked as it felt.  " You

mentioned a porter. Can I have anyone I want as my manservant?"

Sharr nodded. "That's what it is to be a goddess."

"No," said Jag Fel. He didn't raise  his voice or even look at them.  He

continued ratcheting the hydrospanner on the lower starboard claw of his

TIE clawcraft, improving,  with millimeter-by-millimeter precision,  the

alignment of that claw's laser.

All around  them, mechanics  tinkered with  damaged starfighters, pilots

lifted off in courier  shuttles, messengers flashed by  on landspeeders;

the cacophony kept their words from carrying very far across the docking

bay.

"It's important."  Sharr leaned  against the  claw. At  Jag's glare,  he

straightened away from  it. "Don't give  us some sort  of idiotic excuse

that your pride won't take it. Lives may depend on it."

Jaina, a couple of steps back, not deigning to speak directly to a  mere

mortal, merely  smiled. She  held up  her hand  as though  to admire her

nails;  Yuuzhan  Vong  spies  were not  likely  to  see  that they  were

unpainted, cut short, and - she finally noticed - dirty.

"I'm happy to participate in any plan  so long as it's the best plan  to

accomplish its  goal," Jag  said. He  straightened and  slapped shut the

hatch that had  allowed him access  to the claw's  internal systemry. He

ignored Sharr and addressed Jaina  directly. "This isn't the best  plan.

You haven't thought it out."

Jaina gave him a cold stare. "Yes, it is. You just don't want to doit."

"No, I have a better idea."

Sharr snorted. "Better than what an expert on psychological warfare  and

a Jedi Knight have assembled. Of course."

Jag turned an unfriendly smile on him. "Kyp Durron."

Sharr's expression changed as he considered the suggestion.

Jag continued, "To your presumed  Yuuzhan Vong spies and observers,  I'm

just an unknown quantity - a pilot from a place the Yuuzhan Vong haven't

encountered yet. But Jedi Master Kyp  Durron, if they see him bowing  to

her, carrying her baggage, digging dirt from beneath her nails - "

Jaina tried very hard  to keep her outrage  from being reflected in  her

expression. She didn't think she succeeded very well.

"- they'll  be impressed.  Who else  would a  Jedi Master  bow to  but a

goddess,  right?  It'll  create  rumors among  our  people,  as  well as

theirs." Jag turned half away from  them and dogged down the panel  he'd

shut.

More than just finishing his point. Jag had also signaled an end to  the

discussion. But to turn away and leave with no further discussion  would

be to lose points.

Jains' waited until she  was sure she had  her voice under control,  had

lowered it to something like Leia's political voice, and said, "I'd like

you to work up the events of two days ago as a sim. Maybe more of us can

learn to save extravehiculars just with vehicle maneuvering."

Jag tucked  his hydrospanner  into a  belt loop,  turned toward her, and

executed a  salute so  sharp and  meticulous that  Jaina could detect no

sign of resentment or irritation in it. "It will be done," he said.

She returned the salute, spun on  her heel, and headed back to  the main

building.

Sharr caught  up with  her. "I've  only known  him for  five minutes and

already I hate him," he said.

Jaina made an exasperated face. Despite the irritation she felt, she had

to admit - to herself, anyway -  that Jag had been right. "Oh, he's  not

so bad."

Luke's Coruscant expedition came together with startling speed.

Iella offered  him the  services of  the Wraiths,  the most  experienced

Intelligence cell on Borleias. Luke met Face Loran, the unit leader, and

already knew Kell Tainer. Face introduced him to the other Wraiths who'd

been on Coruscant when it fell.

Elassar Targon was  a middle-aged Devaronian  with a bounce  to his walk

that suggested a much younger man. He wore a flamboyant jacket, military

in  its cut,  in reflective  black with  gold fringe,  red piping,   and

numerous  medals hanging  from it;  the fringe  and medals  swung as  he

walked, and he accentuated the effect by often making a circular gesture

- "To ward off bad luck,"  he explained. "It really works. Try  it." But

Luke noted that  the man's shirt,  trousers, and knee-high  boots were a

matte black, and suspected that Elassar could lose or reverse the jacket

to  become  instantly inconspicuous.  Inconspicuous,  that is,  anywhere

Devaronians were to be seen.

Baljos Arnjak was a human; he spoke with the clipped, precise accent  of

a Coruscant  native, or  one who  aspired to  Coruscant ancestry. He was

tall and lean,  with dark hair,  mustache and beard  that made his  pale

skin seem absolutely pallid. He was dressed in a multiply stained orange

pilot's jumpsuit that suggested he was a mechanic who wore only  hand-me

downs, but Face introduced him as  the team's biological expert - a  man

with nearly as much expertise in Yuuzhan Vong technology as Danni Quee.

Piggy  saBinring was  the Gamorrean  pilot assigned  to tutor  Jaina  in

battle  management.  Perhaps  the  only one  of  his  kind,  he had,  in

childhood, been modified by a  biologist working for the Warlord  Zsinj.

The biologist had altered his  brain structure, giving him patience  and

an extraordinary mathematical acuity, the latter being necessary for him

to  learn  the  complex   astronautics  and  as-trogation  required   of

starfighter pilots. Sharr Latt was the pale-haired Coruscant native  who

had  been assigned  to work  with Jaina  on her  role as  avatar of  the

Trickster goddess; he and Piggy were just back from their first  session

with her.

Bhindi Drayson was a human female. She spoke in the same deliberate way,

and with  the same  innocuous accent,  as the  late and  former Chief of

State Mon Mothma, suggesting a  background on Mon Mothma's homeworld  of

Chandrila. Bhindi was  unlovely, as lean  and sharp-featured as  a naked

vibroblade, with dark hair and eyes that contributed to a perception  of

her as someone brooding  and menacing, but Luke  felt no aura of  menace

from her, just a quiet watchfulness.

"Are you any relation to  Hiram Drayson?" Luke asked her.  Admiral Hiram

Drayson was  a former  military officer  and Intelligence  leader, and a

friend ofMon Mothma.

"His daughter," she said.

"You have a noble family history."

She gave  him a  brief smile.  "And that's  only the  parts you've heard

about."

"Bhindi is one of our two tactics experts, with Piggy," Face said,  "and

she's  been  learning  whatever  she  can  about  Yuuzhan  Vong tactics.

Unfortunately, we're going to lose her on Coruscant."

Luke frowned, wondering for a moment if Face was somehow both  prescient

and extremely inconsiderate, then realized what Face meant. He turned to

Bhindi again. "You'll be staying there when we leave?"

She nodded. "I'll be setting up Resistance cells on Coruscant."

Luke suppressed a shudder. Going into Coruscant would be bad enough. The

thought of being  left behind among  enemies so antagonistic  and alien,

deliberately  staying  there,  was not  a  pleasant  one. Bhindi  looked

faintly pleased at having discomfited a Jedi Master.

They'd gathered,  the Wraiths  and Luke,  in a  chamber deep  within the

Borleias complex - a chamber that, from its pristine condition, had not,

Luke  suspected,  been found  by  the Yuuzhan  Vong  during their  brief

occupation.  How  the  Wraiths  had  discovered  its  existence  was not

something he knew; all  he did know was  that it was accessed  through a

sliding panel in the back of a laboratory. The hidden chamber, too,  had

been a  laboratory; on  the shelves  on its  walls were  the left-behind

remnants  of  biomedical  gear.  Luke  saw  bacterial  culture   dishes,

injectors, neural monitors...  at the  back of  the chamber  was a  full

sized  bacta tank,  empty, the  transparisteel of  its main  compartment

scuffed and abraded through  hard use so that  many portions of it  were

almost opaque.

"So," Face said, seating himself on  one of the stools at the  chamber's

main table. "Let's show him what we've got. Kell, you first."

The big man hefted a green  cloth bag roughly two meters long.  From its

open top he pulled an object like a very shallow one-person boat. It was

thick,  perhaps thirty  centimeters in  depth for  most of  its  length,

thinning to some ten centimeters  all along the edge. Its  red underside

was both gummy and reflective; it took Luke a moment's study to see that

a thick layer of transparent red material had been closely fitted over a

smooth silvery surface.  Its top  side was  a dull  gray, with  two shoe

shaped clamps protruding from it.

Kell dropped this  apparatus on the  table in front  of Face. It  made a

boom as it hit the table; it had to be heavy. Face shot Kell a  sardonic

look and said, "Thanks."

"Don't  mention  it."  Kell  turned  his  attention  to  Luke.  "This is

something we've been working on for  some time. We mount them in  shells

resembling meteorites or debris. Together  with the shells, they act  as

individual atmospheric intrusion pods."

Luke gave them a skeptical look. "Meaning what, exactly?"

"Meaning you ride them from orbit into a planet's atmosphere."

"In what?"

"In the shells I mentioned. Nothing  more. The red stuff is an  adhesive

that affixes to the interior of  the shell. The shell doesn't even  have

to be  airtight. One  person rides  it in  a vac  suit, his feet gripped

here." Kell  indicated the  clamps. "The  underside is  an ablative heat

shield. Slowly ablative, you understand. Layered between the heat shield

and the top are  a simple repulsor unit  and a power cell.  The repulsor

keeps it  angled correctly  toward the  planet's surface.  You drop into

atmosphere at the correct angle and ride it all the way down. The  shell

burns up from friction with the  atmosphere - it's designed to keep  the

heat from cooking  the occupant. The  heat wash also  conceals your true

nature from most sensors  - ours and theirs.  When the shell gives  way,

the silvery surface is your  secondary heat shield; it's ablative,  too,

so the  visual illusion  that you're  a burning  meteorite continues. In

other words, you look and act just like a piece of space debris punching

into the atmosphere."

"Until you get  near the planet's  surface," Face added.  "At which time

the repulsor puts out its final  effort and slows you down so  you crash

quite slowly into the surface."

"Crash," Luke said. "Quite slowly."

"And these have been successfully tested." Face glanced around,  looking

a  bit nervous.  "Well, tested,  sure. They've  been tested.  Each  time

they're tested, we assemble what data we can, and the next generation of

pods comes back just a bit more intact."

"We're sure they  have them right  this time," Bhindi  said. Luke looked

among  them, and  it was  Bhindi who  broke first,  losing her   worried

expression, snickering at Luke's.

"We've made insertions with them," Kell said, relenting. "They're pretty

new, but Sharr and I have used them twice, Face and Elassar three times.

We've never fried anyone yet."

Luke shook his head. "I have to say, this sounds like the worst idea  in

a thousand generations of bad ideas." "You haven't heard all our ideas,"

Bhindi  said.  "Next,"  Face  interrupted,  and  nodded  at  Baljos. The

scientist rooted around in a bag  of his own. From it he  drew something

that he threw atop the  atmospheric intrusion unit. It looked  like what

would result if someone carefully removed all the skin from the head  of

a Yuuzhan Vong and meticulously reattached it into the shape of a  head.

It twitched when it hit the pod, then settled into stillness.

"An ooglith masquer," Luke said.

"Right  the  first time,"  Baljos  said. "I'm  the  inventor. Well,  the

developer. I was working from captured ooglith masquers."

"But this one looks like a Yuuzhan Vong face."

Baljos nodded. "Each one is unique. I give them all names. That's Brand.

So  called  because  most  of the  mutilation  decorations  come  from a

technique that resembles branding. They hurt like anything to  remove...

but you can wear them for hours or days, unlike holoshrouds, where  your

batteries give out after a few minutes."

"This, I like," Luke said. "It'll help us move among them without  being

detected."

"Next," Face said.

Bhindi rooted  around in  her own  pack. From  it she  extracted a brown

object made up of  a thick, curved disk  at the top, bent  down into the

approximate  shape of  a canopy,  mounted atop  a thick  stem that  grew

thicker at the other end. It was approximately the size of a human head.

Luke gave it a close look. "It's some sort of fungus."

"We'll all be carrying them," she said.

"In case we get hungry?"

"It's not a fungus," Bhindi assured him. "It's a droid."

"You've got to be kidding."

"It looks  like a  type of  fungus found  in dank  places in Coruscant's

undercity,"  Bhindi  said. "We're  hoping  that the  Yuuzhan  Vong won't

destroy them,  precisely because  they look  like something  organic. In

fact, their  covering is  organic, a  type of  mold. Their  circuitry is

heavily shielded.  They have  an epoxy  reservoir so  they can  cling to

whatever surface they're on if they get grabbed, and an epoxy solvent so

they can detach themselves later. They're mobile and have very  advanced

sensor arrays and tactical programming."

"Meaning,"  Elassar  said, "that  they're  going to  sneak  around, find

Yuuzhan Vong installations, try to get inside, and relay information  to

one another. They'll establish a relay chain up to the surface, and  the

one on the surface will transmit to surviving comm stations there."

"It's a long shot,"  Bhindi said, "but any  piece of information we  get

could prove vital at  some point. And we  have four different shape  and

coloration schemes on these, including  two that look like Yuuzhan  Vong

world-shaping plants. If the Yuuzhan  Vong discover that one is  a droid

and destroy  everything that  looks like  it, the  others could  survive

undetected."

"Fungus droids. I always thought that Intelligence work was supposed  to

be, I don't know, sophisticated and charming."

Face snickered. "That's what you told me the first time we met."

Luke frowned. "When did we ever meet before?"

"It was..." Face reconsidered. "Oh, that's right. I was in disguise. You

wouldn't recognize me now."

"But when was it? Now I'm curious."

"I can't tell you."

"We have a few sets of  vonduun crab armor," Bhindi interrupted, "and  a

few more sets of armor faked up to look like the real thing. If they get

close  enough  to  touch  it,  they'll  know  the  fakes  are  made   of

manufactured materials, of course. And we have lots of tizowyrms - their

translator worms."

"And we have explosives," Kell said. "Lots and lots of explosives."

"And a  Jedi," Piggy  said, his  voice a  mechanical rasp. "Three Jedi,"

Luke corrected.  "Mara and  Tahiri are  going with  us. All right. Let's

figure out exactly how we're going to get into Coruscant orbit, where we

want to land, and what our  priorities are. If we're crazy enough  to do

this, we need to be sane enough to do it well."

TWELVE

Borleias Occupation, Day 39

In  the hallway  of the  senior personnel  quarters, where  most of  the

Insiders kept  their chambers,  Jaina was  held up  by a  crowd - Wedge,

Iella, their daughters, Luke, Mara, little Ben, the Jedi Kam and  Tionne

Solusar from the Jedi academy,  Han, Leia, and C-3PO. They  were crowded

into the hall in a mass of good-byes and last-minute instructions.

"I don't want to go." That  was Syal, Wedge's older daughter. Her  voice

was not  raised in  the high-pitched  whine of  the wheedler; though she

couldn't be  older than  ten, she  was expressing  a feeling rather than

complaining. She was speaking as befitted a child who'd been trained  to

think, to express arguments logically, to express emotions clearly.

"I know," Wedge said.  He knelt beside both  daughters and took them  in

his arms. "But where you're going, I'll worry less about you and can  do

my job better."

"We'll take good care of him."  That was Kam Solusar, to Mara  and Luke.

But Mara did  not seem to  hear; she was  totally focused on  her infant

son, whom she held  to her. Mara was  whispering to her boy,  and though

Jaina  strained to  hear, she  could not;  Jaina wondered  if Mara   was

perhaps not using words, but communing directly through the Force.  Luke

held them both, watching his son with a wondering expression.

Mara's own expression contained none of the edginess and dark humor that

were the  parts of  her everyone  saw. This  was not  exactly a softened

Mara, but it was  a different Mara, one  whose angles and thoughts  were

unfamiliar to Jaina.  Jaina wondered what  the baby was  seeing, whether

this view was, like some optical puzzles, something that only made sense

or was recognizable when viewed from one specific angle.

For a moment Jaina felt a flash of emotion - her own, rather than Mara's

or the baby's, but it was still unfamiliar to her. Envy, she thought, as

it faded, but whom was she envying? Mara, or the baby?

"Hey, kid." That was her father, finally noting her presence. "You  here

to see us off? Or are you running interference?"

"Uh... I  didn't even  know you  were going.  I'm part  of the main task

force."

Wedge reluctantly released his daughters  and rose. "Jaina, this is  the

first  mission to  take the  Jedi students,  and some  of the   civilian

children, such as mine,  to the new safe  zone. Han, I've got  Nevil and

Corran running interference for you."

"Well, blast. Thought I  was going to be  able to give my  daughter some

much-needed flying lessons."

Jaina didn't  rise to  the bait.  She just  shrugged. "Some  other time,

maybe."

With extraordinary  gentleness and  a reluctance  she couldn't  conceal,

Mara handed  her son  to Luke.  She bent  to kiss  Ben's forehead,  then

turned away... not swiftly enough for Jaina to miss the flash of pain in

her features.  Then Mara  was walking  back to  her quarters, her stride

long and  her boot  heels clicking  in a  manner that  seemed absolutely

normal, as if nothing out of the usual had just occurred.

"Come on. Junior  Corellians." Han turned  away from the  crowd, stooped

just a little, and looked back  over his shoulder. "Who wants a  ride to

the Millennium Falcon? "

"Me!" That  was Myri,  closer to  Han than  her sister.  She jumped onto

Han's  back;  he locked  his  arms under  her  knees so  she  could ride

piggyback.

Han scowled at C-3PO. "Come on, Goldenrod."

"I am as ready to depart as  I was at the beginning of this  discussion,

four minutes and thirty-eight seconds ago."

"No,  you  pile  of parts,  I  mean,  do what  I'm  doing."  Han flexed,

emphasizing his odd posture.

"As you wish, but I fail to see what will be gained..." C-3PO bent in an

imitation of Han's position, then  added "Oh" as Syal, grinning,  jumped

onto his back.

"That's it,"  Han said.  "Syal, don't  be afraid  to use  the whip, he's

willful and skittish."

"Sir, I protest.  These are adjectives  that cannot properly  be used to

describe my behavior..."

Han set himself  into motion, heading  down the hallway,  but rolled his

eyes at  Jaina. "I  should have  known better.  She weighs  as much as a

wampa."

"I do not!" Myri said.

They passed down the corridor,  C-3PO and Syal following. Jaina  watched

them go. So many times she'd ridden her father's back that way. The last

time...  when had  it been?  Only a  few years  ago. He'd  said she  was

getting too big, or that his back was getting too old. Probably  another

Han Solo fib.

The gathering in the hall  was breaking up, Leia accompanying  Wedge and

Iella toward the complex's main hall, saying, "I need to talk about some

additional materiel." Luke followed, little Ben in his arms, talking  to

Kam and Tionne.

And then Jaina was  alone. She followed Mara's  path to the door  of the

Sky-walker chamber and knocked. At Mara's "come in," she did so.

Mara  stood  in  the  center of  the  main  chamber.  All the  chamber's

furniture had  been placed  against the  walls, giving  the room a large

open area in the middle, doubtless a place for Mara and Luke to exercise

or meditate.  Perhaps Mara  had just  started an  exercise; she looked a

little flushed, her hair slightly disarrayed.

"I guess it's a bad time,"  Jaina said. She jerked her head  back toward

the door and the corridor beyond. "I didn't know all that was going on."

"It's  all right.  They're taking  the Jedi  academy students  to a  new

hiding place. Somewhere they'll be safe  while the Errant Venture is  on

station here.  Ben is  going with  them, and  Wedge's kids,  and the boy

Tarc." Mara  shrugged, and  seemed about  to add  something, but no more

words came.

"Are you all right?"

"I feel like I've had the wind  knocked out of me. I just can't  seem to

find my breath."

