FOURTEEN

Zekk lowered himself into the pilot’s seat of the captured Hapan ship and then reached over to help his copilot with her restraints. Like Zekk, Tenel Ka was swathed in an evac suit, a helmet near at hand. She waved off his assistance and buckled herself in deftly, completing the task more quickly with her one hand than Zekk could with two.

The look she sent him was faintly challenging, and the energy she projected through the Force had an edge to it. Zekk understood that this had very little to do with her missing limb. Tenel Ka hadn’t become any more competitive since her injury, but then, Zekk hadn’t noticed that she’d become any less competitive, either.

He pretended to scowl. “How is that fair?” he said in mock complaint. “You’ve had more experience with Hapan vessels.”

“Results, not excuses,” she advised, but a ghost of a smile touched her lips as she turned to the console and began to power up the engines.

Jaina thrust her head into the cockpit, and the grin on her face was that of the girl Zekk had known long ago. “Turn up that music and let’s get ready to dance.”

The Jedi pilot smiled faintly, understanding exactly what she meant. The hum and whine of the Hapan ship’s engines was surprisingly welcome after the eerie silence of the dovin basal.

Her smile dimmed as she studied Zekk. “You sure you want to do this?”

Zekk didn’t see much of a choice. The two ships were still connected, firmly melded together by the strange substance the Trickster’s coral hull had secreted. They were as open to each other as two enjoining rooms. Zekk could hear Lowbacca’s deceptively fearsome howl as the Wookiee herded captive pirates through the portal to the Yuuzhan Vong ship.

And that, he noted grimly, was the problem—that two-meter oval doorway between the two ships. Tahiri claimed the Yuuzhan Vong ship could heal itself, but there was nothing to be done about the breach in the Hapan vessel. Cutting the ship loose would leave nearly a fifth of it open to the vacuum of space. They could abandon it, of course, but that would mean losing a salvageable cargo ship and, more important, the fourteen short-range fighters stored in the hold.

At the moment, none of this seemed terribly important to Zekk.

“It should be an adventure,” he said, trying to keep his tone light. “I’ve never flown in tandem before.”

Jaina came up behind the pilot’s seat and leaned down, resting her chin on his shoulder and sliding her arms around his neck in the sort of casual, friendly embrace they’d exchanged many times over the years. “It’s not the stupidest thing we’ve ever done.”

“Who could argue with that?”

She chuckled and rose. The quick click of her boots faded as she passed through to the Yuuzhan Vong ship.

Zekk glanced at Tenel Ka. The warrior studied him with cool, gray eyes that saw far too much. He grimaced and looked away.

“It is difficult to live among Jedi,” she said, acknowledging his chagrin. “I was not able to grieve Jacen in private.”

“And I can’t worry about Jaina without everyone knowing about it.”

“Worry?” Tenel Ka repeated the pale word, rejected it. “You are afraid for her. You are afraid of her.”

“Shouldn’t I be?” he said softly.

“She’s not Jaina as I knew her at the academy, but who has not been changed by this war?”

He couldn’t dispute this. “Still, I don’t like it.”

“Neither does she,” Tenel Ka said evenly. “Jaina would have emerged as a leader in time, regardless of circumstances. The battle at Myrkr forced her down this path before she had time to consider where it might end. Leadership involves finding a compromise, a balance. Nowhere is this more important than within the leader herself. She must be able to take action and to focus all her decisions toward a desired end, while remaining grounded in principle.”

He considered the warrior woman. “You’ve thought about this.”

“At length,” she agreed. “Jaina is dealing with her loss by taking charge. This is a good response, one that returns to her a measure of control. But in detaching herself from her pain, she is also losing an important balance within herself.” Her face turned grim. “I have seen what a leader who lacks this balance can become. We must watch her carefully.”

Zekk looked away. “You’ll have to do the watching. I’m moving on.”

“You would abandon a friend?” she demanded.

“As you abandoned Jacen?” he snapped back.

Nothing in Tenel Ka’s face acknowledged the hit. “I know you didn’t mean that,” she said calmly. “But I also know that if Jacen were in danger of sliding into the dark side, I would want to do whatever I could to pull him back.”

This was the first time any of them had put their concern for Jaina into words. For a moment they were silent, sobered by the grim possibility.

“And what if she can’t be pulled back?” Zekk asked. “I’ve taken that path, and I know what a Dark Jedi can do. If it comes to that, someone will have to stop her.”

“By any means necessary,” she agreed, once again giving voice to their shared fears.

“And I couldn’t do that. No matter what, I just couldn’t do it.”

“I see.” Tenel Ka turned her gaze straight ahead. “Then you are right to go.”

   Jaina slid on the cognition hood and urged the drifting Trickster into motion.

