THIRTY-FOUR
Warmaster Nas Choka gave Yuuzhan’tar a final glance as Yammka’s Mount’s powerful dovin basals prepared to tug the vessel into darkspace for the short journey to the outersystem world known as Muscave. Aswirl with clouds, the green hemisphere that was Yuuzhan’tar had changed dramatically in the short time since the armada had launched for Mon Calamari. Smoke was chimneying from volcanic vents, it was absent one of its moons, and the bridge of the gods had collapsed—all but force-fed rock by rock to the orbiting dovin basals tasked with shielding the world from attack. And no grand ceremony on this occasion. No farewell blessings from Shimrra; no fresh coats of sacrificial blood for warriors and war vessels.
Yuuzhan’tar appeared exposed, ill prepared to defend itself. But Nas Choka trusted that Supreme Overlord Shimrra would attend to that. More important, Yuuzhan’tar would fall to the enemy only if the armada failed in its mission to destroy Zonama Sekot. In that case, Nas Choka wouldn’t be alive to see the planet reclaimed. Judged unworthy by the gods, the Yuuzhan Vong would die, individually and as a species, and the gods would be forced once more to fashion beings worthy of nurture, as they had done three times before the Yuuzhan Vong had been brought into being.
Nas Choka had accepted Shimrra’s wisdom on the matter of Zonama Sekot. Again the Supreme Overlord had demonstrated his brilliance, and that had reinforced Nas Choka’s belief that he had made the correct choice in siding with Shimrra when it had come to toppling Quoreal from the polyp throne.
But Nas Choka nursed a secret distrust for the Trickster goddess, Yun-Harla. The feathered traitor, Vergere, had been the familiar of priestesses of Yun-Harla. Too, Eminence Harrar had been devoted to her, and he had apparently vanished off the face of Yuuzhan’tar. Worse, the Trickster, without intervention, had for a time allowed her guise to be adopted by one of the Jedi. So what was to stop her from betraying the Yuuzhan Vong now? Weary of being patronized by Yun-Yuuzhan and Yun-Yammka, perhaps she wished to bring about the destruction of Yun-Yuuzhan’s creation, by tricking Shimrra into trusting to a false revelation.
To shore up his own faith and that of his warriors, Nas Choka had commanded a coven of Yun-Yammka priests to accompany the armada. Having drawn blood from the tongues and earlobes of each and every Supreme Commander, the priests had pumped the bloated ngdins that had absorbed the sacrificial offerings into a coralskipper and dispatched it into the void, in advance of the armada.
Hands clasped behind his back, the warmaster spun away from the view of Yuuzhan’tar. Several strides across the coarse deck took him to the villip-choir, where the mistress in charge of the array bowed her head in subordination.
“I would speak with the shaper aboard the failing vessel,” Nas Choka said.
The mistress stroked the appropriate villip, which inverted and assumed the sickly likeness of the shaper who had been poisoned at Caluula.
“My only surviving villip is dying, Warmaster,” the ashen shaper reported. “It lacks the vigor to portray your visage, but I suspect it is capable of relaying your words.”
“Speak to the health of yourself and your crew, shaper,” Nas Choka said. “Do you have the vigor to carry out what has been commanded of you?”
The villip’s thick lips formed words. “Four slayers have died; six remain—a sufficient number to pilot this ailing vessel. I am alive only by dint of chemical compounds I managed to mix and ingest at the onset of my paralysis, but my time is short, Warmaster.”
“If need be I will send hale warriors and youthful villips to assist you, shaper. But only you can keep the vessel itself alive. If it dies before we reach Zonama Sekot, then all is lost.”
“I fear it is incapable of going to darkspace, Warmaster.”
Nas Choka ground his filed teeth and swung to his chief tactician. “Advise me of our options.”
“Allow it to be ingested by a larger vessel, Warmaster,” the tactician said. “A sacrifice of yet another vessel and its crew, but essential to our task.”
Nas Choka nodded and turned back to the transmitting villip. “Shaper, command the vessel’s dovin basals, villips, and weapons to rest. I will dispatch a vessel of sufficient size to engulf yours and carry it through darkspace to Zonama Sekot. Once there, the slayers will pilot your vessel from its carapace. Then, under whatever escort I deem necessary, you will consign yourself and your vessel to the living world.”
“An honor that finds me undeserving, Warmaster.”
“Succeed, and undreamed-of rewards await you, shaper. Fail, and suffer the disgrace of having sentenced our entire species to oblivion.”
When the shaper’s villip had resumed its familiar shape, Nas Choka gestured for the tactician to follow him into the command chamber’s blister transparency.
“What have you learned of our enemy’s plan?”
“Muscave has become the gathering place for the Alliance battle group that struck Corulag, and an even larger force of capital ships sent from Contruum. The enemy is now poised between us and our target.”
“Part of our trial,” Nas Choka said evenly. “Before we can even engage the planet the gods have placed in their hands, we must break through the enemy’s line.”
“At the same time, the enemy entices us away from Yuuzhan’tar.”
Nas Choka grunted. “They have devised a clever assault.”
“Though ignorant of the fact, they have the complicity of the gods.”
Nas Choka clenched his right hand. “We will do the same at Muscave, by offering ourselves as an enticement, so that our poisoned barb can fly true to its mark. We will present ourselves as a warrior would, brandishing his amphistaff in challenge on the battlefield!” He nodded in self-assurance. “When will the infidels arrive at Yuuzhan’tar?”