This sudden candor, the way Mara seemed to be just short of in  control,

was unnerving. Jaina tried to find  some words to help but realized  the

ridiculousness, the futility  of it. She  didn't have any  experience to

compare to it.

Other than losing Anakin  and Jacen. It was  not the same. On  one hand,

they were her brothers, not her son;

on the  other, the  loss was  permanent. She  steered herself  away from

those thoughts. "You could go with him," she said.

"Don't think I haven't considered it. Don't think I won't be considering

it  until  the moment  your  parents blast  off.  Or even  after."  Mara

swallowed hard.  "But my  work here,  and this  mission to Coruscant, is

more important than  my feelings. If  I'm not here  to do something  I'm

supposed to do, the Yuuzhan  Vong could take another few  strides toward

victory. Down the line, when it counts, that might be the difference for

us. It might be the difference  between Ben having a galaxy he  can grow

up in... or not having one. If I just do what I want to, and go  running

after your father, Ben  could end up dying.  Or becoming a slave  of the

Yuuzhan Vong. I can't do that."

Mara's eyes were closed now, but she was in control -  in control of her

physical  self,  anyway.  Nothing  could  control  the  anguish  she was

feeling.

Jaina felt it through the Force,  an outpouring of pain that roared  out

of Mara like water through a  shattered dam. It washed across Jaina  and

she was suddenly lost in it -

years alone the cold of space in her heart the Emperor's hand avenge his

death and then Luke  what does hate become  Ben so small so  small was I

ever that small will I ever see him again do I deserve to be his mother

It folded Jaina over like a  snap-kick to her stomach. She lurched  back

into the  door, but  Mara, eyes  closed, somewhere  deep within herself,

didn't seem to hear.

Jaina resisted the urge to go to her mentor, to put her arms around her,

to comfort her. The numbers had to catch up with Jaina sooner or  later,

as they had with her brothers.  Mara would be better off not  having her

emotions divided as finely as they were. By stepping away, allowing Mara

to concentrate just on her immediate family, Jaina would be helping her.

She backed into the doorway and out into the hall.

The door  slid closed  in front  of her,  but the  wash of  thoughts and

emotions from Mara  continued. Jaina moved  away and began  to catch her

breath, but Mara's ache still permeated her, mingling with her own  ache

from the loss of her brothers,  and she wished she could keep  from ever

hurting that way again.

With every step she  drew away from Mara's  quarters, she felt the  pain

slip away. At  the end of  the corridor, where  it intersected with  the

main  corridor leading  to the  administrative sector,  she was  herself

again... but with her thoughts  and emotions still whirling like  clouds

of piranha-beetles on Yavin 4.

Her thoughts were  still not settled  minutes later as  she went through

her X-wing checklist.

All  around  her,  starfighters and  larger  spacecraft  in the  special

operations docking bay roared, whined, or rumbled into life, the  sounds

and vibrations cutting through her despite the insulation provided by  X

wing hull and flight suit.  Normally she found it comfortably  familiar,

even soothing, as if everyone  affected by the noise and  vibration were

united by them into a single mind with a single objective, but just  now

it was distracting, intrusive. She couldn't focus.

The Millennium falcon was  in sight off to  her port, and she  could see

her mother and father in its cockpit. Leia caught sight of her look  and

waved, smiling. Jaina waved back, absently, and forced a smile.

The starfighters of Jaina's own  squadron were arrayed around her,  with

Kyp and Jag situated  nearest. She could see  Kyp going through his  own

checklist, gaze  nicking back  and forth  across the  controls. Jag  was

already done with his, leaning back in his pilot's couch, anonymous  TIE

fighter helmet on, his posture relaxed.

Some of  these people  loved her.  Others at  least respected  her. They

would be hurt when she followed  her brothers into death, but she  had a

handle on  that, putting  them all  increasingly at  arm's length so the

sting would be less when she was lost to them.

She could  help things  further along.  Kyp had  suggested some time ago

that she become his apprentice. If she accepted, it would probably sting

Mara a bit, but  then Mara would be  able to withdraw from  her life and

perhaps  wouldn't feel  the greater  sting whenJaina  died. And  if  she

became Kyp's apprentice, she could insist that he maintain the  distance

suitable to  a Master-apprentice  relationship and  stop expressing  his

personal interest in her.

That left only Jag. She didn't know what he might have meant to her  had

things been different. She suspected that pursuing this question was one

of the reasons behind his  joining her squadron. But he  was disciplined

enough, too accustomed to loss to be drastically affected ifJaina  died.

He'd be all right.

She settled back, a trifle calmer. She had a plan for all the people she

could currently  affect. When  the numbers  caught up  to her, all these

people would be able to endure  her loss a little better, a  little more

easily.

Her comlink clicked. It  was Kyp, a direct,  pilot-to-pilot transmission

routed through their respective as-tromechs. "You all right?" he asked.

"Just using a calming technique."

"I don't think it's  working. I can feel  you from over here.  You're in

turmoil."

"No, I'm not. It  just seems that way."  To cut the conversation  short,

she clicked over to squadron frequency. "Twin Suns Leader to squadron. I

have four engines at full power, ready to scramble."

"Two, four lit and waiting for a target."

"Twin Suns Three, ready."

"Four,  starboard  upper showing  its  usual power  flux,  but ready  to

dance..."

A minute  later, the  go-code flashed  across her  board. Twin  Suns was

first out of the special  ops docking bay, its starfighters  surrounding

one of the kludged,  right-angle-shaped craft the defenders  of Borleias

referred to as pipefighters. They set up on the killing field and waited

for the other squadrons to deploy.

Next  were the  Rogues, reduced  in number  by the  absence ofNevil  and

Corran, with their pipefighter,  and the Wild Knights,  guarding theirs.

Fourth  was  Blackmoon  Squadron,  the  renamed  E-wing  squad  that had

previously protected Pyria VFs moon, under the command of Captain Yakown

Reth;  they  escorted  the  triangle-shaped  pipefighter  that  was  the

centerpiece  of  the  Operation  Starlancer  experiments.  Finally,  the

Millennium Falcon, its two Rogue  Squadron escort X-wings, and a  larger

freighter lumbered out of the docking bay, practically emptying it.

Jaina switched her comlink over  to fleet frequency. "This is  Twin Suns

Leader to Control. Test-fire mission is ready to launch."

"Twin Suns, this is Control. Launch at will. Best of luck."

Jaina led  the Twin  Suns and  their pipefighter  up in  a gentle ascent

through Borleias's atmosphere. No one was entirely sure how much  stress

the experimental  pipefighter could  endure. After  every test  mission,

mechanics descended on the  cobbled-together vehicles, with their  space

station  angle  segments  and  their  old  Y-wing  cockpit  and   engine

components, and managed to patch  them together for yet another  launch.

No one was yet suggesting that this was a losing battle, but Jaina  knew

the  experimental  vehicles  were  soaking  up  a  lot  of  repair   and

maintenance resources. She hoped the project would be successful  enough

to warrant the effort.

The squadrons reached high planetary orbit and went their separate ways,

each navigating to a different point  in the Pyria system - all  but the

Falcon and the vehicles with her, which remained behind in orbit.

Tam Elgrin scrambled into his  quarters on the shuttle and  fumbled with

his concealed  villip. Pain  made his  fingers clumsy;  it took  several

tries for  him to  get the  device open,  to stroke  the villip  surface

itself  so  that  it  would  correctly  expand  into  the  shape  of his

controller. "Speak," the  woman said. "Jaina  Solo has just  taken off,"

Tam said.  With every  word, his  headache eased  just a  bit. "With her

entire squadron. I was able to fling that thing, that bug, at her X-wing

as she  was flying  out of  the docking  bay. It  stuck to  the side. As

ordered." He was getting very good at following orders. Not long before,

he'd walked to the  limits of the kill  zone permitted to civilians  and

used his holocam  to record the  bleakness of that  destroyed landscape,

waiting there long enough for  Yuuzhan Vong warriors at the  kill zone's

edge to throw  a packet to  him. It was  a jellylike gob  of transparent

material, wiggling, filled with bugs and worms and things that  couldn't

escape except when he jammed his  fingers into it to pry them  free, and

subsequent communications  over the  villip had  told him  what all  the

various creatures within it were for.

"Excellent.  You're doing  very well.  Tam." His  controller's words  of

praise, her encouraging  tones, made Tam  feel better. He  hated himself

for it. "Was there anything  else?" his controller asked. "Nothing,"  he

said. His headache was gone now. "Contact me when you've had a chance to

evaluate the morale of the garrison once Jaina Solo is taken," the woman

said. Then the  villip inverted. Tam  closed its container.  He stood in

place, shaking.

He now had  an idea of  how the leash  that had been  put on him worked.

When he failed to carry out  his orders, the pain began. It  worsened as

his  failure  continued.  When  he  was  able  to  report  success,   it

diminished. But since his  controller couldn't know, until  he reported,

how successful he was, the only  stimulus for the pain could be  his own

knowledge of failure. Some portion of his brain that lit up when he felt

guilt, some hormone discharged into his bloodstream when he was under  a

specific kind of stress, triggered the headaches.

He had no doubt that the pain, if allowed to grow too great, could  kill

him. He'd been told so. He'd felt it grow to the point that he  believed

it signaled an imminent explosion in his head, a fatal aneurysm or other

deadly failure within him.

If only he could find some way to think himself around the pain, to feel

no guilt or acknowledge no failure,  so that the pain never came...  but

even with  that thought,  throbbing began  in his  temples and  the pain

returned.

He slumped, defeated. He wasn't even allowed to think such things.

He was a slave and he would always be a slave.

He left the shuttle, head down, to return to his duties.

Han  slouched  in   his  pilot's  seat   and  stared,  in   unaccustomed

contentment, at the stars.

"What are you thinking?" Leia asked from the copilot's seat.

Han glanced at  her. She looked  far more comfortable  in the Leia-sized

seat  they'd installed  for her.  At the  very least,  she wouldn't   be

slipping back  and forth  during high-performance  maneuvers. "You  know

me," he said. "I wasn't thinking."

Leia nodded. " I know you. What were you thinking?"

"I was thinking about what would  happen when we finally got rid  of the

Vong. I was thinking about taking up the old trade again."

"Sure you were."

"In an elder-statesman way, of  course. And I was thinking  that someone

with your skills and connections,  Leia, could be a tremendous  asset to

that sort of operation."

She just looked  at him for  a moment, her  expression somewhere between

amusement and outrage. "You think I should be a smuggler?"

"Sure, why  not? You're  through with  politics, you  said so. Maybe you

should follow me around for a few  years. Like I did with you, when  you

were busy helping rule the galaxy."

"You didn't follow, you visited."

"Well, that's as close to following as I could manage. I'm sure you'd be

better at it than I was."

"I may not be a politician anymore, but I'm still, well, honest."

"Mistress Leia, Captain Solo..." They were the musical tones of C-3PO.

Han and Leia looked to the back of the cockpit, where the Protocol Droid

stood in  his usual  posture of  nervous diffidence.  "What is  it?" Han

asked.

"It's  the  children,  sir.  I was  wondering  what  sort  of games  and

entertainments I should find for them. They are, well, bored."

"They can't be bored yet. We've only been here two minutes."

Leia nodded. "It takes Han at least three."

Han shot her a glare. "Break out the hologame board."

"Well, I  did,  sir,  but  they  appear  to  think  it's  somewhat   old

fashioned."

"Old-fashioned? That's one of the few systems that was installed new  in

the falcon."  Then Han  frowned. It  had been  new when installed, which

was, oh, nearly three decades ago.

Leia  smirked at  his expression.  "See-Threepio, let  the younger  ones

train with  lightsabers against  the remote.  They won't  want to, since

it's so antiquated, but tell them  it's the same one Luke first  trained

on, and bring up his scores  to give them something to compete  against.

The older ones... um, put up some simulations on the quadlasers and  let

them run through those."

Han nodded. "That's more like it."

"If they don't want  to work with equipment  that old, tell them  it's a

history lesson."

"Yes, Mistress Leia." The droid returned the way he'd come.

Han glared at her. "Leia, you're just asking to walk from here."

She just smiled at him.

Twin Suns Squadron came on-station  in an empty region of  Pyrian space.

The twelve  members of  the squadron  broke into  four shield  trios and

moved out from the center  of their zone while the  pipefighter remained

behind, maneuvering itself  to be more  and more precisely  at the exact

mathematical point the Operation Starlancer coordinators required of it.

They  directed  their sensors  outward  to give  them  earliest possible

notification of a Yuuzhan Vong intrusion.

Occasional, low-volume comments crackled  up from the comm  board, which

was set to  squadron frequency. At  the four stations  of the Starlancer

mission, nothing was happening - nothing but pipefighters setting up.

"I like your design." That was Kyp, the volume of his voice louder  than

the settings she'd set up for her comm system. She glanced down and  saw

that he once  again was routing  a message through  their astromechs for

privacy.

Jaina  turned to  look through  her canopy  at Kyp's  X-wing, which  was

floating mere meters off to her  starboard. He was also looking back  at

her. "What design?" she asked.

"Your X-wing coloration. I like it for its effectiveness."

"Oh, right." She'd arranged for her X-wing to be painted a glossy white;

on each flank was  a picture of a  running voxyn. The reptilian  beasts,

designed by the Yuuzhan Vong to detect and slaughter Jedi, had all  been

killed or doomed by the young Jedi Knights' expedition to the  worldship

around Myrkyr, and Jaina did not remember them fondly - they had  killed

too many of her friends and  colleagues. But she did like the  idea when

Sharr had  expressed it  to her.  She liked  the mixed  signals it sent,

appreciated  its  ambiguity. Did  it  mean that  she  identified with  a

creature created by the  Yuuzhan Vong? That though  she was a Jedi,  she

did  not fear  it and  had participated  in its  destruction? That   she

admired  its ferocity  and cunning?  Its presence  as a  symbol on   her

snubfighter would confuse the  Yuuzhan Vong. It was  certainly confusing

the New Republic fighters and Jedi who did not belong to the Insiders.

Kyp's own X-wing was now  individually decorated as well, with  a design

that had  to be  as unpleasant  to him  as the  voxyn were  to Jaina. On

either side of  the fuselage was  painted a sun  in the throes  of going

supernova, a reminder to the Yuuzhan Vong that it was Kyp Durron who had

destroyed whole worlds, years ago,  through use of a superweapon  called

the Sun Crusher. Kyp had been  driven by rage during that time,  and had

not been  old enough  for maturity  to have  restrained him. Even today,

many people thought he should  pay for his crime against  those Imperial

worlds  -  pay the  ultimate  price, sacrificing  his  life -  but  Luke

Skywalker had disagreed, and Kyp had, in the intervening years, found  a

sort of uncomfortable and incomplete redemption in his role as a Jedi.

For a moment, Jaina thought about adding, I like your design, too.  That

would confuse Kyp, help  keep him at bay.  But her resolve softened  and

she could not  bear to inflict  that little wound  on him. She  kept her

mouth shut.

"Contact,   bearing   three-three-seven,  incoming."   That   was  Gavin

Darklighter's voice at the muted volume of the squadron frequency.

"Wild Knights  here. We  have incoming  targets from  Rimward." This was

Danni's voice.

A moment later,  Captain Reth called  in a sensor  contact for Blackmoon

Squadron.

Jaina's  sensor  board  was  still  empty  of  unfriendlies,  but  three

simultaneous  approaches   against  the   other  units   protecting  the

Starlancer  vehicles suggested  that she'd  have incoming  coralskippers

soon as well. She switched to squadron frequency. "Keep your eyes open,"

she said.

"Awww." That was the  mechanical voice of Piggy,  who was now flying  as

Twin Suns Five and doing squadron tactics evaluation. "I wanted to sleep

a while  longer." Then  his voice  became suddenly  alert, as  though he

realized his jest might not be appreciated. "I mean, to hear is to obey,

Great One."

Jaina grinned. If she were  leading this unit like a  military squadron,

she'd snap at him for  making irrelevant comments over his  comlink, but

the Twin Suns pilots were supposed to be looser, more idiosyncratic.

"Starlancer Leader to squadrons, we are ready for test-firing."

Jaina switched back to fleet frequency. "Starlancer Leader, this is Twin

Suns Leader. Fire at will."

Several  kilometers behind  her, the  ends of  the two  larger  pipelike

extrusions from the pipefighter flared into incandescence. A bright  red

bar of light, a meter-thick laser beam, leapt out from each one. Instead

of flaring once with a short burst of energy, like a starfighter  weapon

system, they continued pouring out laser light.

Acknowledgments came in across her comm unit, indications from two other

Starlancer  triangle-corner vehicles  that they,  too, had  fired.  Then

there were updates from them: "Estimated two minutes until impact... One

minute forty-five seconds... one minute thirty seconds until  impact..."

All four Starlancer  craft were fitted  with voice-only holocomm  units,

allowing  them to  coordinate at  transmission speeds  greater than  the

speed  of   light,  and   their  respective   guardian  squadrons   were

piggybacking their own communications through those holocomms.

Jaina  tuned  out  the updates  and  concentrated  on the  fighter-pilot

chatter. The Rogues, Wild Knights, and Blackmoons all reported detecting

inbound squadrons, but now indicated that the squadrons were not  coming

in at attack speed. This seemed to be a slower, more deliberate sortie.

"Fifteen seconds until impact... Impact. We have positive connection  on

both leads with Vehicle Two, with Vehicle Three... with Vehicle One. All

three are positive. Fire central units."

Behind Jaina,  the pipefighter  fired off  its third  extrusion, the one

that bisected the right angle; it, too, emitted a meter-thick stream  of

laser  light.  At the  moment  it fired,  the  project controller  began

transmitting, "Estimated one  minute twenty-two seconds  until impact...

one minute fifteen..."

"Wild Knights engaged." Danni Quee's  voice rose in pitch. "We  have two

squadrons of coralskippers."

"Same  here, two  squadrons." The  Blackmoon leader,  Captain Reth,  was

calmer than Danni. "Standard incoming tactics."

"Rogues have two complete squadrons incoming." Then Gavin  Darklighter's

voice  took  on  a slightly  amused  tone.  "Correction, two  incomplete

squadrons."

Jaina  frowned  at  her  sensor  board.  Why  weren't  the  Yuuzhan Vong

attacking her position? It didn't make sense for them to attack three of

four Starlancer positions. They should be attacking only one, to acquire

a Starlancer pipefighter, or all four.

Then she saw it, a blip  at the extreme range of her  sensors. "Incoming

enemies," she said, "from this position. Twin Suns shield trios, form up

on me."

Han and Leia listened to the comm traffic from the Starlancer  positions

- when it wasn't drowned out  by the shrieks of amusement from  the more

distant portions of the  Falcon, where novice Jedi  practiced deflecting

remote blasts, shooting  down computer-generated  targets with  computer

generated laser blasts, and  ran amok. Han  and Leia could  also hear  C

3PO's  ineffective  protests.  "That should  be  enough  distraction out

there," Leia said.

"I think so, too." Han keyed his comlink. "Kam, Tionne, get them settled

in and strapped down. We're jumping out of here in one minute." A moment

later, he  could hear  the deeper  tones of  Kam Solusar  addressing the

boisterous passengers.

"Can I sit up here?"

Han  and  Leia turned  to  see Tarc  standing  at the  opening  into the

cockpit. The boy looked uncertain, unhappy.

Leia said, "You don't want to  sit back there with the others?  We won't

have much time to talk to you, honey."

Tarc shook his head. "They're better at everything than I am. Even  Syal

and Myri."