The ship balked, confused by circumstances it did not understand, and by the metallic bulk attached to it. Jaina gritted her teeth and reconsidered the wisdom of this attempted salvage. They might be able to fly and land in this formation, but if challenged, they wouldn’t be able to put up much of a fight.

A trio of starships appeared in the distance, so suddenly that Jaina had the uncanny feeling that she’d conjured them with her unspoken fears. Faint lines of light slid out of hyperspace and slowed into focused, rapidly approaching dots.

She snatched up the comm Lowbacca had rigged up and opened the frequency to hail. “This is Lieutenant Jaina Solo of Rogue Squadron, aboard the Yuuzhan Vong frigate Trickster. The ship is under New Republic control. There are no Yuuzhan Vong aboard. Repeat, this is not an enemy ship. Hold your fire.”

“Relax, Trickster. We’re here to see you safely down,” announced a familiar voice—the last voice Jaina expected or wanted to hear.

“Kyp Durron,” she said coldly. “You might as well turn around right now. I wouldn’t follow you out of an ocean if I were drowning.”

“Hear me out before you open fire. Your parents are on Hapes, in the refugee center. I told the princess I’d bring you back. Now, you could send me back to Leia empty-handed, but we all know what path a vindictive spirit might take you down.”

She absorbed his dark humor in silence as she considered his words, and the likely consequences of his presence. Her parents had enough to deal with without the added grief that always seemed to follow Kyp Durron like fumes from a faulty exhaust.

“Don’t use my family in another of your tricks—if they’re really on Hapes at all.”

“This is Colonel Jag Fel, Lieutenant Solo,” another voice broke in. “I have seen your mother on Hapes, and the request for an escort came directly to me from landing control. Kyp Durron is speaking the truth, and flying under my command.”

A strange, unsettled feeling coiled in the pit of Jaina’s stomach, and a little rush of gladness entered her heart like a spring breeze. She did her best to ignore both.

“Under your command? Don’t believe it,” she said bluntly. “If Kyp can twist a Jedi’s thoughts, he can make you think anything he wants.”

“Thank you for your concern, but I hope I’m not quite so weak-minded as that.”

“So do I,” she retorted, a little stung by the glacial tone that had entered Jag’s voice. His response didn’t exactly come as a surprise, though. Pilots were renowned for their pride, and she’d just stomped on the edges of his. Still, if Jag was determined to fly with Kyp, someone ought to tell him he’d set course on a dangerous vector.

“Suit yourself. But while you’re watching my back, keep an eye on your own.”

She firmly clicked off the comm and concentrated on flying the ship. The Trickster rebelled against its mechanical hitchhiker, and Jaina waged a silent but fierce argument with the ship in an effort to keep it from shedding the pirate vessel. Finally the sentient frigate yielded to a compromise.

“Lowbacca, Ganner, can you put that panel back in place?”

“You’re not thinking about abandoning them?” Alema Rar demanded.

“The ship wants to,” she replied, “but it’ll settle for a chance to heal itself. It’s a good precaution.”

Lowbacca waved Ganner aside, then wrapped his long arms around the coral oval and heaved. He set it down in front of the portal with a resounding thud and then shouldered it into place. Immediately a dark goo began to seep from the surrounding wall, filling in the crack and binding the portal back into the wall.

Jaina clicked on the comm. “Zekk, if you can lock down the breached chamber, do it. Just in case.”

“Already done.”

She turned her attention to the task of flying the ship—and keeping a mental connection open to her fellow pilot. Talking was useless, for there were no words to equate one technology with the other. The two pilots communicated through feelings, impressions, adjusting their speed and direction to match each other precisely. Jaina had jokingly described their shared flight as a dance, and that’s precisely what it felt like—a dance between enormous, mismatched partners.

All went well until they entered Hapes’s atmosphere. The Trickster shuddered as the dovin basal adjusted for the planet’s gravity. A loud, groaning creak announced that the heat and turbulence of reentry was straining the seal between the ships. The messages coming to Jaina through the cognition hood were garbled, as if the ship were confused.

Suddenly Jaina was none too happy about their chances. She tossed a look over her shoulder. Tahiri was right behind her, a place she seemed to be taking with increasing frequency. “Tahiri, you’ve flown in these things before. How did you land?”

“We crashed, mostly,” the girl admitted.

The ship shook and pitched as it neared the ground. “It’s panicking,” Jaina realized. “It thinks the attached ship is pulling it down.”

“Let me try,” Tahiri offered, prodding Lowbacca out of the navigation chair. She pulled on the hood. After a moment she shook her head. “No good. It’s not listening anymore.”

“You hear that, Zekk?” she called through the comm.

“Cut us loose,” he said tersely.