Leia exchanged  a look  with Han.  Han cleared  his throat.  "Sure, kid,

strap into the seat behind mine. And cinch everything down tight."

The two coralskipper squadrons came laser-straight toward the Twin  Suns

pilots.  As  Twin  Suns  broke   again  into  four  shield  trios,   the

coralskippers broke into four units of six, one each to a shield trio.

"Standard procedures,"  Jaina said,  and angled  toward one  of the  six

coralskippers heading her way. She reached out for Kyp within the Force,

found him and grabbed him as  easily as catching a comrade's hand,  then

waited for him to select a target.

He did. They fired together. Jag firing an almost unde-tectable fraction

of a second  later. Kyp's lasers  found the target  coralskipper's void;

Jaina's blasted through  the bow. Jag's  through the pilot  canopy. Then

they hurtled past, the remaining five coralskippers turning in pursuit.

As she banked  around for another  pass, Jaina spared  a glance for  her

sensor board.  It showed  all the  coralskippers still  engaged with the

starfighters; the  six skips  on the  second shield  trio, the  one with

Piggy in it, had already been reduced to five, and the other two  groups

were intact. No one was  maneuvering against the pipefighter, which  was

still pouring laser energy in three directions -  no, one direction,  as

the two greater pipes shut down,  leaving just the smaller pipe to  fire

energy at the center of the pipefighters' long-distance formation.

A  stream of  plasma cannon  projectiles poured  past her  X-wing, at  a

distance of fifty meters or  so, close by star-fighter battle  standards

but not close enough to worry her. These coralskipper pilots weren't the

best the Yuuzhan  Vong had to  offer; she could  tell by the  difficulty

they had in maintaining pursuit  of her squadron's starfighters, by  the

fact that incoming fire was not drifting close enough to be  terrifying.

Even  the comm  chatter suggested  the comparative  lack of  danger  the

squadrons  were  facing;  the voices  of  Rogue  Squadron and  Blackmoon

Squadron  conveyed  tension, but  not  as much  as  in more  challenging

exchanges.

Jaina led her shield trio around in a wide loop that kept them ahead  of

their pursuers  but brought  them to  within firing  range of  the skips

assaulting  Twin  Suns  Seven  through  Nine.  She  gave  Kyp  a  little

confirming flicker through the Force; he chose another target and fired.

This skip  pilot managed  to veer  away and  get his  void up behind his

narrower profile,  intercepting the  lasers of  both Jaina  and Kyp, but

Jag's,  at a  slightly different  angle and  fired at  a slight   delay,

sprayed  around  the  void  and  tore  out  the  skip's  underbelly. The

coralskipper veered away,  barely under control,  and began a  long loop

away from the combat zone.

"This is a trap." It was  Piggy's voice, and Jaina saw that  the message

was being  routed directly  to her  through her  astromech; none  of the

other pilots would be hearing it. "I recommend we return to base."

Jaina frowned. The  five skips pursuing  her shield trio  were now in  a

wedge  formation, the  boldest of  them well  out ahead  of the  others.

"Explain that, Piggy."

She reached out to  Kyp, feeling for a  moment his hand on  his X-wing's

yoke.  She   handled  both   her  controls   and  his,   simultaneously,

identically, and both X-wings  decelerated and gained altitude  relative

to their pursuers. Jag, left out of their Force link, leapt ahead.

Jaina gave Kyp the cue. He targeted the lead skip and fired just as  she

did. Jag, in  his more maneuverable  claw-craft, inverted in  a maneuver

tight enough  to send  an X-wing  out of  control and  fired at the lead

skip's bow. The skip's dovin basal brought its void up to capture  Jag's

lasers, but Jaina's  and Kyp's fire  shredded it, sending  glowing yorik

coral chunks in all directions.

Jaina and Kyp kept up their fire, concentrating on the port side of  the

coralskipper formation. Jag drifted to his starboard, flashing by  those

same two targets as he fired, his shots intercepted by voids but keeping

those spots of darkness from  swallowing the X-wings' fire. In  moments,

those two  skips, though  not destroyed,  were charred  by laserfire and

venting atmosphere. Jag looped around  and came up behind Jaina  and Kyp

as they dropped into position behind the coralskipper formation.

Meanwhile, Piggy was talking. Talking  and talking. "Listen to the  comm

chatter.  We've been  attacked by  forces sophisticated  enough to  time

simultaneous assaults on the other three squads, but they didn't jump us

until the other  three were fully  engaged. This is  a ploy designed  to

make sure we're  pinned in place  and happily hunting  easy kills, while

they set something up."

"Copy." Jaina trained bursts of  laserfire on the skip ahead.  Her Force

connection with Kyp slipped as she focused on Piggy's words.

He was  right. All  evidence pointed  to the  new Yuuzhan Vong commander

being canny and experienced. He'd  never set up a sophisticated  assault

with second-rate pilots except as a distraction, a bluff, or a trap.

But they couldn't just flee whenever they faced a trap. The Yuuzhan Vong

would come to recognize their  skit-tishness, and then begin to  exploit

it.

"Piggy, we're going to weather this  one out," she said. "I want  you to

broadcast  that  warning,  the  short  form,  in  the  clear  on   fleet

frequencies. Try to sound panicked, would you?"

"Copy." A moment later, his voice sounded across the fleet frequency, at

a higher volume and pitch: "Great One, this is Twin Suns Five. I feel  a

trap closing around us. We have to flee."

Jaina  snorted  to herself  at  his melodramatic  words,  then responded

appropriately. "Be calm, Piggy. Have faith. You feel their trap. They're

about to feel mine."

Now, she  told herself,  all we  have to  do is  figure out what they're

trying to do, keep them from  doing it, and do something worse  to them.

Easy.

Sure.

The beam from the lesser end of the pipefighter ceased. Its part in  the

operation was over for now. She switched to squad frequency. "Starlancer

One, get out of there. Head back to base."

"Copy. Starlancer One on our way."

THIRTEEN

Borleias Occupation, Day 39

The  streams  of  laser  energy from  Starlancers  One,  Two,  and Three

converged on Starlancer Prime, the pipefighter with the three extrusions

arrayed in equal angles. Each stream entered one of the pipe openings.

Starlancer  Prime's  last  extrusion, the  one  aimed  at the  Coruscant

system, fired, channeling its constant, meter-thick beam of laser  light

toward the former  home of  the New  Republic government  several  light

years away.

Jag had made a clean solo kill against one of the starboard skips.  That

left two damaged,  one unhurt, of  the six that  had come against  them.

Jaina's sensor board  showed that one  other pilots, Twin  Suns Ten, was

drifting powerless, but Eleven had reported that Ten was still alive.

Then there was something else  on her long-range sensors, two  large red

blips arriving  from the  opposite directions  at high  speed, just  now

slowing as they reached the vicinity  of the target zone. They were  the

right size for Yuuzhan Vong corvette analogs, and as Jaina watched,  the

blips  fired off  many more,  smaller blips  - signs  of a  coralskipper

launch.  "The  second  wave  is  here,"  she  told  her  squad. "Rogues,

Blackmoons, Wild Knights, watch out for reinforcements at your end."

She received three sets of acknowledgments but barely registered them as

her wing trio scored quick  kills on the undamaged coralskipper  and one

of the damaged ones. The last  Yuuzhan Vong pilot from the original  six

turned  away,  toward  one   of  the  oncoming  flood   of  coralskipper

reinforcements.

Jaina  let  him  go.  Other survivors  of  the  two  first Yuuzhan  Vong

squadrons were also scattering back toward their reinforcements. None of

them appeared to be  pursuing the rapidly retreating  Starlancer vehicle

or the drifting Twin Suns Ten.  Jaina called for her squad to  muster in

the few seconds  available to them.  "Rogues, have they  sprung the same

trap at your end?"

"Negative, Twins Leader."

"Wild  Knights  just  have the  original  squads,  though resistance  is

stiffening."

"Same with Blackmoon, Twins."

"These are interdictors. Leader."  That was Piggy's voice.  "They're not

here for the Starlancers. They're here tor you."

"Plot us a course out of here. Piggy. Away from the Starlancers'  escape

vector."

A  bare  second later,  a  projected course  sprang  up on  Jaina's  nav

computer. It didn't lead through  the area showing the most  open space.

Jaina  wondered why  Piggy had  deliberately ignored  that most  logical

option - and then realized that he'd probably done so because it was the

most logical option, and one  the Yuuzhan Vong had doubtless  planned on

her choosing. He had to have  seen other things she'd missed for  him to

decide on this course.

Whatever his reasoning, she oriented  along his escape vector and  fired

her  thrusters at  full acceleration.  The rest  of Twin  Suns came   up

smoothly  behind  her.  Ahead,  Yuuzhan  Vong  coralskippers  began   to

congregate on her escape route;  behind, more skips turned in  her wake,

accelerating to  catch up.  Her sensor  board suggested  that the eleven

Twin Suns pilots now faced five times as many skips.

A microjump away, a fraction  of a light-year outside the  Pyria system,

Han and  Leia listened  to the  holocomm traffic  from their  daughter's

battle zone. "I'm going back," Han said.

Leia looked as ashen as Han felt. Slowly, she shook her head. "We  can't

help her."

"The hell we can't. I can get her escape vector, and we can drill a hole

in from the other side before the Vong know we're coming - "

"Fine. What do you want me to tell our passengers, the children?"

Han gave an inarticulate growl. He sat with muscles locked, listening to

find out what would become of his daughter.

"We screwed up," Wedge said. As usual during missions of any importance,

he  stood in  the control  chamber beside  the hologram  displaying  the

mission zone.

Tycho nodded, looking glum. He didn't elaborate on Wedge's words.

He didn't need to. The two of  them had had the mission and the  Yuuzhan

Vong response plotted  out in great  detail. The Yuuzhan  Vong would, at

some point, make an attempt to grab the Starlancer vehicles. The  pilots

of  the  pipefighters  would  be  theoretically  able  to  detach  their

cockpits,  which  had  their  own  rudimentary  thrusters,  and  escape,

destroying the pipe  assemblies with primitive  mechanical self-destruct

systems  that were  unlikely to  be affected  by enemy  countermeasures,

leaving Ibehind just  enough clues to  give the Yuuzhan  Vong a hint  of

what was going on.

But  that  whole approach  assumed  that the  Starlancers  would be  the

Yuuzhan  Vong  target. Instead,  it  appeared that  Jaina  Solo was  the

target.

And since only  Jaina's squadron had  been attacked in  this fashion, it

meant that Yuuzhan Vong spotters on the ground or in Borleias orbit  had

identified her and correctly determined her course, suggesting that they

were even more on the ball than Wedge and Tycho had guessed.

"How long before we can get anyone to her?" Wedge asked.

Tycho shrugged. "Two minutes to get the frigate Lunar Tide to the  site.

And that'll  just get  Lunar Tide  destroyed. Five  minutes for the task

force now leaving Bor-leias's mass shadow."

Wedge weighed the numbers, not  forgetting that among them were  numbers

of the living  crew of the  vessels involved. How  many lives was  Jaina

Solo worth? More important, how much harm would it do to them, to  their

plans, to demonstrate the New  Republic habit, considered a weakness  by

the Yuuzhan Vong, to risk and  probably doom a greater number of  people

to save a smaller number?

"Tell Lunar Tide to get into  position to jump... but not jump  until we

give  the  order.  They'll  wait  for  the  task  force  unless  we  say

otherwise."

Tycho nodded and turned to his comm board.

With the discipline of  decades. Wedge was able  to conceal the way  his

decision tied his insides  up in knots, and  he prayed that he  wouldn't

have to tell Han and Leia that he'd doomed their daughter.

"I  can  get the  squad  out of  here,"  Jag said.  "Care  to share  the

information?" Jaina asked. "It'll take too long, Goddess. Care to  trust

me?" Jaina weighed the question for part of a second and found that  she

did - if he said he knew how to get them out alive, then he did.  "We're

your wing," she said.

"You and Kyp, launch shadow bombs. Have them follow me at a distance  of

a few  meters -  as close  as you  can manage.  You'll know when to drop

them. Hang back, let me lead  you by a few kilometers." Without  waiting

for further authorization or  acknowledgment, Jag hit his  thrusters and

pulled out ahead of the Twin Suns formation.

Jaina  felt slight  confusion from  Kyp, a  sort of  question mark.  She

offered up a mental shrug. She armed and launched one shadow bomb,  then

reached out to grab it with the Force and hurtle it along in Jag's wake.

She dimly detected Kyp's similar efforts; his shadow bomb was well ahead

of hers.

The  foremost oncoming  coralskippers were  almost on  Jag now,  but  he

executed a starboard turn, as close to a right-angle turn as a TIE pilot

could  manage,  and  headed  directly toward  one  of  the  Yuuzhan Vong

interdictors, the one between their position and the safety of Borleias.

The oncoming coralskippers  vectored to follow  Jag. Jaina opened  fire,

spraying them with stuttering red laser bolts, and heeled over in  Jag's

wake; she saw laserfire from  her fellow pilots flashing into  the cloud

of skips, saw one of the Yuuzhan Vong craft detonate.

This was hard going. She had to fly, fire, and keep track of her  shadow

bomb in the Force - and the  latter task was one of the more  difficult,

because Jag was jinking and juking as only a TIE or A-wing fighter pilot

could,  dodging incoming  plasma cannon  fire from  the inter-dictor  so

nimbly and  acrobatically that  the chief  danger to  him was  that he'd

twitch into the path of a plasma projectile rather than having one  seek

and find him.  Keeping the shadow  bomb tucked in  right behind him  was

proving an almost  impossible task. Her  bomb strayed to  either side of

Jag's clawcraft with every sideslip he performed.

Then she felt Kyp reach to her through the Force. She could suddenly see

his technique;  she saw  Jag's living  presence in  the Force, and there

were the two  unliving things that  were his shadow  bombs, and Kyp  had

connected them as if encasing all three in a bubble so that whenever Jag

moved, he himself drew  the bomb along with  him. Kyp was supplying  the

energy, but  Jag, unknowing,  was directing  it. Jaina  tried to  do the

same, tried to draw a connection between her bomb and Jag... and though,

in that instant, she knew she hadn't developed the degree of control Kyp

had, she  could tell  that her  shadow bomb  was now  shadowing Jag more

effectively.

The coralskippers they'd  been heading toward  mere moments ago  had now

turned in their wake. Jaina put most of her discretionary X-wing  energy

into her  rear  shields and  concentrated  on flitting  like  a  piranha

beetle, keeping  the pursuing  Yuuzhan Vong  pilots from  getting a good

shot in at her. Her other pilots were doing the same.

Jag had increased  his lead to  several kilometers, and  up ahead loomed

the   bulk  of   the  Yuuzhan   Vong  interdictor.   Its  squadrons   of

coralskippers, which  had dispersed  to head  off the  Twin Suns' escape

were congregating  again, but  they'd been  caught off  guard by the run

against the  interdictor. Of  course they  had. From  a logical point of

view, it was the dumbest thing the New Republic pilots could have done.

Jag aimed  straight in  at the  capital ship's  bow, the  node where its

dovin basals were concentrated - the dovin basals that dragged the  ship

through space, that projected the voids that drank incoming damage, that

projected gravitic fluctuations into hyperspace to drag ships in transit

back into realspace - and to keep nearby craft from making the jump into

hyperspace. And finally Jaina knew and understood Jag's plan.

His evasive maneuvers became tighter,  faster, more random as he  neared

the interdictor and its full array  of plasma cannons opened up on  him.

Jaina,  through  her tentative  Force  connection with  Jag,  could feel

little spikes  of alarm  and adrenaline  go through  him, something  she

would never have guessed, given his calm demeanor in every situation.

"Coming up on drop point," Jag said, his tone as indifferent as if  he'd

just ordered a  meal he didn't  look forward to  eating. "Three, two..."

His  clawcraft  began  spraying  laserfire  in  a  spiral  pattern,  the

interdictor's voids  greedily sucking  it all  in. Jaina  could see  the

voids  concentrating  there  before  Jag's  clawcraft,  anticipating the

spread of his attack.

Anticipating. He was so good at anticipating, predicting, that he  could

use the  anticipation of  his enemies  as a  weapon against  them. Jaina

shook her head.

"... one,drop."

Jag's clawcraft  vectored again,  another angle  only a  TIE craft could

manage, but he  continued to direct  his laserfire against  the flank of

the interdictor. Its voids tracked, staying ahead of his lasers.

Jaina  yanked her  shadow bomb  away from  Jag, kept  it almost  on  his

original  course, pulling  it to  port. Kyp  maneuvered his  up and   to

starboard. A void sprang up before Kyp's.

But Jaina's hit,  detonating in a  brilliant flash mere  meters from the

dovin basal node. She  felt another jolt of  alarm from Jag, but  he did

not disappear from her perceptions.

She looped  around the  dying interdictor,  spraying fire  at a  pair of

coralskippers approaching from ahead to port, and her laser attacks were

joined  by  those of  her  squadmates. The  two  skips were  reduced  to

superheated yorik coral  rubble in a  matter of moments...  and suddenly

there  was  nothing  between  her squad  and  Borleias  but  open space.

Coralskippers were angling in from  the sides, but none could  manage an

intercept course capable of catching her X-wings. She breathed a sigh of

relief.

Then her breath  left her. Her  unit consisted of  only ten blips.  Twin

Suns Three wasn't  back with them.  She found Jag  on the sensor  board,

back in  the vicinity  of the  dying interdictor,  at an  angle that was

carrying him back into the midst of the coralskippers.

"Twins Three, this is Leader. What are you doing?"

"Sorry,  Leader."  Jag's  voice  sounded  pained.  "I  was  grazed  by a

singularity effect.  My shields  are stripped  and the  yank put  me off

course. I'll have to catch up to you later."

That  was  just  pilot  bravado.   Jag  had  nearly  two  squadrons   of

coralskippers converging on him  from all directions. No  available exit

vector would let him use the clawfighter's superior speed to just  speed

past opposition; he'd have to fight his way out, and without shields, he

didn't have  a chance.  His skills  might let  him last  a few  seconds,

perhaps a minute. Then he would be dead.

Jaina wavered. Jag was one of her pilots. She couldn't leave him behind.

Couldn't.

But  Kyp was  still in  contact with  her, still  connected through  the

Force. She heard him across the comm unit:

"No, Jaina. If you go back, you've just thrown away what he did for you.

You can't be captured."

"I know," she said.  Her voice sounded weak  to her. She watched  as the

closest of the coralskippers came within firing range of Jag. He resumed

his evasive flying; the little blip representing him on the sensor board

blurred as the sensors tried to keep up with his movements.

"Let's go," Kyp said. His voice was solemn, and she could feel that  his

regret was genuine.

"Yes," she said. "Twin Suns,  set course for Borleias, jump  when ready.

Let the planet's  mass drag you  out of hyperspace."  She saw Twin  Suns

Eleven jump almost immediately; Tilath must have had the course  already

plotted.

Over the next few moments, the others jumped, all but her and Kyp, while

on the  sensor screen  Jag's blip  became surrounded  by an increasingly

thick screen of red dots.

"I'm waiting for you," Jaina said. She could barely hear her own  voice.

There seemed to be a haze over her eyes, a clourf of white noise in  her

ears.

"I'm waiting for you," Kyp said.

"Together, then." Jaina took a deep breath, watching the ever-tightening

web of coralskippers around Jag.  They were channeling him, leaving  the

screen lighter in one direction, and he was inexorably moving toward the

other interdictor. "On three. One, two, three, jump."

Neither X-wing jumped.

"Blast it, Kyp, go home." Jaina  yanked on her yoke, sending her  X-wing

in  the tightest  turn she  could manage  back toward  the combat.  Back

toward the stream of coralskippers pursuing her. And she found, in  that

moment,  that  the  haze over  her  eyes  and white  noise  in  her ears

disappeared.

"Jaina, no." Kyp  stayed with her.  "You can't do  this. You can't  save

him. You can only kill yourself."

"Shut up." He wasn't dead. Jag was still flying, he still had a  trigger

under his finger, he wouldn't die.  She would get there. She would  save

him.

The  first of  her pursuers  began firing.  They weren't  firing  plasma

cannons.  Space  around her  was  suddenly riddled  with  grutchins, the

burrowing insects  that could  disable a  craft. She  twitched her yoke,

allowing  the  Force  to  guide  her  evasive  maneuvers,  and  switched

discretionary power to her forward  shields. So far, there were  none of

the distinctive ping noises of a grutchin hit.

"Jaina,  this  is Colonel  Celchu.  This transmission  is  scrambled and

coming  through your  astromech. General  Antilles is  issuing a  direct

order.  Do  not  reenter  the  combat  zone.  Return  to  base.  Do  you

understand?"

Part of her did. Part of her knew that Wedge Antilles had concluded that

Jag Fel was lost, and was  not willing to exploit even the  faint chance

Jaina Solo offered to save his own nephew. That's how bad it looked.

"Don't tell  me the  odds," she  said, her  voice nearly  a whisper. She

flashed past the first squadron of pursuers. They looped wide to turn in

her  wake  without  getting  in the  way  of  the  second squadron.  Now

grutchins were coming at her from two directions.

"I didn't tell you the odds." For once, Tycho sounded confused.

"Good."

Kyp hung doggedly  at Jaina's side,  firing as constantly  as his lasers

would recycle.  Jaina wasn't  firing. Her  mind was  somewhere else, not

even  acknowledging  the  coralskippers as  threats,  only  her reflexes

keeping the grutchins off her. Kyp nailed one oncoming coralskipper, his

lasers hitting the dovin basal and then shearing through into the skip's

main body. He  checked his sensor  board. Only forty-nine  skips and one

interdictor to go.

Then it was forty-eight. The number on the board dropped and one  little

light near Jag's blip winked out. But Jag was now awfully close to  that

interdictor.

Then the answer  came to Kyp.  "Jaina, I can  save him, but  I need your

help."

He felt a flicker from her. "How?" she asked.

"Aim straight  in for  the other  interdictor's bow.  Go ahead and punch

through the cloud around  Jag to give him  some relief. And protect  me.

I'm going to be too busy to shoot."

"Kyp, the  shadow bomb  thing can't  work again.  They'll be looking for

it."

"That's not what I'm going to do. Do you trust me?"

"Do it."

They traded places then, Jaina suddenly opening up with her weapons, Kyp

handing the task of flying evasively over to his reflexes while his mind

went elsewhere.

Luke Skywalker had done this once, a couple of years ago. He'd mentioned

it to the other Jedi. No one else had tried it because it had  exhausted

Luke to the  point of collapse,  and Jedi were  seldom in a  position to

survive a technique that tired them so completely.

They were past the second  wave of coralskippers now and  heading toward

the  cloud surrounding  Jag. Beyond  it, not  far now,  was the   second

interdictor. Kyp knew that other skips  had to be converging on him  and

Jaina.  He didn't  bother to  look at  his sensor  board. They   weren't

relevant now.

And  he  didn't  think  he'd  be as  terribly  drained  as  Luke  by the

technique. He was stronger in the Force than Luke Skywalker.

He'd known that almost  since they'd met -  that he had more  pure power

than the legendary  Jedi Master. But  this was, perhaps,  the first time

he'd been able to say it to himself without a little thrill of pride. He

was just stronger, and  that was all. It  usually didn't matter. Now  it

did.

They reached the  edge of the  coralskipper cloud around  Jag. Jaina and

Kyp flashed  by the  skips that  had turned  against them, dodging their

incoming fire,  Jaina spraying  return fire.  Suddenly they  were in the

middle, with Jag's clawcraft turning in their wake, and the  interdictor

was before them.

Absently, barely aiming, Kyp squeezed the trigger of his lasers. His red

beams flashed out against the interdictor, and a void moved in  position

to intercept the beams.

Within the Force,  within the broader  range of senses  it gave him,  he

tried to feel the  presence of that void.  He couldn't feel the  Yuuzhan

Vong or their  creatures, but he  could feel distortions  in space, hard

little nuggets of wrongness where there should be nothing.

He felt many of them, but didn't know which belonged to the interdictor,

which  to  the  coralskippers, and  this  rarefied  sensory data  didn't

precisely translate to exact directions and distances. A void that  felt

far away could be from a coralskipper close at hand.

He armed a proton  torpedo and fired it.  He felt its physical  presence

as, in a matter of seconds,  it closed the distance between him  and the

interdictor... and was swallowed by another void.

He felt it enter the void, felt which of the many singularities it was.

And he  seized upon  that void,  directing all  his Force  abilities and

discipline against it.

It was like using a thin  metal rod to push a grounded  landspeeder. Too

much  pressure  and it  would  bend, becoming  useless.  Too little  and

nothing would happen. He had to find the right pressure to budge it,  to

set it into motion and keep it going that way...

For a moment, the only things  in the universe were him, Jaina,  and the

void. He  moved the  void, turned  it around,  moved it  back the  other

direction.

Then he was  himself again, in  the cockpit, watching  the flank of  the

interdictor  distort.  The   void  had  moved   back  and  touched   the

interdictor, and now the  interdictor elongated into it,  extending what

looked like  a pliant  extrusion of  what he  knew to  be hardened yorik

coral into the singularity.

The  portions  of  the  interdictor in  closest  proximity  to  the void

accelerated faster  into its  maw so  that portions  farther back  tore,

venting gases into space. But the incredible gravity of the  singularity

didn't allow  the remainder  of the  ship to  tear away  and be free. It

dragged  greater  and  greater  portions  of  the  interdictor  into it,

compressing them,  rending them,  and in  a moment  the interdictor  was

gone.

Kyp felt obliterated, bone-tired, as  though he'd run for days,  drawing

on the Force to sustain him, and had finally settled down for rest.  His

diagnostics board was beeping  at him and he  spared it a glance.  "I've

taken damage," he said. "A grutchin, I think."

In  fact,  a portion  of  his cockpit,  to  starboard, was  starting  to

blacken, with acrid smoke pouring off it. Idly, he pulled his lightsaber

from his belt and oriented its head toward the blackened area.

A moment  later, the  metal parted  and insectile  eyes shoved their way

into the  cockpit. Kyp  thumbed his  lightsaber on  and the energy blade

plunged through  the creature.  Kyp turned  it off  again. Its noise was

muted by  the fact  that almost  all the  atmosphere in  the cockpit had

disappeared through the hole in those few moments;

Kyp's  flight  suit  activated,  its  energy  shield  technology holding

atmosphere  in  around  him, keeping  pressure  on  his skin.  "Grutchin

problem solved," he said.

"Sorry about that," Jaina said. Her voice was muted.

Kyp glanced at his sensor board.  He, Jaina, and Jag were outbound  from

the engagement zone. Maybe twenty coralskippers were in pursuit.

But there were now other friendlies  on the board, a cloud tagged  Rogue

Squadron, a capital-ship-sized blip tagged Lunar Tide, approaching  from

the approximate direction of  galactic spin. "Let's go  that direction,"

Kyp suggested.

"We'll do that, Kyp," Jaina said. "Thank-you."

"Think nothing of it."

Han sat, limp and  gray, in his seat  and forced himself to  take deeper

breaths.

Leia didn't look any better than he felt. "We raised her that way,  Han,

whether we intended to or not."

"I know."

"So we can't exactly criticize her."

"Since  when does  logic interfere  with my  right to  complain to  her?

Especially when she does something that stupid?"

"Han."

"I'm twenty years older than I was this morning. Twenty years, Leia."

"You're starting to sound like Threepio."

He scowled at her. "Am I really?"

"Just fly. The faster we get to the Maw, the faster we can return."

FOURTEEN

Yuuzhan Vong Worldship. Coruscant Orbit

The laser  beam, a  meter thick,  flashed from  the depths  of space  to

strike Tsavong Lah's worldship.

It hit with the force of  a turbolaser battery, pouring damage onto  the

worldship surface, superheating the  yorik coral there, scarring  deeply

into it.

Less than a second later,  a void materialized beneath it,  intercepting

it, swallowing  all the  damage. The  void remained  there as the damage

continued to rain down. Then,  a minute later, the laser  attack ceased,

and the void disappeared.

In  the worldship  control chamber,  Tsavong Lah  took the  news of  the

attack with puzzlement in his manner. "Extent of damage?" he asked.

"Minimal," Maal Lah said. "The damage is already regenerating. Within  a

day, there will be nothing but a battle scar."

"And you have not found the vehicle or emplacement that fired it."

"No, Warmaster.  Though it  appears that  it was  fired from  beyond the

orbit of this system's outermost  planet, and took considerable time  to

reach our worldship."

"Demonstrating  merely  that they  have  enough spotters  on  the planet

below, and  that those  spotters have  enough communications  gear, that

they can  keep track  of this  worldship's position  while it remains in

orbit." Tsavong Lah shrugged. "Why would they demonstrate this knowledge

in a way that gains them no advantage?"

"I do not know, Warmaster."

Tsavong Lah  considered, barely  distracted by  the twinging  sensations

brought on by the parasites burrowing their way through the flesh of his

arm.

A thought occurred to him, a discouraging one. "Trace the course of that

laser attack."

"We have already done so, Warmaster."

"Trace it beyond the Coruscant system. What other planetary systems  are

directly along that line?"

Maal Lah gestured to one of his analysts, and within moments the analyst

brought them the answer. "Pyria," Maal Lah said.

"Open the villip to my father. And bring Viqi Shesh tome."

Borleias Occupation, Day 39

Though the doors to  the special ops  docking bay were  open, and the  X

wings of Rogue  Squadron were maneuvering  through them to  land, Jaina,

Kyp, and Jag were  directed to land in  the kill zone, only  a few dozen

meters from the  front entranceway, in  an area where  no other vehicles

were situated. One officer stood there alone, and as they came in for  a

landing, Jaina recognized him:

Colonel Celchu.

Her  heart  couldn't sink  much.  It was  already  somewhere around  her

ankles. But she felt it descend the final few centimeters to her toes.

As  the pilots  emerged from  their starfighters,  Tycho looked  between

them. "Anyone hurt?" he asked.

They  all  shook  their heads.  Kyp,  though  undamaged, leaned  heavily

against the wing of his snubfighter,  and Tycho gave him a second  look.

"You, go lie down," he said.

"Happy to." Kyp glanced at Jaina. "By your leave, Great One."

"Get some rest, Kyp."

Tycho turned to Jaina. "General Antilles wants to see you,now."

"I expect so."

"And me? "Jag asked.

"Later,"  Tycho   said.  "Though   he  did   want  me   to  extend   his

congratulations on that shadow bomb tactic. Since kills can't be awarded

to more  than two  people, he  thinks that  first interdictor  should be

awarded to you."

"I agree," Jaina said. "I'll sign off on that."

"Me, too," Kyp said.

They walked into the biotics building. Kyp managed not to stagger as  he

left them for his quarters.

At Wedge's office, Tycho left Jaina  and Jag to enter the inner  office,

then stuck  his head  out a  moment later  to say,  "It'll be about five

minutes."

"Understood," Jaina said.

When Tycho had withdrawn again into the inner office, leaving them  with

Wedge's protocol droid. Jag said, "I need to talk to you. Privately."

Jaina couldn't tell, from his quiet, controlled manner, what he intended

to convey to her, but she had a good idea. "There's a little  conference

room down the corridor."

"That'll do."

She knew what  he was going  to say. His  face would turn  pale with his

anger, highlighting the scar on his forehead, and he would cut her  with

his words.  You abandoned  your mission  objectives for  one pilot, he'd

say. You almost wiped out the rest of your squadron. You almost  wrecked

the plan. No  one's life is  worth that. Not  mine. Not yours.  You're a

complete failure as a leader, as an officer.

He'd say  that, and  she wouldn't  have any  words with  which to defend

herself, because he'd be right.

He'd stare at her with  an expression made up of  analytical calculation

and hard experience.  He'd tell her  what he thought  of her. Then  he'd

turn and walk  away. He'd find  himself a unit  to command, a  unit that

could be counted on to perform up to his professional standards.

A  sharp pain  sprang up  in her  gut, as  though she'd   in-advertently

swallowed a vibroblade and her movements had finally switched it on. But

she held herself  straight. She had  to be able  to look him  in the eye

when he started in on the verbal beating she knew she deserved.

They reached the conference room,  its door open, its interior  cool and

dark; Jag turned on the overhead lights, closed the door behind Jaina.

She faced him, hoping that what she was feeling wasn't reflected in  her

expression. "I know what you're going to say," she told him.

"I don't think  you do." Oddly,  his face was  not the stern  mask she'd

expected. If anything, he looked  uncertain, unlike the Jag Fel  she was

used to.

"You're going to tell  me that I screwed  up. You're going to  elaborate

until  you're certain  I can't  take it  anymore. Then  you're going  to

leave." Her throat, constricting, caused her to lose control of the last

few words; they sounded high and hoarse to her.

"No. We both know that your command decisions were far afield of  common

sense and effective strategy. We don't even have to discuss that. What I

have to know..." He hesitated, and if anything looked even less sure  of

himself than before, "What I have to know is this: Why did you doit?"

"I don't know."

"You do  know. You  have to  know. Nobody  else but  you could know." He

leaned in closer.  It wasn't a  posture of intimidation;  he stared into

her eyes as if he hoped to  find an answer, any answer, written in  tiny

letters on her pupils. "Answer me."

"I... I..." Her voice hoarsened until  she was sure she could no  longer

use it, but finally words emerged, words that seemed to be coming from a

child. "Everyone is  going away." Tears  blurred her vision.  "They keep

going away and I can't stop it. I didn't want you to go away."

Then the tears did come, and Jag was transformed into a wavery block  of

black uniform with  a wavery block  of pale skin  atop it. She  could no

longer read his expression  but knew it had  to be one of  puzzlement or

distaste or outright contempt -

Then he took  her by the  shoulders and pulled  her to him,  drawing her

head against his chest, resting his own head atop hers, an embrace  that

startled her so much that she  should have jumped away. But she  didn't.

She leaned against him, a half  collapse, her legs no longer willing  or

able to bear all her weight, and  though she did not sob, her tears  ran

down her face and soaked into his uniform.

"I won't go anywhere," he said.

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why won't you go anywhere? "

"Because I  don't want  to." He  tilted his  head down  and hers up, and

suddenly she was kissing him, holding him tight enough to cause a vacuum

weld.

Her  confusion  didn't  disappear,  but  it  was  joined  by  a  soaring

sensation, as though  she'd just taken  off and left  her X-wing behind.

There was also  an abrupt relief  of pressure, unbearable  pressure that

she had never felt descending upon  her, had never noticed until it  was

gone.

Gavin Darklighter departed Wedge's office. Wedge and Tycho looked up  as

Jag entered and saluted.

"I've known  Jaina Solo  since she  was tiny,"  Wedge said.  "You're not

her."

Jag kept his attention fixed on  the wall over Wedge's head. "I  came in

her place, sir."

"She asked you to do that?"

"No, sir. I told her to go get some rest. That I'd speak to you and  get

things sorted out."

"Sorted out." Wedge  exchanged a  glance with  Tycho, but  his second-in

command had retreated behind the safety  of his sabacc face. "Do I  need

sorting out, Fel? "

"I believe  so, sir,  through no  fault of  your own.  If I may answer a

question with a  question, how old  were you before  you first disagreed

with a commanding officer - and later found out you were right?"

"Twenty. Which is when I first had a commanding officer."

"I'm about the same age, sir,  and I have something to recommend  before

you talk to Jaina Solo."

"Very well. At ease. Sit down. Let's hear what you have to say."

Jag did as he was told and  finally met his uncle's eyes. "Sir, I  think

that disciplining her now would be like hitting a bar of metal when it's

superheated."

"Meaning that you'll change its shape."

"Yes, sir. And not for the better."

"What about her reliability in combat? I need to take her off the  line.

She's not rational."

"That  would  be disciplining  her,  sir, probably  with  the results  I

predict. I recommend against it."

"Despite the fact  that she deliberately  disobeyed orders and  risked a

high-priority mission to pursue a personal agenda."

"Yes,  sir."  Jag cleared  his  throat. "Sir,  I'd  fly again  with  her

tomorrow, and not out of gratitude. I think that what happened today was

an anomaly. I don't think it will happen again."

"Care to tell me why?"

"No, sir."

Wedge let a silence fall between them, let it stretch into long seconds.

"You  know, I  would not,  from a  command point  of view,  be able   to

accommodate you on  this, despite the  fact that I  do have appreciation

for your views  and experience. It's  the sort of  thing that undermines

discipline. But we  already have orders  in place that  demonstrate that

Jaina receives  special treatment.  This is  a more  extreme variety  of

special treatment than I'd prefer to accord her, but there you are."

"Yes, sir."

"All right, then. I'll do as  you recommend. And get my answers  later."

Wedge leaned forward, his posture becoming more casual. "Let me take  my

rank insignia off for a second. Jag, and say how glad I am that you made

it today."

Jag managed a smile. "Thank you, sir - uh, Wedge."

"Still difficult to address me informally, isn't it?"

"Yes. Yes, it is."

"Good.  That  gives  me  one  more  way  to  make  a  know-it-all nephew

uncomfortable." Wedge heaved a sigh. "Back  to work for me, so I'll  let

you get back to your duties, as well."

"Sir." All business again. Jag stood, saluted, and left.

When the door closed behind him, Tycho said, "That was interesting."

"He deliberately countermanded one of my orders," Wedge said.

"He was furtive."

Wedge nodded. "Sneaky, even."

"We'll make a Rebellion-style pilot of him yet."

The Maw

Han  navigated  through the  danger  zone of  the  Maw with  the  grace,

intuition, and  delicate skill  he could  demonstrate whenever  the need

arose -  but which  he preferred  to demonstrate  only when  no one  was

watching, as careful, meticulous flying of this sort ran counter to  his

image as a cocky and  careless flyboy. Behind the Millennium  Falcon, in

single file,  followed two  X-wings and  a freighter,  each meticulously

duplicating his course changes.

The Maw, from far away, was visible only as a big splotch of color  with

dark singularities sucking in colorful  gasses. It was a convergence  of

black holes, their random  placement almost completely enclosing  within

it an  area of  space. The  extreme gravitational  and light  distortion

caused by the overlapping fields of effect made it impossible for  light

within that space  to escape and  made it fatal  for any ship  to try to

enter or depart along a straight path. The routes to the interior  space

were complicated and devious,  skirting areas made impossibly  dangerous

by the black holes' gravitational exertion. Only a very good pilot could

navigate one of the known approaches. Only an extraordinary pilot  could

find a new one.

Today  Han  was  playing  it safe,  traveling  along  one  of the  known

approaches. Knowledge of those routes was confined to a very few people.

Leia knew Han could  probably feel his way  through a new approach,  but

now, with a ship full of  children and teens aboard, with Yuu-zhan  Vong

conducting activity  at the  nearby Kessel  system, was  not the time to

explore.