Jaina relayed her intention to the ship and then wrenched the frigate to one side. The seal released at once, and the Trickster soared away from the pirate ship.

Her heart crawled into her throat as she watched the damaged ship spiral slowly toward the ground. It was scant meters from crashing before Zekk finally managed to pull out of the spin. He brought the ship into a rising turn, then slowed to a hover as the repulsor engines came on. The cargo ship lowered onto the landing dock, coming to rest heavily but safely.

To Jaina’s relief, the Trickster calmed and followed its erstwhile partner down to the dock. As soon as the Yuuzhan Vong frigate set down, she suggested that it rest and then yanked off the hood.

The other Jedi had left the ship by the time she finished shutting down. When she reached the open hatch, she noted them standing together in a tight knot. Several Hapan military officials supervised the removal of the fighter ships from the cargo hold of the captured vessel; others led the pirates away.

Jaina hurried down the ramp, and her eyes sought out Zekk. “You didn’t have a choice,” he said before she could speak. “There were two people on my ship, twenty on yours. I would have done the same thing.”

Jaina nodded her thanks. Before she could say anything, Tahiri caught the arm of a passing docking official. “How can we get a repulsorsled? We have a casualty aboard. We need to take him to his parents in the refugee camp.”

The woman pulled away and swept a hand toward the grassy area beyond the dock. Rows of wounded lay on white pallets. Sheets had been pulled up over many of them. “I’m sorry, but yours is hardly a unique situation.”

Jaina’s eyes narrowed. She came to stand at Tahiri’s side, faced down the official and moved her hand in a slight subtle gesture. “You will find Han and Leia Solo in the refugee camp and inform them that their daughter has arrived.”

The official’s eyes widened, only partly due to the subtle Jedi compulsion. “This casualty you spoke of. That wouldn’t be Anakin Solo, would it?”

This set Jaina back on her heels. “You’ve heard?”

“Who hasn’t!” she said, her tones rounded with near reverence. “The HoloNet—or what’s left of it—has been playing Princess Leia’s exhortation to the people of Coruscant almost nonstop since the battle. Of course I’ll send word!”

The woman hurried off. Tahiri shifted her weight from one foot to the other, and glanced back toward the Yuuzhan Vong ship. Impatience and repugnance came off her in waves, and an almost frantic desire to get away. Still, Jaina couldn’t see wandering around the refugee camp with this particular cargo in tow.

“Maybe we should wait for my parents here,” Jaina suggested.

Green fire flared in Tahiri’s eyes. “How can you think about leaving Anakin in there one nanosecond longer than we have to!”

Jaina was about to point out that Anakin was past caring about such things. Yet it was hard to forget the grim compulsion that had driven her to recover her brother’s body from the worldship, at great risk to herself and the other Jedi.

She tamped down her impatience. “Be practical. We can’t exactly cruise around Hapes with a repulsorsled. My parents will want a funeral—well, my mother will, anyway—and she’ll make sure everything is handled in a dignified, proper fashion.”

The official hurried back, followed by a repulsorsled and two somber-faced assistants. “They look sort of dignified,” Tahiri ventured.

“All right,” she conceded. “They can get him off the ship.” She told them where to find her brother’s body. In short order they emerged from the ship, flanking a white-draped sled. Tahiri’s eyes filled.

Jaina abruptly turned and put several quick paces between herself and the young Jedi. She folded her arms and leaned against the Trickster, staring out over the bustling docks.

Before long she noted a two-person landspeeder skimming toward them. Almost before it stopped, Leia flung herself from it and hurried to her daughter, her eyes bright with relief.

She stopped abruptly when her gaze fell on the sled, and the color drained from her face.

“We brought Anakin with us,” Jaina said. “Jacen we couldn’t get to. I’m sorry.”

Leia took a long, steadying breath and tilted her chin into its familiar, imperious angle. From the corner of her eye, Jaina noticed Tahiri mirroring the older woman’s gesture, as if the outer form might serve as a vessel to hold something of Leia’s strength.

She stepped forward and embraced her daughter. “Don’t worry about Jacen,” she said softly. “He might seem fragile at times, but he’s a survivor.”

Jaina stiffened, startled by her mother’s comment. Leia was as sensitive to the Force as any trained Jedi, and in Jaina’s opinion, the epitome of grace under pressure. How could she block this?

Her eyes sought out her father’s face. Han looked from her to Leia, his eyes wary. He must have read the truth in Jaina’s eyes, because suddenly the color seeped from his face, leaving it gray and haggard and … old.

And suddenly Jaina had one more reason to hate the Yuuzhan Vong.

Her gaze slid away from the shattered face of the man who was both her father and her childhood hero. She eased out of her mother’s embrace, keeping her hands on Leia’s shoulders. “Mom, Jacen is gone. We all felt it.” One way or another, she added silently.