Eventually  Han made  the final  course correction  and vectored  toward

Shelter, the space station growing at the center of the sheltered  space

of the Maw. He breathed out several minutes' worth of tension and  said,

"There it is. Uglier than ever."

Shelter was an ad-hoc collection of parts assembled by Lando  Calrissian

and a collection  of advisers and  patrons he trusted.  Cobbled together

into its  structure were  remains of  the original  Maw Installation,  a

collection  of  hollow  planetoids  that  had  housed  the  workers  and

technicians who had fabricated Imperial superweapons, plus components of

old space stations, modules stripped from cargo vessels, and  extrusions

whose origins Leia couldn't identify.

In  minutes,  they were  docked  at their  designated  berthing area,  a

domelike attachment -  whose base was  about four times  the diameter of

the Millennium Falcon, and whose surfaces, a matte silver decorated with

patches of rust,  hinted at similar  antiquity - which  had not been  in

place the last  time they'd visited,  several weeks before.  Waiting for

them as  they descended  the ramp  was a  tall woman  whose elegance and

expensive dark  clothes spoke  of aristocracy...  and distant  times and

places where aristocrats might enjoy the benefits of their station.

Leia hurried ahead of the descending line of Jedi kids and embraced her.

"Tendra! I didn't know you were here."

Lando's wife gave her a return  smile. "You almost missed me. I  brought

some materiel and I've spent the last few days making sure it was up and

running."

"What materiel?" Han asked.

Tendra waved her hand, her gesture taking in the entire docking bay and,

by extension,  the rest  of the  dome. "This.  It's a deep-space habitat

module used by world-shapers. It  has its own gravity generator,  even a

crude old hyperdrive. It's been  in storage on a Corporate  Sector scrap

heap for generations. I was able to pick it up for, well, less than it's

worth."

"And now it's the core of the Jedi portion of Shelter?" Leia asked.

"Yes.  I've  made  sure  some  of  the  areas  originally  intended  for

worldshaping materials have been  restructured for training halls.  It's

pretty short on supplies - "

"We brought supplies," Han said. "In the other freighter, as well as the

Falcon.   Food,   fabrication   machinery,   energy   cells   and  fuel,

recordings..." His gaze fell on the Jedi children spreading out  through

the docking  bay, looking  at the  cargo loaders  and Tendra's ship, the

Gentleman Caller. "And brats."

"Hey." Valin  Horn, Corran's  son, stopped  a couple  of meters away and

gave him a scowl. "I'm not a brat."

"No, your dad's the brat in the Horn family."

Valin smirked. "I'm going to tell him you said that."

"You  do  that. Scoot,  kid.  Go beat  up  a rancor  or  something." Han

returned his  attention to  Tendra. "If  you're about  to leave, you can

wait just long enough  for us to give  the Falcon a check-over  and then

we'll escort you out."

"You're not staying?"

"Too  much to  do at  Borleias. Keeping  your husband  out of   trouble,

watching our daughter get  in trouble..." He exchanged  a long-suffering

look with Leia. "So we're going right back."

"I'll be  ready in  half an  hour." Tendra  gave him  another smile  and

headed back to  her ship, her  heels ringing on  the metal floor  of the

docking bay.

Leia sighed after her. "What I would have given to be that tall."

"I've  got a  thousand credits  that say  she's always  wished she   was

petite. And another thousand that if you two got together to talk  about

how much you envied each other's height, the conversation would  devolve

into what pains your husbands are."

"No bet. Our husbands are pains."

"Well, they were Imperial credits anyway.  Ready to help me go over  the

Falcon?"

"No, first I need to say good-bye to..." Leia looked around the  docking

bay,  identifying  each of  the  people moving  about.  "Where is  Tarc,

anyway?"

"I've got a thousand credits that say he's hiding on board the Falcon."

"Stop that."

Han gave her a smile he knew to be insufferable and thumbed his comlink.

"Goldenrod, where is Tarc now?"

C-3PO's voice, sounding distinctly aggrieved, came back a moment  later:

"He's in the upper quadlaser cupola, huddling in the seat so he can't be

seen. And sir, I do have a name."

Moments  later,  they  stood  at  the  bottom  of  the  access  into the

turbolaser shaft. "Tarc?" Leia said. "You want to come down?"

"No," the boy said. He didn't even lean over so his face could be seen.

"It's time, Tarc." Leia made her voice gentle. "If you get in line early

you may get better quarters."

"And then I'll be stuck with them. The Jedi."

"There's nothing wrong with Jedi. I'm a Jedi."

"Yeah, but you're  different. You're not  creepy. I want  to go back  to

Borleias with you."

Han said, "It's safer here, Tarc."

The boy finally did  look over the arm  of his chair. He  stared down at

Han with an expression that combined pity with condescension, a forceful

you have  no idea  what you're  talking about  look. "No,  it's not," he

said.

"The scarheads  are looking  for Jedi.  If they  come here  and find the

Jedi, they'll get me, too."

"Don't say 'scarheads,'  " Leia said.  "It's not nice."  "Besides," Tarc

added, pulling back out of sight,  "if they don't come, and people  come

for these Jedi kids, no one will come for me."

"Of course we will," Han said. "No, you won't. The only reason I'm still

alive is  'cause I  look like  Anakin Solo.  And it  hurts your feelings

every time you see me. I can tell."

Han looked at Leia. She paled and started to fold over.

Han moved to put his arms around her, and slowly she straightened.

Han whispered, "Did you teach him to argue?" "Nobody had to teach him to

argue," she  whispered back.  "All kids  argue like  senior politicians.

Except that not all senior politicians  can cry on cue." "So what  do we

do?" She shrugged. "Maybe we shouldn't leave him here. In a place  where

all the  other children  have powers  he can't  compete with. Except for

Wedge's kids, who'll  probably just subvert  the administrators here  to

get whatever they want."

"What do we do instead? Take him  back to Borleias, put him in front  of

the Vong? Ship him off to a  refugee camp run by strangers? At least  we

know Kam and Tionne."

"I just don't know, Han."

"But you know everything."

"Only by comparison with my husband."

"Ouch." Han stopped whispering. "Hey, kid."

"What?" Tarc looked back over the arm at him.

"Never get married."

"What does that mean?"

"It means strap yourself in. You're going back to Borleias for now."

The boy's eyes widened. "Really?"

"Just for the time being, kid." Han let real anger creep into his  tone.

"And don't pull that because I look like Anakin skitter. Not ever again.

Do you understand?"

Tarc's expression froze. "Yes, sir."

"Remember this face, kid. It's telling you that I mean what I say."  Han

drew Leia along  with him toward  the cockpit. "I'll  figure out how  to

convince him next time."

"I've got a thousand credits that say you don't."

FIFTEEN

Borleais Occupation, Day 47

It was  the dead  of night,  but the  former biotics  facility was never

truly  asleep.  Tam could  hear  movement down  side  corridors, distant

conversations, a  rumble in  the walls  that signified  the takeoff of a

patrol of starfighters outside.

But this corridor was comparatively still. Guarded day and night against

entry by unauthorized personnel, it was empty of traffic at this hour.

Tam  paused  outside the  door  to Danni  Quee's  laboratories and  felt

himself rocking in place, moved by the racing of his heart.

But pausing  was failure  to comply,  and the  faintest throbs  of a new

headache joined the rhythm of his heart.

He cursed and moved  to the wall opposite  the doorway. Reaching up,  he

brushed his fingers along the wall's surface, near the ceiling, until he

found it - a slick patch as though someone had sprayed oil there.

It  wasn't oil.  It was  a thing  of the  Yuuzhan Vong,  another  living

apparatus that they had given him. It had a texture much like the villip

- smooth, slick.  He rubbed it  until he found  the crease that  was its

activation point, and he stroked  that more deliberately. Then he  wiped

his hand on his shirt.

That spot on the wall changed color. Though he knew it remained flat  as

a sheet of fine flimsiplast, it seemed to him as though it gained depth,

transforming into a  duplicate of the  security keypad and  blue readout

beside Danni's door.

As though it  were a holorecording,  a hand came  into view and  punched

numbers into the keypad. It was a woman's hand, young, unlined, probably

Danni's. Tam  watched the  keys as  they were  depressed, memorizing the

sequence, and glanced at the readout that showed the values of the keys.

They weren't  the same.  He repeated  the letters  and numbers he'd seen

pressed, and they differed from the ones on the readout in two places.

That meant  - what?  Either he'd  misread the  keys as  they were  being

punched, or the readout played back an incorrect sequence.

He nodded,  satisfied. It  was a  security measure.  A recording  of the

readout would yield a password that either wouldn't work or would  alert

a security office of an intrusion in progress. Only Tam's visual memory,

very  strong and  accurate, one  of the  reasons he'd  become a  holocam

operator in the first  place, had saved him  from being trapped by  this

subterfuge.

He wished he'd been trapped. He wished he'd failed.

The headache began to increase in intensity.

He touched the Yuuzhan Vong recording apparatus and watched it fade away

to transparency. Then  he keyed   the password  - the  correct  password

into the keypad. The door slid aside.

Tam froze. Inside the room, two  meters from him, Danni Quee sat  at her

usual  desk. But  she was  motionless, her  head down,  colors from  the

monitor before her playing across her hair.

Danni didn't move, other than from the rhythm of her breathing, and  Tam

forced himself to enter the office.

It was dim, lit only by monitors and desk lights, and no one other  than

Danni was  present. Tam  moved around  her station  to stand beside her,

taking great  care not  to brush  against anything;  if he  moved slowly

enough, he could  compensate for his  awkwardness. Awkwardness that  had

caused him to trip when  he was being pursued on  Coruscant. Awkwardness

that had led to his capture. His enslavement.

Danni's monitor  showed something,  an object  with facets  like a  gem.

There  was a  lot of  writing on  the screen,  technical terminology  he

couldn't grasp, phrases like reflectivity index and refraction and power

augmentation.

He squinted at it. His eyes were fine, but he had to squint to alert the

little creature now sharing his ocular  orbit with his eye that now  was

the  time for  it to  wake up  and begin  recording. He  felt the  thing

twitch; then his stomach twitched as nausea rose within him.

Tam moved through the laboratory,  looking at each of the  other screens

in  turn,  looking at  handwritten  notes and  datapad  screens. At  the

station beside Danni's lay a couple of data cards; slowly, silently,  he

brought out his own datapad, inserted the cards in it, copied off  their

contents, and returned them to their original positions.

There was nothing more to do here.

He felt his headache rise in  strength. No, there was something more  he

could do here. His orders were to acquire information... and to aid  the

Yuuzhan Vong in  general in any  way he could  that did not  lead to his

capture and exposure.

Danni Quee was here. Tam could overpower her while she slept. She was an

enemy  of  the Yuuzhan  Vong,  and eliminating  her  as a  New  Republic

resource would definitely help his masters.

There was no way he could  smuggle her out of the bi-otics  building, no

way he could even smuggle her out of this hallway. No, to eliminate  her

as a threat, he'd have to kill her.

He could do it, too, in such a way that there would be no likelihood  of

blame  falling on  him. In  one of  his pockets  was a  gob of  material

restraining a razor bug. He could pull it out, free the creature,  fling

it at Danni. It would chew her to pieces.

And he'd go back to the shuttle and receive praise.

He stood in place and his  headache mounted. He cursed himself. Just  by

thinking of a way to help  the Yuu-zhan Vong, he'd obligated himself  to

do it, or suffer the consequences. Danni Quee had to die now.

He stood behind  her. He didn't  bother wondering what  might have been,

had  they  met  in  different  circumstances.  He  was  a  big,  clumsy,

inarticulate thing and she was an intelligent, beautiful woman with  the

stamp of destiny on her. Had they been stranded together on an otherwise

deserted planet, nothing  would have happened  between them. They  would

have ended up friends. Just good friends.

Tam reached out a  hand to brush it,  ever so carefully, against  one of

her blond  curls, now  colored scarlet  by light  from the screen before

her. Then he reached into his pocket and found the razor bug.

He  stood and  did nothing.  The pain  increased until  it affected  his

breathing, making it short and halting.

The problem was, no matter how much  he wanted the pain to end, he  knew

it would keep coming. He knew that Danni Quee deserved to live. He  knew

that he deserved to die.

He turned away. Pain shot through  him as though a metal spike  had been

hammered through both his temples  with a single blow. He  staggered and

had to put a hand on the floor to keep from falling over.

But the pain didn't kill him.  He strained against it, rose, made  it as

far as the door. He had to  lean for long moments against the door  jamb

to give himself strength enough to continue. Then he could open the door

and leave.

As he  walked, his  steps made  unrhythmic by  the hammering  within his

skull, he reminded himself that he was taking data to his controller. He

was succeeding in his primary mission. And the pain diminished.

But only a little.

As soon as the door slid shut behind Tam, Danni raised her head to stare

after him.

She typed  a command  into her  keyboard. The  screen before her changed

views to follow Tam as he staggered away down the corridor.

When he was well out of  earshot, she keyed her corn-link. "He's  gone,"

she whispered. "He was either memorizing or recording everything on  our

screens."

Iella's voice  came back,  not a  whisper, but  the comlink's volume was

dialed down low. "Did he leave anything?"

"I don't know. I'll begin analyzing the recordings now. Out."

"Good work. Out."

Danni  brought up  the first  of the  recordings made  by the   holocams

positioned at  hidden points  around the  room. She  felt her  shoulders

twitch. She wasn't sure what Tam had  been up to in the long minutes  he

stood directly behind her, and was  desperate to be sure that he  hadn't

spread Yuuzhan Vong creatures throughout this office.

Yuuzhan Vong Worldship, Coruscant Orbit

In the operations  chamber, surrounded by  analysts and advisers,  blaze

bug displays and recording creatures, banks of villips and standing rows

of guards,  Tsavong Lah  sat at  the center  of things  and listened  to

reports.

Most of them came from Maal  Lah and Viqi Shesh. As they  spoke, Tsavong

Lah reflected that some things never changed. Normally, it would be  Nom

Anor and  Vergere standing  before him,  interpreting, offering  advice,

sniping at one another, one of them a Yuuzhan Vong warrior and the other

a clever  female of  a lesser  species. Now,  with Nom  Anor and Vergere

performing  other  tasks, their  roles  were still  being  acted out  by

others.

"It is a super-weapon," Maal Lah said, using the Basic word rather  than

the Yuuzhan Vong  equivalent. "They have  a history of  creating devices

that can travel faster than light and smash entire worlds, and this is a

new one."

"It's Danni Quee's doing," Viqi said. "It has to be. She's the only  one

who could integrate Yuuzhan Vong  and New Republic technology this  way.

I'm going to make that idiot Tam suffer for not killing her when he  had

the chance."

Tsavong Lah raised a finger. Viqi bit back on further ranting words.  "I

just heard heresy," Tsavong Lah  said. "First, the works of  the Yuuzhan

Vong are not technology. They must never be referred to as such."

Apparently stricken, though Tsavong Lah suspected it was merely  acting,

Viqi bowed  her head.  "I am  sorry, Warmaster.  I don't  know a word to

encompass both disciplines."

"Perhaps, during your punishment, you  will find one. Second, our  works

could not be melded with infidel technology. The gods would never  allow

it."

Viqi and Maal Lah  exchanged glances, and it  was Maal Lah who  dared to

correct the warmaster. "This turns out not to be correct. It has already

been done. We  know that, some  time ago, Anakin  Solo reconstructed his

lightsaber  with a  lambent crystal...  and it  appears that  he  passed

knowledge of this technique to others  before he was killed. It is  also

with a lambent crystal that this new device is concerned."

"Go on."

Maal  Lah  gestured  to  Viqi.  She  turned  to  activate  the recording

creatures on the table  behind her. Each, in  turn, began to shine,  the

light above it showing one of the images Tam Elgrin had recorded.

Maal Lah pointed to the image that had been on Danni's screen. "That  is

a lambent  crystal. Rather,  it is  a diagram  of one.  According to the

information Viqi's  agent seized,  it is  being artificially  grown in a

laboratory in the depths of their garrison building. According to  other

information we read in these images, they tried to grow the crystals  on

their ships, but they grow only in true gravity, or dovin basal  gravity

- their infidel technology gravity ruins them."

Tsavong  Lah offered  Maal Lah  an expression  of revulsion.  "So  their

Jeedai will have more lightsabers? We will not allow it."

"It is  worse than  that, Warmaster.  The diagram  you see  represents a

lambent crystal as tall as one of our warriors."

"As tall as... what sort of obscenity could they produce with such a..."

And then  Tsavong Lah  knew what  they were  producing. He found himself

standing, shaking in  anger, and did  not remember rising.  "Bring me my

father's villip," he said.

In  moments,  he  stared  into  the  villip's  blurry  but  recognizable

simulation of his father's features. With impatience, Tsavong Lah rushed

through  the customary  greetings. Then  he got  to the  subject of  his

communication;  "I now  know what  their Starlancer  project is.  It  is

another accursed superweapon. The coherent light these vehicles  project

to one another  will at some  point be focused  through a giant  lambent

crystal being  fabricated in  the depths  of their  building. When  this

happens, the beam  will be of  sufficient power to  destroy a worldship.

The attack we suffered not long ago was a test-firing, perhaps to attune

the weapon's beam to the target."

"Interesting," his father said.

"We cannot allow them to perfect this device," the warmaster  continued.

"So I now direct  you to commit yourself  to an all-out assault  on that

facility and destroy it. Immediately."

Czulkang Lah was  silent for long  moments. The villip  representing his

face froze  into such  immobility that  Tsavong Lah  wondered if  it had

suffered some sort of  failure. Then his father  spoke again. "To do  so

would  be a  strategic mistake,"  Czulkang Lah  said. "We  have not  yet

gauged our enemy's tactics or resources. His repertoire of surprises  is

not fully known.  At best, our  losses will probably  be inappropriately

high. At worst, with such  a premature attack, we could  sacrifice large

numbers of warriors  needlessly... and still  lose. It is  too early, my

son."

"My orders stand," Tsavong Lah said.

His  father's  features  assumed  an expression  that  all  but  said, I

expected better of you. It was an expression Czulkang Lah wore  whenever

a student had  failed him for  the last time.  It had never  before been

directed at  Tsavong Lah,  and the  warmaster took  an involuntary  step

back.

But Czulkang Lah said nothing aloud, no words that would shame his  son.

Instead, he said, "It will be done."

"May the gods smile upon your actions," Tsavong Lah said. He gestured at

one of his officers, who stroked the villip. It inverted.

The  warmaster   stood,  his   breathing  heavy.   His  father's   final

disapproval, so implacable, was like a physical blow to him.

When he  was under  control again,  he turned  to Maal  Lah. "Issue this

directive. When Borleias falls to us,  it will no longer be the  home of

the Kraal. Instead,  it will be  given to the  priests of Yun-Yammka,  a

haven for their order, in thanks to the god for the gains he has brought

us."

Maal Lah nodded. He, too, said, "It will be done."

That, the warmaster thought, should send the priests of Yun-Yuuzhan into

a fit, and if there truly  are conspirators within their orders and  the

shapers are against me, I will soon know it. He glanced down at his left

arm. I will soon feel it.

Borleias Occupation, Day 48

"It has all the characteristics of a major push," Tycho said.

He,  Wedge,  and  Iella  stood  before  the  control  chamber's hologram

display. It showed the compiled readouts from all the garrison's  ground

based sensors, including the gravitic sensors Luke's Jedi had planted in

the  jungle  beyond the  kill  zone, and  incorporated  live feeds  from

starfighters out on patrol.

At  the center  of the  display was  the large  friendly signal   marked

"Base."  Out  at  a  distance of  a  few  hundred  kilometers, in  every

direction  of  the compass,  were  masses of  red  blips; Iella  counted

sixteen separate groups. "What are they doing? " she asked.

"One  or  two  groups are  landing  personnel,  vehicles, everything  an

invasion force needs," Wedge  said, "The others are  distractions. We're

supposed to divide up our attention among them in a desperate attempt to

figure out  where their  landing zone  is, and  we're supposed to become

nervous because we're not succeeding."

"'Supposed to,'" Iella said. "Meaning that you're not? Not doing  either

one?"

Wedge shook his head. "Oh, we're sending out scouts to all these  sites,

but they're under orders to show up, stay alert, and then make a run for

it if anything comes after them. We don't want to lose pilots  acquiring

information we essentially don't need."

"So you don't care where their landing zone is?"

"It doesn't matter."

"Why?"

"Because, sometime in the  next day or two,  they're going to attack  us

here - and that's exactly what we want them to do."

"And when they do,"  Iella said, "who are  you going to face  them with?

The New Republic or the Rebel Alliance?"

Wedge and Tycho exchanged a look, and both grinned.

"Neither," Wedge said. "We're going  to face them with an  enemy they've

never had the displeasure of fighting. We're going to hit them with  the

Empire."

"They're not going to like the Empire," Tycho said.

And they told her about Operation Emperor's Hammer.

Borleias Occupation, Day 48

This time, when the Millennium Falcon arrived on Borleias, it did so  in

the middle  of the  night, to  no fanfare,  no welcoming committee other

than a  handful of  refuelers. Leia  saw Han  breathe a  sigh of thanks,

celebrating the absence of ceremony.

Han  took Tarc  to find  him some  quarters -  the rooms  that had  been

assigned to the underaged Jedi students, where Tarc had previously  been

staying, would have been reassigned by now, and Han, though he liked the

boy, didn't want him in their  own quarters. Leia went in search  of her

daughter.

Jaina's X-wing was  in the special  operations docking bay,  a mechanics

crew working on it, but Leia could not find her daughter in her quarters

or  in  the  former  incubation  chamber  that  now  served  the special

operations squadrons - Rogue,   Wild Knights, Twin  Suns,  and Blackmoon

as an informal lounge.

Leia  couldn't  call  Jaina  on  her  comlink,  couldn't  give  her  the

impression  that  she was  keeping  tabs, even  though  that's what  she

desperately wanted to do. Eventually, having had no luck in her  search,

she returned to her own quarters.

And it was there  she found Jaina -  stretched out on the  bed, lying on

her side,  in her  pilot's jumpsuit,  her boots  and other accoutrements

kicked off to  the foot of  the bed. Jaina  was asleep, and  Leia took a

moment just to look at her.

Though in engagement after engagement Jaina had been at the controls  of

one of the New Republic's deadliest fighter craft, racking up kill after

kill against savage enemies, her features were now relaxed in sleep, and

she looked as innocent as a child.  But she was no child now. She  was a

young woman,  her childhood  suddenly, irretrievably  gone, and  an ache

constricted  Leia's heart.  We should  be away  from all  this now,  she

thought. Han and Jaina andjacen and Anakin and I. And Luke and Mara  and

little Ben. In a field of flowers. On Alderaan.

Moving slowly and quietly  so as not to  awaken Jaina, Leia lay  down on

the bed  and put  an arm  around her.  It was  a closeness, a protracted

closeness that Jaina  no longer permitted  her in times  of wakefulness.

Too soon, she heard Jaina's breathing change as her daughter awakened.

Jaina looked up into Leia's face and offered a slight, sleepy smile.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to wake you."

"It's  all right."  Jaina reached  up to  pull Leia's  arm more  tightly

around her. "Since you left, I've  come here sometimes because I knew  I

could smell  you and  Dad here.  You'd be  all around  me even  when you

weren't here."

Leia managed to  keep an expression  of incredulity off  her face. Those

words seemed so unlike Jaina - so unlike the person she'd become  across

the last couple of years. "Are you all right?"

Jaina shook her head. "I don't think  so." She lay her head down on  the

pillow again. "I don't think I know who I am anymore."

"Is it this goddess thing - ?"

"No. That doesn't confuse me in the least. It's just a confidence  game.

No, the problem  is all being  a Jedi, which  seems so crystal  clear in

what you should do and what you should say at any given time... and then

being the rest of me, where nothing is clear." Her expression, what Leia

could see of it at this angle, seemed bleak.

Leia chuckled. "Jaina, I've been wrestling with the same question  since

I was only  a little older  than you are  now, and I  still don't have a

good answer.  Sometimes I'm  Jedi and  sometimes I'm  not. Jedi teaching

says that you must turn away from  fear. But as a politician, I have  to

experience fear. Not just my own. The fear of my allies. The fear of  my

opponents. If I can't  feel it - if  I can't become it,  in a sense -  I

can't  predict  which  way  they're going  to  jump  when  trouble hits.

Sometimes being a Jedi just runs completely counter to your other goals.

The  methodology  is  just  too  different."  Softly,  she  stroked  her

daughter's hair, silently willing her daughter's torments away.

"That's part of it, too," Jaina said.  "It took me a while to figure  it

out. I'm afraid."

"It's all  right to  be afraid.  You're surrounded  by fearsome  things.

Being afraid will keep you alive."

Jaina shook  her head.  "That's not  it. I'm  not afraid  of dying.  I'm

afraid of surviving... and getting to the end of the war and discovering

that I'm all alone. That everyone I knew and cared for is gone."

"Jaina, that won't happen."

"It's already been happening. I mean, it was like having part of me  cut

off when Anakin died, but with Jacen  it's even worse. As far back as  I

can recall, no  matter what was  going on, no  matter what was  wrong, I

could turn around and Jacen would be there. We could be on some  distant

hideout world or lost in the underbelly of Coruscant or wandering around

on parts of  Yavin Four no  thinking creature has  ever seen, and  there

Jacen was. I never had  to be bored, I never  had to be afraid, I  never

had to be  alone. When we  lost him, I  was cut in  half. Half of  me is

gone." Now the tears came. Jaina wiped them away.

Leia shook her head. "Jacen's not dead. I know he's in trouble, but he's

alive. I would have felt him go. I felt it with Anakin."

The tension in Jaina's shoulders didn't ease, but she chose not to argue

that point. Instead, she  said, " I keep  having these thoughts. That  I

should be planning for the future. Just recently, they've gotten,  well,

even more frequent. But I can't bear to do that. I can't plan to have  a

home on a world when it might not be there tomorrow, or for a career  in

a service  that might  be gone,  or to  spend time  with people who keep

throwing themselves against the Vong until they stop coming back."

"I know. That's  what it was  like all those  years ago, when  Palpatine

seemed to be  an unstoppable force  and we were  always on the  run, and

your father was just this ridiculously attractive man who always  seemed

to be on the verge of leaving us. And do you know what I learned?"

"What?"

"At times like that,  you plan for your  future by bringing people  into

your life. You know that they can't all survive what you're facing.  But

those who do, they're  part of your life  forever. No matter what,  when

you fall, they'll catch you; when you're hungry, they'll feed you;

when you're hurting, they'll heal you. And you'll do the same for  them.

And that's your future. I've had whole worlds taken away from me...  but

not my future."

Jaina  was  silent,  seemingly thinking  about  Leia's  words, for  long

moments. Finally she rolled over onto her back to look into Leia's eyes.

"Actually, I'm glad you got back tonight. Part of why I kept coming here

was because I  wanted to tell  you something. I  wanted to let  you know

that I finally get it."

"You get - get what?"

"I had a  talk with Mara  a few days  ago and it  really bothered me. It

took me until after that really  bad furball in space, the one  where we

almost  lost Jag,  to figure  it out.  I finally  understood about   you

sending us, Jacen and Anakin and me, away when we were little. Having to

be away all the time even when  we were on Coruscant. I'm not stupid,  I

always knew why. Responsibilities."  Jaina looked off into  the distance

of time for a moment. " But  I never really understood how badly it  had

to have hurt you."

"Oh, baby. Of course it hurt. I tried to tell you, time after time.  But

there aren't even words for that kind of pain."

"I know." Jaina  sat up and  Leia let her.  "I've got to  go. Reports to

write. Goddess stuff to do." But first she embraced Leia, squeezing  her

with fierce strength. "I love you. Mom."

"I love you, Jaina."

Barleias Occupation, Day 49

Wedge, in Luke's  X-wing, transcribed a  lazy arc through  vacuum in low

planetary orbit. Far below  was the near-continuous Borleias  jungle. He

gave the yoke a hard pull and his course suddenly became a tight circle.

He went  through 360  degrees of  arc, starry  sky giving  way to jungle

outside his canopy, then becoming starfield again, as centrifugal  force

in excess of  the X-wing's inertial  compensator tugged him  deeper into

the pilot's couch.

He smiled as  he leveled off.  " Good to  get out once  in a while, even

when you're not flying missions, isn't it?"

R2-D2's beeps of response came across his comm board. They sounded  like

an agreement, but not an enthusiastic one.

"Don't worry, Artoo. Luke will come  back. There's no one in the  galaxy

who knows how to survive bad places better than Luke Skywalker."

R2-D2 beeped again, his tones sounding somewhat more encouraged.

Then a voice broke  over his comm system,  Tycho's. "General, this is  a

heads-up."

"I read you."

"For the last half hour or so, we've had some odd traffic on the  sensor

board.  Anomalous  readings  out beyond  the  kill  zone. Becoming  more

frequent."

"Your guess?"

"I'd say the push is on. They're coming in from all directions."

"About time. Alert Luke's team  to prepare for departure; they'll  leave

during the confusion of the attack. I'm coming in." Wedge put the X-wing

back on a course for the biotics building.

"You're sure about this." Luke gave Lando a skeptical look.

Lando nodded,  his manner  easy. "I'm  sure. Every  so often  I need  to

remind the universe that I'm a  damned good pilot. With people like  you

and Han and his daughter around, everyone tends to forget."

They  stood in  the killing  field before  the Record  Time, the   troop

transport that had  been part of  the first invasion  wave to reach  the

planet's surface.

Seven weeks  before. Record  Time had  been an  antiquated cargo  vessel

working reliably through  late middle age.  Then it had  seen one combat

mission, the Borleias landing, and had been shot nearly to pieces.  Now,

after weeks of as-time-allows  repairs by the garrison's  mechanics, the

skin of  its two  main sections  was so  irregularly patched  as to look

scabrous, and reinforcing bars  welded to the narrow  section connecting

the two  ends merely  accentuated the  fact that  the whole thing looked

ready to break in half at any moment.

"Who are you trying to kid?" Luke gave him a skeptical look. "You're one

of two men who blew up the second Death Star. You don't have anything to

prove."

Lando shrugged.  He ran  a hand  down his  tunic to  smooth it. It was a

rust-red, long-sleeved garment,  delightful to the  touch, and had  cost

more than he'd made in lean  years. It perfectly complemented the  cream

colored hip cloak he wore. He wanted to look good for his funeral or his

triumphant return to Borleias,  whatever would come. "All  right, you've

got me. It's about the scam, Luke.

"People hear about me, they see what I do, and they think I'm all  about

the profit  motive. And,  sure, I  like wealth.  I like  it enough  that

sometimes I'll even do  honest work to get  it." He offered Luke  a mock

shudder.  "But  that's secondary.  The  trick is  what  makes everything

sweet.  Take  someone who  thinks  he's got  you,  put him  through  the

machinery of your mind and your skills, and bring him out the other  end

stripped of all  his goods, but  absolutely convinced that  he's had the

better of you - so convinced that  he's even willing to be nice to  you,

to be  generous to  you -  and you've  accomplished something great." He

gestured at the ship. As  if on cue, a hatch  cover near the top of  the

bridge, beside one of the sensor arrays, popped free; it rolled down the

bow's sloping hull and then dropped to the duracrete with a tired clang.

"This is  a scam.  We're going  to take  this heap  of junk  in and  the

Yuuzhan Vong  are going  to think  our hopes  are pinned  on it. They're

going to  blow it  up and  think they've  wrecked our  hopes. They'll be

doing exactly what we  want them to -  they'll be our personal  servants

for those few moments, which would kill them if they knew - and  they'll

never realize just how much they've  helped us. Until we choose to  tell

them. That's sweeter than any wine, Luke."

"If you say so." Luke took a hard look at the bow, doubtless  cataloging

where the hatch came  from so a repair  crew could fix it  in the little

time they had left. "Who's your copilot on this?"

"No copilot. Just a weapons officer. YVH One-One-A."

Luke frowned. "Isn't that one of your combat droids?"

"It is."

"You're going to use this mission to field-test a droid."

"That's right."

"Not a good idea."

Lando shrugged again. "I'm  captaining that flying landfill.  My choice.

Wedge has authorized it."

"Sometimes I  think you're  as crazy  as Han."  Luke checked his chrono.

"I'd better get with my team. Some last-minute packing to do."

"I'll be here." Lando watched Luke leave.

He had no interest in field-testing  his droids on a mission like  this.

No, he just  had no faith  in his ability  to get out  of this operation

alive and didn't want to lead another living thing into death with him.

That was bad, dark thinking. But he'd scammed Luke about his motives  in

having a droid  weapons officer. He  smiled to himself.  Luke wasn't the

naive young  man he'd  been when  Lando had  met him.  Scamming him  was

tougher these days. And always a pleasure to pull off.

He walked over to stand near the ramp into the bay he and his droids had

occupied so  many days  ago. He  stood well  to the  side of  the sparks

drifting out from the bay; he didn't want anything charring his tunic.

The bay had now  been partitioned off by  a temporary bulkhead into  two

parts. In the front third, suspended in a metal brace hung from the  bay

ceiling, was a two-seat B-wing  fighter, old but - he'd  been guaranteed

reliable.

The rear portion of  the bay was filled  with boulders. Well, they  were

not boulders exactly. Hanging from cables were pieces of debris, many of

them chunks  of downed  coralskippers. Dead  coralskippers, he  reminded

himself. They'd been hollowed out by volunteer crews who'd later decided

they never wanted  to field-dress one  of the organic  spacecraft again.

Now they were shells, each one capable of holding one or two members  of

Luke's team. There was  other wreckage in the  bay, as well -  pieces of

Yuuzhan Vong and New Republic ships, chunks ofpermacrete. The press of a

button from Lando's bridge or a comlink carried by Luke would sever  all

those  cables  and  activate  an  inertial  compensator  mounted  on the

bulkhead opposite the  ramp door, shoving  the debris and  the insertion

team out through the door.

The work crew's  final welding of  the bulkhead between  the forward and

rear  portions of  the bay  was what  was generating  the sparks.  Lando

approved. He wanted that bulkhead to be strong. He didn't need debris to

come crashing through to wreck his B-wing.

He wasn't as familiar with B-wings  as he'd like to be, but  the vehicle

should be able to get  him and his droid back  home - if he could  reach

the  docking bay  from the  bridge. If  he had  time. If  not, he'd   be

launching in an escape pod. He'd  be captured by the Yuuzhan Vong.  He'd

be enslaved and tortured.

No, he  decided, if  he couldn't  reach the  B-wing, there  would be  no

escape pod for him. He'd ride  the wreckage of the corvette all  the way

down to Coruscant's surface. And he'd look good while doing it.

Lando was on the bridge when Luke's team came up the temporary ramp into

the landing bay. It was Luke  and Mara, Tahiri, several of the  Wraiths,

whom he'd barely met - the  bald one, the tall one, the  Devaronian, the

skinny bearded man, and the severe-looking woman - and a final surprise,

Danni Quee.

He  shouldn't  have  been  startled.  He  should  have  known  that  the

persistent scientist would have insisted on being a part of the  mission

to find  out what  was going  wrong with  Coruscant's planet  shaping to

learn whatever she could of the Yuuzhan Vong.

R2-D2 waited  at the  bottom of  the ramp.  Lando knew  that Luke wasn't

taking him along, and why; the as-tromech droid wasn't mobile enough  to

navigate the difficult terrain the insertion team expected to face,  and

would certainly be an instant victim of Yuuzhan Vong wrath if captured.

R2-D2 tilted backward, as if leaning back to stare up at Luke, and Lando

could imagine  the plaintive  noises and  musical tones  he'd be making.

Luke stopped at the top of the ramp, still within range of R2's  holocam

view,  and  turned  back  to  his  droid  companion.  His  gesture   was

conciliatory, reassuring.

"Pretty sad, huh?" Lando asked.

His own droid companion, YVH 1-1  A, looked up from its sensors.  "Sad,"

it confirmed, but without inflection.

"Ready to face the danger?"

"I am ready," YVH 1-1A said. "Of  course I am ready. I am programmed  to

be ready. Always ready. Never uncertain about facing danger."

Lando gave the  droid a little  frown. It sounded  as though the  combat

droid had picked up some conversational mannerisms from a protocol droid

like C-3PO.  But YVH  1-1A still  didn't have  the linguistic modules to

help him develop idiosyncrasies like that. Oh, well. Something to  worry

about when they got back. He hit the switch on his comm unit.  "Borleias

Control, this is Record Time. Ready for takeoff."

"We'll give  you the  word. The  assault is  anticipated within the half

hour."

"Hey, what odds am I getting that I'll blow up before getting out of the

atmosphere?"

"Um, about one in a hundred, sir."

"I'll put a thousand credits on surviving at least to orbit."

"I'll take that, sir. I could use ten credits."

"How do you collect if you win?"

Silence answered him.  Lando grinned at  YVH 1-1A, but  the droid merely

stared back at him, humorless.

The alarm cut through the  biotics building, the temporary docking  bays

built outside  it, the  kill zone  surrounding it.  Pilots scrambled for

their starfighters. Mission controllers reached their stations and began

coordinating the units they managed.

Jaina, racing for the special operations docking bay, skidded to a  halt

as a large man staggered into her path and turned pleading eyes on  her.

He  was young,  not unpleasant  looking, but  awkward of  posture,  with

mussed hair and  eyes more bloodshot  than she'd ever  seen in a  human,

worse  than her  father or  Lando after  the most  extravagant night  of

drinking. "Do you need help?" she asked.

The big man  shook his head.  "I'm going to  die." His words  were slow,

pained.

"Then you  definitely do  need help."  She brought  out her comlink. All

around her, pilots and crew ran into the docking bay and toward vehicles

parked in the kill zone.

"I'm a Yuuzhan Vong spy, and  I'm going to die. I'm supposed  to capture

you now, with the bugs  in my pocket, and carry  you to the edge of  the

kill zone. But I'm not going to."

"Thank  you."  Jaina  switched  on the  comlink.  "Twin  Suns  Leader to

Control. I'm in front of the special ops docking bay. I have a  civilian

male here. He's, uh, experiencing distress and needs medical help  right

away."

"Acknowledged, Twin Suns."

"I've  won." The  big man  offered her  a broad,  idiotic smile.   Blood

suddenly  began  pouring down  from  his nose,  running  over his  lips,

spilling to the ground. "I don't have to do what they say. All they  can

do is kill me."

"Of course." She  edged around him.  Whatever his situation,  she had to

get to her X-wing.

"I took the bug off your X-wing," he called after her. "So don't worry."

"I won't," she promised, then turned to race after her pilots.

Tam watched her go.

He  knew  she  hadn't  believed  him.  Everyone  had  seen shell-shocked

refugees here  after Coruscant's  fall. He  must look  just like  one of

them.