The older woman shook her head. “He’s still alive,” she stated, quietly but with implacable conviction.

For a moment Jaina was at a complete loss for words. She stepped aside so that Leia could confront at least one of the grim realities before her.

For a long moment the woman stood, gazing at the still, white-draped form of her youngest child. Her eyes welling with unshed tears, she reached out a shaking hand to fold down the drape covering Anakin’s face. One droplet traced a wet path down her cheek and she brushed it away, blinking hard. Han, his own eyes glistening, came to her side and took her hand. But when she looked up at Jaina, blinking back tears, Leia’s voice was steady.

“Was it hard?”

Jaina glanced at the bier. “Let’s just say he didn’t make it easy for them.”

“He wouldn’t,” Leia said with a faint, sad smile. “But I was asking about you. I was among the Yuuzhan Vong briefly, so I have some idea of what you might have faced—what Jacen might still be facing. But I survived, and so did you. And so will Jacen. We have to believe that.”

Leia gazed at her fallen son for a long moment. Softly, she stroked his cheek, then bent to kiss his forehead. At last, she turned and began to walk ahead. Her husband and daughter exchanged a helpless glance and then fell into place on either side.

“About Jacen,” Han ventured, his voice shaking a little. “I don’t want to believe it, either, but … There’s got to be a way to make sure. Maybe Luke could—”

“No,” Leia said firmly. “He couldn’t. Jacen is alive. I know it. I just can’t explain why I know it, or how.”

“We all felt Jacen’s presence,” Jaina said. She added carefully, “It seemed like … a farewell.”

“I felt that, too. But there’s a difference between closing down and winking out. I felt Anakin’s death. Not Jacen’s.”

“Neither did I, and I’m his twin.” She took a deep breath. “Mom, I think you need to consider the possibility that you might be in denial. A mother’s intuition is a powerful thing, but so are the instincts of half a dozen fully trained Jedi.”

“Don’t start in on your mother,” Han cautioned. “Not again, and especially not now.”

Jaina sent him an incredulous stare.

“Don’t look at me like I just kicked an Ewok,” Han said. “I’ve heard about some of the comments you’ve made, about her not working at being a Jedi, not being there as a mother.” He stabbed a finger in her direction. “No more.”

For several moments, father and daughter faced each other wearing identical expressions of outrage. Then Jaina bobbed her head in a curt nod.

“All right, maybe I’ve said some things in the past couple of years that I’m not proud of. But would you want to be judged on the three or four worst comments you’ve made since this war started?”

Han’s silence was more eloquent than words.

“Don’t judge me for a few stupid remarks,” she repeated softly. She and Leia locked stares. “Somehow, I doubt that Mom does.”

Her mother smiled faintly. “I was younger than you when I joined the Senate. Almost immediately I started using my position to cover my work with the Rebellion. Bail Organa tried to dissuade me. I called him a coward.”

“Well, there you go,” Jaina said, as if that settled everything.

Han’s gaze shifted from his wife to his daughter. Never had the resemblance between them been stronger than at this moment. He shook his head in bemusement. “And here I thought I was outnumbered by the Vong,” he muttered.

Jaina enfolded him in a quick, hard hug. “Take care of Mom,” she whispered.

Han held her off at arm’s length and glanced toward the group of solemn young Jedi gathering around Anakin’s bier. “You’re not staying?”

“I’ve said my good-byes.” Jaina pulled free, exchanged another look with her mother, then strode off without a backward glance.

It was pure instinct that sent Han after her. Leia stopped him abruptly, one hand on his chest.

“She’s your daughter,” Leia reminded him. “She has to deal with loss in her own way and in her own time.”

Han considered this. The expression on his face was that of a man who gazed into a mirror and disliked what he saw. He grimaced and passed one hand over his face.

“She’s my daughter,” he admitted, “and I’m an idiot.”

His eyes held apology for all he’d done and said in the months following Chewbacca’s death. Leia manufactured a shaky smile. “Don’t be too hard on yourself.”

“Yeah, well.” He fell silent, and his gaze shifted slowly, reluctantly toward the draped sled.

“I hope Anakin saw things the same way Jaina does,” he said at last. “I’d hate to think he judged me—or worse yet, himself—by the stupidest three or four things I’ve said since this war started.”

“He knows,” she said. “And he doesn’t.”

He looked at her, his expression wistful. “You sound so sure. You’re sure about Jacen, too, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

Han considered this, nodded. “That’s good enough for me.”

Leia’s heart overflowed. She went into Han’s arms—the last sure haven in the galaxy—and turned her face into his chest to hide the tears she could no longer contain.