It took him a long time to work his way through that thought. With every

beat of his heart, another spike of agony was pounded through his  skull

and into the  deep portions of  his brain. There  wasn't room for  brain

matter anymore. That had to be why it was so hard to think.

But it was important that some people believe him, so they could  finish

undoing what he had done since arriving on Borleias.

He could  see medical  personnel running  toward him  now. He'd never be

able  to  make  a full  confession  to  them, not  before  the  pain ate

completely through him and  he died. But he  didn't need to. He  reached

into his pockets. His right hand drew out the jellylike container  still

half full of Yuuzhan Vong bugs. His left drew out the data card, the one

on which he'd written "In The Event Of My Death."

Suddenly  he  was looking  at  the sky.  He  hadn't felt  the  impact of

falling. He put the bag and data card on his chest, where they were sure

to be found.

Then the sky was full of faces, men and women saying things he  couldn't

understand. He smiled at them,  to reassure them. Maybe they  could save

him. But  if they  couldn't, it  was important  they understand  that he

didn't blame them, that he wasn't mad.

He  was  still  trying  to  form  the  words  to  tell  them  this  when

unconsciousness claimed him.

Jaina dropped into her X-wing's  cockpit. Still somewhat rattled by  the

encounter  with  the  madman,  she  began  her  power-up  checklist. Her

astromech, a gray-white R2 unit with burgundy lines and decorations, was

already in place.  "Hey, you," Jaina  said, "I never  asked. What's your

name?"

Her comm board trilled and she  looked to find a line of  text appearing

on it. I DON'T HAVE A NAME. MY DESIGNATION IS R2-B3.

"No name? That's  terrible. You can't  become famous without  a name. Do

you want one?"

THAT WOULD BE GOOD.

"How about Cappie? For a friend of mine, a pilot named Capstan."

I AM CAPPIE.

"All right, Cappie, give me the engine readouts..."

Jaina went through  her checklist with  her customary speed.  This time,

though, she didn't push  herself to finish. She  knew that Jag would  be

done before she was; she no longer had to look through his viewport  for

confirmation. On the other  hand, when she was  done, she did look.  She

saw him leaning back in his pilot's seat, relaxed. She gave him a  smile

and a thumbs-up.

He pulled  his helmet  off and  gave her  a return  smile. It was a half

smile, the left side of his mouth, brief but encouraging, for her alone.

Then he  pulled his  helmet on  again and  was the  anonymous pilot once

more.

The  expression caused  something to  flutter in  her stomach.  Have  to

remember, she told herself, he may have been raised among the Chiss, but

he's still full-blooded Corellian.

A few meters away, Kyp Durron also saw the exchange of looks. He  pulled

his gaze away and concentrated on his diagnostics readout instead.

Since Hapes, Jaina had kept Kyp at arm's length. She'd kept everybody at

arm's length. Now it was obvious that Jag Fel had gotten past her guard.

So  what's it  going to  be? he  asked himself.  Show him  up? Let   her

interest in him run its course, then be on hand when she needs a  friend

to  console her?  He wished  he disliked  Jag. That  would make   things

easier.

Another voice, another thought, intruded. Maybe you ought to figure  out

what she is to you before you make any decisions.

He grimaced. That required more honesty than he wanted to experience.

Because he knew he wasn't in  love with Jaina Solo. He just  liked being

around her.

She was intelligent,  talented, brave, beautiful.  Strong in the  Force.

Important to the New Republic. He could make her happy.

Why did he want to? He  suspected it was because she hadn't  been happy,

and  her pain,  which he'd  felt through  the Force  every time   they'd

connected, called to him, even  when she'd fooled herself into  thinking

she could make it go away by keeping the whole universe at bay.

But he'd been interested in her before the loss of Anakin and Jacen.  So

why?

Maybe it was because  of Han. He owed  Han so much, from  the time years

ago when they'd met, from the help Han had offered in bringing Kyp  back

from the dark place  he'd been in when  he'd destroyed whole worlds.  He

might not be alive if not for Han. Make Jaina happy, make Han happy.  It

was a simple formula.

Besides, he had repaid that debt, or some of it. He'd helped Jaina  come

back from the steps she'd recently taken toward the dark side, and would

continue to help as long as she needed him.

"Twin Suns Two..."  That was Jaina's  voice, artificially sweet,  and it

jolted Kyp out of his reverie.

"Yes?"

"Status, please? All the other little Twin Suns are ready to go."

"Oh. Uh, I'm - " He did a quick scan of his readouts. He'd finished  his

checklist automatically, as if on autopilot, and hadn't even  registered

the fact. "Ready to go. Sorry, Great One."

"Liftoff in ten, nine, eight..."

Kyp smiled ruefully to himself. So much for acting like a Jedi Master.

SIXTEEN

Borleias Occupation, Day 49

"All special ops  squadrons have launched,"  Iella called out  above the

clamor of the command chamber.

"We  have  contact," Tycho  said.  "Yuuzhan Vong  capital  ships nearing

Borleias, far side of the planet."

Iella said, "Commander Davip  is requesting permission to  pull Lusankya

out of geosync to engage the enemy before they reach our location."

Wedge smiled at her. "Of course he is. Tell him no. Transmit to him  the

details of Operation Emperor's Hammer."

"Done."

Yuuzhan Vong Worldship, Pyria Orbit

"They are not sending forces into orbit," Czulkang Lah told the  villip.

"Instead,  their orbital  capital ships  are sending  some squadrons  of

small fighters down into the atmosphere."

The villip with his son's face said, "Meaning that they are aware of the

approach of your ground forces."

"Correct. We somehow failed to  disable all their sensor devices  on the

ground and they have not been fooled."

"I will  not offer  advice. You  are Czulkang  Lah. You  will crush them

despite their state of readiness."

Czulkang Lah  remained silent.  An honest  reply, his  estimate that the

infidels had surprises in store  for the Yuuzhan Vong forces,  that they

might not win today, would only cause embarrassment for the warmaster.

After moments of  awkward silence, Tsavong  Lah added, "Good  fighting."

His villip inverted.

Twin  Suns Squadron  took up  position a  few kilometers  north of   the

biotics building, high enough that  Yuuzhan Vong attacks fired from  the

ground would have to travel for several obvious seconds before  reaching

them.  Her  pilots -  twelve  again, ever  since  Pastav Rone  had  been

released from the bacta tanks - waited.

The Wild Knights  were arrayed to  the east, Black-moon  Squadron to the

west, and the Rogues to the south;

other squadrons from the Star Destroyers overhead were arriving to  fill

in the broad gaps in that defensive circle.

Jaina the pilot didn't like waiting. She shook her head and became Jaina

the Jedi, to whom patience was a way of life.

But even as a Jedi she couldn't quite shake some thought eating at her.

The fear she'd discussed with Leia  was back. It was under control,  but

always present. With  it was worry  -  for Jag,  for Kyp, for  her other

pilots, for friends, even for Cappie.

She felt it cleanly now. It  had, she supposed, been with her  since her

return from Hapes, but she'd built up an insulating layer around her and

kept it distant, muted. Now the insulation was gone.

And, oddly, she didn't mind the fear. Where she'd been for the last  few

weeks, she hadn't been quite alive, completely present. Now she was. The

worry, the fear, the pain they  brought her, told her she was  among the

living, among her kind, part  of everything she cared about.  They might

be  counted  as  negative  emotions,  but  now  she  found  them welcome

reminders of who she was and of the importance of what she had to do.

That thought stopped her. In a way, it was so like what she'd heard from

and about  the Yuuzhan  Vong, whose  desire for  physical pain seemed so

alien.  All  of a  sudden,  she almost  understood  it. Their  pain  was

evidence of their life.

"All  right,"  she  told  herself. "I'm  going  to  give  you some  more

evidence."

Her  comm  board  clicked  with  the  voice  of  the  chief  controller.

"Coralskippers now reaching geosync  point. Squadrons from Lusankya  and

Rebel Dream engaging."

Jaina's fingers twitched. She needed  to be where the fighting  was. She

was Jaina the Pilot again.

She forced herself to wait. She knew it wouldn't be long.

"Intrusion detected in west quadrant."

Captain Reth didn't have to be told. Two kilometers ahead of his  E-wing

unit, the broad, swaying backs  of two rakamats, the giant  reptiles the

Yuuzhan Vong used  as ground-based battle  vehicles and troop  carriers,

crested the top of the jungle canopy as they approached.

Reth keyed  his comlink.  "This is  Blackmoon Leader.  We're on  it." He

switched to squadron frequency. "Black-moon Two to Eight, come with  me;

we're going to do a couple of  strafing runs and see what pops up.  Nine

and Ten, lay down a firebreak in their path and then spread it around to

encircle them."

His pilots  clicked acknowledgments.  No unnecessary  talk. He  liked it

that  way.  He  kicked  his  thrusters  and  began  laying triple-linked

laserfire down on the enemy forces.

Jaina sprayed laserfire across the foremost of the rakamats  approaching

her position. There were three  of them, just their spiny  backs visible

at a distance of two and a halfklicks.

Kyp's and Jag's laserfire joined hers. All of it was swallowed by  voids

on the  target ahead.  The same  was happening  with the laserfire being

laid down by the  other shield trios of  Twin Suns Squadron against  the

other two rakamats. Jaina accelerated toward the enemy force, her pilots

keeping pace.

"More voids than usual," Jag said. "These rakamats are reinforced."

They flashed  over the  rakamat formation;  all twelve  Twin Suns pilots

looped around for another firing  run. As they began their  turn, plasma

cannonfire erupted  from the  ground, from  the rakamats  and all around

them. The streams were wide at first, shots meant to gauge distance, but

rapidly closed on their targets.

"They have  coralskippers at  ground level,"  Piggy said, unnecessarily.

"Using the jungle canopy  to soak up our  damage and make their  precise

locations uncertain."

Jaina stood  her X-wing  on its  starboard S-foils  and veered  from her

course just  in time  to elude  a stream  of plasma  gobs. "What  do you

recommend?"

"Keep doing what we're doing... or do what they're doing."

"Huh. Interesting.  Piggy, take  command of  the squad.  Continue aerial

assaults. Jag and Kyp, you two come with me."

She  veered away  from the  engagement area  and fled  back toward   the

biotics facility.

"Make it  fast. Commander."  Wedge's face  filled the  hologram area  of

Commander Davip's  private communications  chamber. "We're  sort of busy

here."

"Sir, this Operation Emperor's Hammer..."

"You've got a problem with it?"

"Not with the  plan itself, sir.  It's... interesting. Potentially  very

effective. But..."  Davip steeled  himself against  what he  had to say.

"Sir,  I don't  have confidence  in my  crew to  carry it  off with  the

precision  you need.  It's something  that hasn't  been done  in  twenty

years! Sir, I'm commanding mostly misfits, and those misfits could  cost

you your life."

Wedge  nodded,   sympathy  evident   in  his   expression.  "Misfits.  I

understand. I've been there."

"I don't know why Command assembled this incredible collection of  screw

ups..."

"I do. It was so they'd all  die here and deprive the New Republic  Navy

of the officers and crew who have offered it the most trouble. Including

you. Including me."  Wedge shrugged. "The  orders stand, Commander.  You

can either figure  out how to  convince your crew  to perform, in  which

case we survive down here, or  you can't, in which we die.  Now, listen.

Command of  the Lusankya  isn't a  ticket to  promotion anymore.  It's a

ticket to obscurity and early retirement, and you'll deserve them if you

don't learn how  to think outside  your training. Lusankya  is your last

command, Davip, unless you get the job done today. Any more questions?"

Davip shook his  head, not bothering  to conceal his  pained expression.

"No, sir."

"Antilles out." The general's hologram faded to nothingness.

Davip  exited the  chamber and  returned to  Lusankya's bridge,  to  the

walkway  above  and  between  the  tremendous  banks  of  officers   and

technicians at their stations.

The walkway afforded an incredible view through the forward viewports of

the  coralskipper-on-starfighter  duels taking  place  just outside  the

range of the Star Destroyer's weapons. The surface of the walkway itself

was so clean, so white, so spare.

Just like Davip's mind at the moment. He always wanted things clean  and

spare.

Maybe that was it. Maybe he needed dirty and cluttered. Dirty and bloody

and confused and unclear...

He called down to his chief weapons officer, "Transfer command of one of

the  turbolaser  emplacements  designated  for  Emperor's  Hammer  to my

station. Make it the one belonging to the weapons officer with the worst

composite score from simulations."

"Yes, sir."

Several of the officers below,  those whose current tasks didn't  demand

their  full attention,  looked up  at him,  confusion evident  on  their

faces. He  supposed he'd  done something  he'd never  done before.  He'd

issued a command that didn't make immediate and obvious sense.

He turned his attention to  his communications officer. "Open a  line to

all the  weapons stations  designated for  Emperor's Hammer.  I need  to

address them now." He pulled out his comlink.

"Yes, sir." The officer typed in a quick command and nodded at him.

"This is Commander  Davip. I'm assuming  personal command of  one of the

laser stations for  Emperor's Hammer. During  the operation, any  gunner

whose  accuracy rates  worse than  mine is  in for  it. He  or she  gets

transferred down to the planet's surface immediately after the battle is

done and  will be  put on  the crews  handling the  bodies of  our dead.

That'll be your position through the duration of our stay insystem,  and

no transfers will be accepted. That is all." He gave the comm officer  a

nod to indicate he was through.

That officer, and the others who had been looking at him before,  stared

blankly, as though they'd just realized they'd been taking orders from a

talking bantha in an officer's uniform.

He  grinned at  them. Why,  if he'd  known how  much entertainment  he'd

derive from baffling his subordinates, he might have tried it years ago.

Jaina's and Kyp's X-wings crept along just above the jungle floor.  They

were perpendicular to the  ground, their repulsorlifts whining  with the

unaccustomed demands of  having to fly  sideways just above  a planetary

surface. The snubfighters' bows  crashed through branches and  fern-like

vegetation as  they moved  - not  exactly stealthy,  Jaina decided,  but

still invisible from the air.

Jag's clawcraft was  not in sight;  sensors said that  he was about  two

hundred meters  ahead and  slowly increasing  his lead.  The clawcraft's

more  compact  shape   was  better  suited   to  travel  through   these

surroundings without becoming snared on heavy foliage.

And with Jag's fighter, hovering behind it at a distance of no more than

four meters, were two shadow bombs, armed, drifting along in the grip of

the Force. Jaina sweated as she divided her concentration between flying

this way  and controlling  her shadow  bomb, and  once again  she envied

Kyp's effortless control over all matters of the Force.

All matters not involving his own motivations and actions, that is.

Jag said, "I've managed to set  down in some heavy growth just  beside a

riverbank. A sort of hunter's  blind. I have pretty good  visibility. If

you want, you can set the bombs down behind me. Gently."

Jaina did so, grateful for the relief. "How close do you think you are?"

"Pretty close. I'm looking right at them. About twenty meters off, ahead

to  starboard.  There  are  two  masses  of  reptoid  slaves   escorting

coralskippers. The skips are moving about a meter off the ground.  Their

voids  aren't  visible... I  suspect  they're directing  their  voids to

reinforce  the rakamats.  I see  only five  skips, but  their  formation

suggests  a broad  line of  them. Hold  on." He  was silent  for a   few

moments. "Vibrations in the hull  suggest that one or more  rakamats are

headed this way. I think we placed it pretty accurately." Then there was

a loud bang and a curt laugh from Jag. "A tree just took some  laserfire

from one of us."

"Try not to get hit with your shields down, dummy."

"Good advice, that. I'd never considered it before. Wait a second."

"What is it?"

"I see a rakamat...  I think it's a  range. Something big, shoving  down

whole trees in front of it. Who wants to try this one?"

"Ido,"Kypsaid.

"All right, lift the shadow bomb up, traverse it ten meters forward, and

lower it slowly... I see the  bomb. Very good. All right, take  it ahead

dead slow... a little to  the right... no, not  that much to the   right

Stop! Can you back it up a meter and sideslip a little to the right?"

"This will never work," Kyp said. "I can't sense all the vegetation with

the accuracy of seeing it. I can't just steer around things."

"Yes, you can," Jaina said.  "Can you direct its movements  through hand

motions?"

"Well, yes, but it's no better if I still can't see it."

Jaina grinned. "Kyp, set down here and slave your controls to Jag's."

"All right... done. Now what?"

"Jag, you use your control yoke like it was a joystick in a game. Direct

the shadow bomb's movement.  Kyp, keep your hand  on your yoke, let  its

feedback direct  where your  hand goes...  and control  the shadow  bomb

through your hand motions."

"Whoa." Kyp sounded impressed. "All right, I'm game."

"Nice of you to  be so willing," Jag  said. "You're not the  one sitting

meters away from an armed proton  torpedo being directed by a blind  man

in a two-way hookup. Well, here goes."

Jaina  set down  her X-wing,  lowering it  onto its  landing gear,   and

crossed her fingers.

"Hey, it's working,"  Jag said. "My  control is sloppy,  but much better

than  verbal.  I've  got it  past  the  trees... lowering  it  to  a few

centimeters off the ground. Good, Kyp, we're getting better. Cruising it

forward, dead slow... Stop it here, set it down. Good. It's right in the

path of  the rakamat.  I can  see the  rakamat clearly  now, and there's

another one behind it,  a little to port.  The near one is  about thirty

meters, the second one, I'd estimate, twenty meters behind it."

"Go ahead and take the second bomb," Jaina told Kyp.

Reth brought his squad around for another pass and cursed. He'd lost two

E-wings on the last  pass, one in a  clean kill, one with  comprehensive

thruster damage that sent it limping back to base. That left him  eight.

The Yuu-zhan Vong ground force  was moving into his firebreak  zone, its

reptoid troops, coralskippers, and rakamats exposed to view from  above,

but they were soaking up his  squad's damage with impunity. And now  the

coralskippers were coming up off the ground to engage them.

There were  a lot  of them.  Dozens of  skips. Hundreds  or thousands of

reptoids.  And the  rakamat. One  squad of  E-wings wasn't  going to  be

enough to put a dent in them.

He  switched  over to  command  frequency. "Control,  this  is Blackmoon

Leader.   We're   facing   a  superior   force   and   could  use   some

reinforcements."

The  voice  that  responded  was  Iella  Wessiri's.  "Black-moon Leader,

Control. All our ground forces are engaged. Fight defensively and make a

fighting retreat back our way."

"Control, copy." Reth gritted his teeth. This wasn't going to end  well.

It  would  be  another  Hoth,  another  Dantooine,  with  not  even   an

opportunity to count up their dead.

Jag looked  dispassionately at  the reptoid  who'd just  walked into his

viewport. The  reptoid stared  at him,  mouth open  to suggest  anger or

surprise, and  looked around  to gauge  the size  of Jag's clawcraft. "I

estimate about ten seconds before the Yuuzhan Vong figure out I'm here."

"Get out  of there,  then. Come  back to  us." "No,  it's more  than ten

seconds  before  the rakamat  are  in position.  We  need to  time  this

exactly." "No, come on back now. Do you trust me?" "No fair using my own

arguments against me." The reptoid  was in a frenzy, shouting  something

back  toward  the advancing  line  of coralskippers.  Jag  activated his

shields, heard and  felt the increased  engine demand thrum  through his

clawcraft. He rolled  his craft over  backward like a  ball, rotating it

along its  directional axis  so he  ended up  facing the  other way  but

right-side up, and goosed his thrusters.

Behind him,  his hiding  place exploded  as plasma  cannon ejecta rained

down on  it. Then  the trees  surrounding it  shattered, splintering, as

coralskippers gave chase.

Jaina let herself drift, staying  in tentative contact with the  distant

life-forms.

She could feel them,  the collective them, and  every few moments a  new

group of them, a few meters away  from the last, offered up a second  or

two of fear as their world shook around them.

They were insects, lizards, other life-forms native to Borleias, and she

was  sure  she  was feeling  their  fear  as the  impact  tremor  of the

rakamat's giant feet shook the ground around them.

She could also  feel, with a  different set of  Force-sensibilities, the

shadow bomb she controlled.

The two sets of feeling were coming closer together.

She felt a twitch  from Kyp. His range  was right over his  shadow bomb.

Wait, she told him.

Closer, closer, and then they  were almost together. Now, she  told him,

and triggered her shadow bomb. She opened her eyes.

In the distance, fire erupted into  the sky - fire, propelling into  the

sky tons of charred flesh that  had been rakamats. A shock wave  rippled

out from the  site of the  explosions, shredding trees  near it, shaking

them farther away, causing nothing more than a ground tremor where Jaina

and Kyp sat.

"All right. Twins," she said. "Let's go back in and deal with that  last

range, and Jag's pursuit."

"Twin Suns, this is Control."  In fact, it was Wedge's  voice. "Negative

on that. Fall back. Fall back."

"Fall back, understood." Jaina struggled with herself, then assumed  her

most regal tone.  "We want to  know why we're  being summoned back  when

we're winning."

"Because you're holding up the Yuuzhan Vong advance."

She  lost her  godly demeanor.  "What? I  thought that's  what we   were

supposed to do!"

Wedge laughed  at her.  "Goddess, as  usual, you're  doing your  job too

well."

SEVENTEEN

Coruscant System

The Record  Time dropped  out of  hyperspace close  to Coruscant,  close

enough for the planet to fill most of her forward viewports.

Lando immediately began broadcasting. "Survivor Cell Thirty-Eight,  this

is Rescue Two. We're inbound and ready for pickup. Make yourselves ready

at Target Zone A-Nineteen. Over."

There was no reply. Of course  there wasn't. There was no Survivor  Cell

Thirty-Eight. There was no Target Zone A-Nineteen. No one was monitoring

this comm frequency.

"Sensors show frigate analog incoming," YVH 1-1A said.

"Shields  up. Commence  firing." Lando  plotted a  course revision  that

would carry them away from the  other Yuuzhan Vong command ships in  the

area, a course that  would, in theory, get  them to the vicinity  of the

edge  of Coruscant's  atmosphere. He  ran the  numbers and  winced.  The

incoming frigate would be on  them before they could get  into position.

Record Time was going to soak up some damage.

He  keyed the  comm unit  again. "Survivor  Cell Thirty-Eight,  this  is

Rescue Two. Why don't you answer?  Why don't you answer?" He clicked  it

off and grinned at 1-1A. "What did you think of that?"

One-One-A began firing, meticulous shots with the ship's turbolasers  at

too  great  a  distance  to  be  effective.  "Stress  analysis  of  your

transmitted words suggests  high emotional  content. From  a  search-and

rescue perspective, you sound like an emotional civilian."

"Good. How about the repetition? Too cliched, or did it work for you?"

"That  is  outside the  scope  of my  programming."  One-One-A continued

firing. "The frigate is launching coral-skippers. I have destroyed one."

"I suggest you destroy a second one."

"I have destroyed a second one."

"I suggest you destroy a third one."

"If I may ask, are you managing a subordinate, or taunting me?"

"I'm taunting you, One-One-A. All in the spirit of fun."

"I have destroyed a third one."

"I suggest - "

"I have destroyed a fourth one."

Luke waited in the darkness of the cargo hold. Strapped to his feet  was

the descent unit the Wraiths had given him. Its bottom was attached with

adhesive to his descent pod,  a portion of a coralskipper  reshaped into

an oblong spheroid by creative application of du-racrete and paint.  Its

hatch was dogged shut.

He wore a set of Yuuzhan Vong-styled armor - not one of the true vonduun

crab sets, one of the  artful simulations. He'd suspected that  it might

not be appropriate  for a  man with  a mechanical  hand and  an  all-too

useful lightsaber to make use of one of the authentic sets; he suspected

he'd have to shed any Yuuzhan Vong disguise too often and too quickly.

Over the Yuuzhan Vong armor, he wore an environment suit, a big,  bulky,

ancient one no one would miss when he had to shred it upon landing.

He reached out to Mara, felt her in the Force, felt her living presence.

She  reached  back,  an absent  gesture;  he  knew her  mind  had  to be

elsewhere, on their mission, on their child.

Lando's voice came over his helmet speakers. "We're getting into range."

The ship,  and everything  in the  cargo area,  shuddered. "Sorry  about

that. Little bit of plasma goo." His voice was replaced by 1-lA's for  a

moment:

"I have destroyed a sixth one." Then Lando was back:

"Knock off the  running tally, would  you? Um, we'll  go into a  lateral

maneuver in just a minute and  punch you out. If you find  yourselves in

vacuum before then, just go on without me."

"I have destroyed a seventh one."

"I told you - "

"I am teaching myself to taunt you."

Lando pulled a pilot's helmet on. His fancy tunic and cloak concealed  a

far more ordinary  pilot's jumpsuit, and  he checked its  connections to

make sure it was ready to seal him off in case of pressure loss. A piece

of plasma had already burned  its way through the transparisteel  of the

forward viewport, and air was hissing out through it.

The Record Time shook every few seconds now. Its tail section was taking

the brunt  of the  damage -  plasma cannon  fire, barely  reduced by the

failing  shields,  from  both pursuing  coralskippers  and  the trailing

frigate analog - while the forward section was suffering from hit  after

hit launched by a single coralskipper.

But they  were almost  in position.  Lando keyed  his helmet microphone.

"Coming up on launch zone in fifteen seconds. There's not going to be  a

countdown. When we're there, I'm going to punch you out."

"Force be with you, Lando."

"Luck be with  you, Luke." Lando  switched off the  comlink and returned

his attention to the controls.

This was tricky.  He put the  ungainly, disintegrating freighter  into a

slow port  turn, bringing  its starboard  side around  to face the sunny

side of the planet below.  "Ready yourself, One-One-A." Then he  tripped

the newly installed switch labeled GO.

The ship's inertial  compensator kicked off.  Though he tightly  gripped

the arms of his  chair and was strapped  into place, Lando felt  himself

yanked to the right,  heard the post his  seat was bolted to  creak from

the sudden pressure.

All around the forward section  of the ship, explosives attached  to the

outer hull would  be going off.  They weren't high  explosives; they had

just enough detonating power to  fire chaff and thick smoky  residue out

in all  directions. From  outside, it  would look  as though Record Time

were experiencing a series of internal explosions.

The smoke and chaff concealed the starboard cargo bay door, which should

have been  slung open  by the  maneuver and  loss of artificial gravity.

Lando  saw  that  its  gauge  registered  that  it  was  open,  that its

atmospheric  pressure  was  approaching  zero,  that  its  own temporary

inertial compensator had activated.

He  looked out  the starboard  viewport. There,  a cloud  of debris  was

tumbling away  from the  freighter, directly  toward Coruscant's surface

far below.

He keyed his helmet microphone again. "Survivor Cell Thirty-Eight,  this

is the final transmission of Rescue  Two. Sorry we couldn't get to  you.

Hope you have better  luck next time." That  message, he knew, would  be

picked up by  a New Republic  scout ship at  the edge of  the Corus-cant

system and relayed to Wedge Antilles;  it meant that Luke and his  party

were safely away.

He turned to 1-1 A. "All right, let's get - " A blast of plasma from the

frigate analog hit the  center of the span  joining the two sections  of

Record Time. The span parted, and  the ripple from the impact shook  the

length of the  ship. This time,  Lando's chair post  did break, bouncing

him,  still strapped  into his  chair, into  the air.  With the   ship's

artificial  gravity  dead,  he  rose until  he  banged  into  the bridge

ceiling, bounced off, and began  drifting toward the fist-sized hole  in

the forward viewport. "Oh, I have a really good feeling about this,"  he

said.

Luke  felt abrupt  weightlessness, then  sudden acceleration  as he  was

punched out of the cargo bay and, he hoped, toward the planet.

He checked the sensor readouts glued to the pod surface before him. They

showed course  - correct.  Number -   correct; all  of his comrades were

with him still. As he watched,  the inertial compensator in the unit  at

his feet activated, rotating  him so that  he approached Coruscant  feet

first. Minor repulsor bursts would be keeping him in close proximity  to

the others.

He shook  his head,  dissatisfied. He  didn't like  to be  in any  small

vehicle when he wasn't at the controls. And this was a vehicle only by a

very generous broadening of the definition of that word.

Lando  got himself  unstrapped from  his chair  and kicked  against  the

viewport. The move carried him away  from it, but also caused cracks  to

appear where his  heel had struck,  cracks that reached  the plasma hole

and radiated in other directions as well.

One-One-A pushed himself free from  his seat, a trajectory that  carried

him past Lando and toward the door out. He caught Lando around the waist

as he traveled, Lando's mass  barely causing a change in  his direction,

and reached the door recess. He  clamped his feet down at the  bottom of

the recess and, with his free hand, sheared through the metal door.

Atmosphere behind  it poured  through, tugging  Lando, but  1-1 A merely

shoved his way  through the ruins  of the door  and into the  passageway

beyond.

"Good work," Lando said.

"Is that more taunting, or a compliment?"

"Neither, really. In this case, it stands in for a 'thank-you,' which is

what it really means. Now can you get us into the bay? Because that last

blast seems to have pushed us toward the atmosphere, and we're going  to

be carbon dust in a few seconds to a minute."

"You're  welcome."  One-One-A  kicked  again,  and  they  were  floating

weightless down the passageway.

Luke could feel the heat now;  for all the Wraiths' claims, heat  soaked

into the descent unit and was transmitted into the pod, cutting  through

his environment suit, through his armor, causing him to burst into sweat

from scalp to toes.

The sensor board before him winked out. Then, beyond it, he saw the  pod

interior surface go from  black to red, to  yellow - and then  flame was

licking at it there, flame that grew and spread.

The pod rocked. Luke knew that friction had to have caused a pit in  the

bottom of his pod; atmosphere was getting a foothold in the pit, causing

greater friction, causing the  whole unit to sway.  He felt a rumble  in

his feet as  the repulsorlift there  increased power output  to keep the

unit upright.

Abruptly there was a bright flash and the top of the pod was gone.  Luke

found himself in a column of fire, streaming yellow flames that  reached

from the edges of the descent unit at his feet straight up into the air;

he could see nothing beyond it. For a moment, a memory over  twenty-five

years old  rose before  him, the  vision of  the smoking  remains of his

Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru, as they lay on the sands in front of his  home

on Tatooine.

He forced the  memory away and  tried to gain  a little perspective.  If

this is bad for me, he thought, what is it going to be like for  Tahiri?

A teenager?

Luke felt a jolt under  his feet, sudden deceleration; his  knees flexed

as he  absorbed the  shock. The  deceleration remained  constant and the

flames began to diminish, to waver.

In moments he could see his surroundings through them. Mara was no  more

than ten meters away, her face not visible through her environment  suit

and Yuuzhan Vong armor. The others were all nearby.

They were  less than  two kilometers  above the  world's surface,  still

falling,  but  not  at  terminal  velocity.  And  though  he'd  lived on

Coruscant for many years, this  wasn't the surface he remembered.  Great

buildings lay toppled, their angles no longer conforming to those of the

structures around them.  Everything was coated  with green, a  poisonous

shade  of  the  color.  At  least  the  orange-and-brown  clouds  in the

distance, full  of rain  and lightning,  were the  same, one  reassuring

piece of familiarity.

"Interesting ride, farmboy."  Mara's voice was  clear over the  comlink;

any interference brought on by the atmospheric friction of their  decent

was now ended.

Luke repressed a snicker. "Not too bad."

"Face?" That was Tallin's voice, faint, full of emotion. Luke winced. He

and Mara would need to offer her some reassurance.

"Yes?"

"I want one! I've got to have one of these when we get back. Oh, what  a

ride! Can we do it again?"

Luke shook his head and felt Mara laughing at him.

One-One-A had to use  his blaster on the  main door into the  cargo bay.

Once it was shredded and gone, the atmosphere from the passageway nearly

blew the  two of  them into  the bay  itself, but  the combat droid held

fast.

Lando poked his head in. The B-wing seemed to be secure. The cargo  ramp

door was still down, maybe gone,  and  he could see starry space  beyond

space, and,  as the  remains of  the ship  rotated, a coralskipper still

pouring fire into its side as the ruins descended toward the atmosphere.

Cold began seeping into Lando's bones. "Let's go."

A minute later, just as the outer edges of the Record Time began glowing

from friction, Lando's B-wing erupted  from the cargo bay, turning  away

from the pursuing coral-skipper, away  from the frigate and other  skips

that had chosen to hang back once their task was done. With 1-1A  silent

in the passenger seat, Lando plotted a course that would carry them  out

of Coruscant's mass shadow, to a  point where he could make a  jump, any

jump, to hyper-space and get clear.

He turned to look at the combat  droid. "And I did it looking good,"  he

said.

"Is this taunting, too?"

Borleias

The biotics facility  was in clear  sight now. Jaina  could see it,  her

squadmates,  the surviving  starfighters and  blast-boats of  the  other

eleven squadrons defending the site, and fires - dozens of fires  raging

in the jungle outside the kill zone. She poured her lasers into  distant

targets: ranges, coralskippers. She saw a Yuuzhan Vong frigate analog  a

dozen  kilometers away,  in the  zone defended  by Rogue  Squadron.  The

frigate blossomed in fire and blood as a proton torpedo found its  mark.

But there were more frigate analogs, other capital ships, all converging

on the biotics facility.

She shook her head. The Yuuzhan Vong force marching toward the  facility

was too great; the defenders could not hold the site.

Until now, she'd been silently raging at Wedge Antilles. Whenever  she'd

manage to  make inroads  against the  enemy assault,  he or  one of  his

controllers would  order her  to withdraw  a half  kilometer, a  hundred

meters. It was as if they didn't want her to win. But now she could  see

that too much success on her part would serve only to cut Twin Suns  off

from the other units, to doom  her and her pilots. It was  probably best

that she'd  been ordered  to fall  back at  the same  rate as  the other

squadrons.

The mind ofJaina the  Goddess woke up. Jaina  frowned. Fall back at  the

same rate.  She consulted  her sensor  board. That  was exactly what was

happening. The  New Republic  Forces had  withdrawn where  they were too

strong, and been reinforced where they were too weak, and now every live

unit of those forces was within a kilometer of the kill zone.

"Jag, I need to apologize to your uncle," she said.

"Why?"

"I'll tell you why later."

"All units, fall back to kill  zone," Iella said. "All units, fall  back

to kill zone. You have fifteen seconds. Fourteen. Thirteen."

Jaina led her squad back,  taking up position directly over  the landing

zone in front of the  biotics building, directing their lasers  back the

way  they'd   come.  "Twin   Suns  Squadron,   on-station."  Using   her

repulsorlifts, she drifted to port  and a stream of plasma  whipped past

her, splashing onto  the blue transparisteel  panels on the  face of the

building; she directed laserfire back at her attacker.

Other unit commanders  called in readiness  as the countdown  neared its

end. Not  all did.  Jaina winced.  She couldn't  hope that no friendlies

were out  there; she  knew some  were, pilots  who'd been  shot down but

might still be alive.

"Zero," Iella said. "Hold positions."

And it began to rain.

It didn't rain  water. It rained  columns of destructive  energy, massed

fire from turbolaser batteries far overhead, brilliant needles of  light

that poured into the jungle all around the kill zone.

The  turbolaser  blasts  tore  through  vegetation,  through  everything

beneath it.  Blasts hitting  trees detonated  them in  clouds of  smoke.

Beams hitting  ponds and  creeks and  stagnant water  sent up  clouds of

superheated  steam. Beams  flashed down  through those  clouds, but  the

manipulators of voids  couldn't see them  coming, couldn't maneuver  the

voids into place in time.

Jaina sat transfixed.  This was orbital  bombardment, what the  Empire's

Star Destroyers had been built to  do, what no Star Destroyer under  the

command of the New Republic had ever done. Jaina had heard about it, but

it was just history, just some  old-timey thing that no one ever  had to

worry about.

And now she was seeing  it. Lusankya was finally fulfilling  the purpose

for which she had been built, before Jaina had even been born.

For four minutes,  death rained down  from overhead, in  a circle neatly

surrounding the kill zone. Then it stopped, and the rumbles, the screams

uttered by bodies of water suddenly superheated, the bellows of  distant

rakamats meeting their doom, all died away.

Jaina jumped as  her comlink crackled  back into life.  "Ground forces,"

Wedge said, "commence mop-up."

Coruscant

The repulsors on  the descent units  activated for the  final portion of

the descent. All the members of  Luke's group set down on the  same roof

except  for  Kell Tainer,  who  hit the  roof  correctly, punched  clean

through its disintegrating duracrete surface, and ended up three stories

down.  "Not  hurt,"  he  shouted  up.  "Hey,  they've  left  behind some

holodramas I haven't seen."

Luke pulled  off his  scorched environment  suit as  the others  did the

same. He took a look around. In  the distance, he could see a flight  of

four coralskippers; they were  not aimed this way,  but if he could  see

them, their pilots might be able to see him. "Let's get under cover," he

said. "Shove all the trash into the hole Kell made. Look out below."

Mara, somehow stylishly savage in her vonduun crab armor with its helmet

off, surveyed the landscape. Her  lips twitched in a momentary  grimace.

"Welcome home," she said.

Luke shook his head. "This isn't home. I wonder if it will ever be  home

again."

Yuuzhan Vong Worldship, Pyria Orbit

Czulkang  Lah blinked.  How had  that particular  use of  the  infidels'

triangle ships eluded him?

Nom Anor, he  decided. Nom Anor  had been the  Yuuzhan Vong spy  in this

galaxy for decades. Like an idiot, during all those years, he had failed

to discover  that humans  gave birth  to twins  so often  that it  was a

matter of little interest to them, and this failure had cost them dearly

- it had allowed the notion of  Jacen and Jaina Solo as sacred twins  to

become a weapon in the hands of the infidels.

Now, it seemed obvious  that Nom Anor had  failed to inform the  Yuuzhan

Vong military command of a  little-used but critical tactic employed  by

the enemy's senior capital ships. Unforgivable. Unforgivable.

"Recall the ships and coralskippers harassing their orbital forces,"  he

told his aide. "This engagement is done."

"It cannot be done," the  officer whispered. "We have been  embarrassed.

We have failed."

"If you can't live with it,  find a way to kill yourself,"  Czulkang Lah

answered. "And  I will  find an  aide who  has intelligence  as well  as

courage." He turned away. He would have to give his son unpleasant news.

Borleias

As night fell, Jaina finished  her power-down checklist. She exited  her

X-wing, gave it an affectionate pat, waved at Cappie, and turned  toward

the docking bay exit.

But waiting for her, as he usually did now, was Jag. He wore the  slight

smile Jaina suspected that only she could see. "What's up?" she said.

"Calrissian got back  from Coruscant alive.  So, being Calrissian,  he's

throwing a  party for  family and  friends. And  friends of friends, and

anyone who looks interesting. He  says he has pre-invasion brandy.  Care

to go?"

Jaina felt herself start to shake her head, the refusal that had  become

second  nature to  her since  she'd come  to Borleias,  but she   caught

herself in time. She  linked her arm through  his and smiled up  at him.

"Love to."