“The Alliance commanders have already sundered the fleet they assembled at Contruum,” the tactician said. “We suspect that the vanished battle groups have jumped to darkspace and will emerge in our absence, to all sides of Yuuzhan’tar, and from unfamiliar vectors. A study of villip memories of the battle at Ebaq Nine has revealed worthwhile comparisons. There, too, the enemy made use of darkspace corridors of which we had no knowledge. But the comparison ends there. After our spear has been thrust into Zonama Sekot’s flesh, there will be no need for a ground assault, or an ill-conceived hunt for Jeedai. Satisfied that we have overcome the trial, the gods will add their might to our armada and we will be able to wipe the Jeedai from existence.”
Nas Choka smiled lightly. “It is a rare occasion when well-matched warriors have an opportunity to face each other a second time, in a different arena.” He paused for a moment, then said: “As yet no communication from Domains Muyel and Lacap?”
“No,” the tactician said. “Their war vessels remain in the star systems awarded to them by Supreme Overlord Shimrra.”
Nas Choka’s tattooed upper lip curled in anger. “Their punishment, too, will be swift and lethal.”
One didn’t have to be a native of Coruscant to know that the planet had seen better days. Holos displayed at the premission briefings didn’t do justice to the extent to which the Yuuzhan Vong had transformed the world and Zonama Sekot had wounded it. Once as green as the Chiss capital of Csilla was white, vast areas were now blackened by fire and fractured by sinuous flows of lava.
Jag absorbed the desolation in a glance as his clawcraft swooped from the open belly of the Star Destroyer Right to Rule. Twin Suns’ complement of clawcraft and X-wings streaked behind him in a trailing wedge. Off to Jag’s port side, and slightly to stern, flew Rogue Squadron; to starboard, the Wraiths and Taanab Yellow Aces. Centered and shielded by the near wing of starfighters were three lightly armed troop transports. Two were of the same vintage as the 170-meter-long bulbous-lobed Record Time, which had been sacrificed at Coruscant shortly after the planet’s capture. The third was a pre-Empire vessel, almost four hundred meters long, and might have been a precursor of Right to Rule herself.
The main body of the Yuuzhan Vong armada had made the jump to lightspeed only an hour earlier, but Warmaster Nas Choka had left enough vessels in orbit to test the mettle of the Alliance. Even with Star Destroyers, Mon Cal cruisers, and Corellian gunships arriving from unguarded insertion points, the Yuuzhan Vong were capable of engaging each separate battle group.
The enemy flotilla that rushed to meet the Fourth Fleet was made up of light cruiser and assault cruiser analogs, from whose hull panels jutted forked arms housing plasma cannon emplacements and clusters of coralskippers. Simultaneous with the emergence of the starfighters, the skips had dropped from their barnaclelike perches and were now racing outward from the edge of Coruscant’s envelope, eager for contest.
“Shield trios,” Jag commanded his group over the tactical net. “Stick close to the transports, and stay alert for course corrections. Don’t allow yourselves to be drawn into individual conflicts.”
The group was split evenly between Chiss and Alliance pilots, but for the first time since Twin Suns’ inception at the Jedi base known as Eclipse, there wasn’t a Force-user among them. Jag had originally flown with Twin Suns at Borleias, when the squadron had been handed over to Jaina, and he had flown with her for most of the past year at Galantos, Bakura, and in other campaigns. Their training, coupled with his deep affection for her, sometimes made him wonder if he hadn’t become sensitized to the Force—or at least to Jaina’s use of the Force. At Hapes, and as recently as Mon Calamari, where Jaina’s X-wing had been crippled, he seemed to be able to intuit her needs or requests. Incapable of communicating with her squadron, she had reached out through the Force and Jag had heard her—clear enough, at any rate, to have anticipated and relayed Jaina’s orders to her wingmates. With Jaina absent—on Zonama Sekot, according to Gavin Darklighter—the starfighter group felt less responsive, though Jag maintained a strong combat bond with the Chiss pilots, especially Shawnkyr and Eprill.
“Twin Sun Leader,” said the voice of Right to Rule control. “Bring your group to Sector Sabacc, zero-six-six. We’re getting ready to light things up.”
Jag had flown with Grand Admiral Pellaeon’s vessel at Esfandia, and the voice was reassuring.
“Copy, Right to Rule. Coming about to zero-six-six.”
The broad bank sunward placed the trio of transports and their starfighter escorts over daybreak Coruscant. No sooner was the task force clear of Right to Rule than all its starboard quad laser batteries belched fire. Not far from the Star Destroyer, and similarly aligned to the planet, two Mon Cal MC80Bs and the cruiser Dauntless added their blinding salvos to the light storm. Half the amassed firepower was directed at the onrushing coralskippers, dozens of which were instantly vaporized. The other half was aimed at what remained of Coruscant’s short-lived planetary ring. Hammered by massive packets of coherent light and high-yield proton torpedoes, the largest pieces of what had once been a moon broke into thousands of even smaller fragments, creating a meteor storm the likes of which Coruscant probably hadn’t confronted since it had coalesced into a planet.
Enormous singularities began to open as the chunks were sent tumbling into the upper reaches of the envelope. But the orbital dovin basals that had created the gravitic anomalies were already overburdened, and many of the fragments plummeted past them, becoming fiery streaks as they entered the atmosphere.
Jag knew that scanners aboard the Alliance capital ships were already analyzing the relative strengths of the singularities and monitoring the trajectories of the meteors that had slipped through the gravitic shield. Once the areas of greatest stress were identified, their locations would be relayed to the transports and starfighters.
Not quite two years earlier, the troop transport Record Time had delivered its cargo of Wraiths and Jedi to the surface of Coruscant in single-person containers. But that was before the dovin basals had been seeded into orbit. More important, there was no reason for stealth now. As someone at Contruum had said to Jag, “If we can’t drop a moon on them, we can at least make it rain rocks.”
“Twin Suns,” Right to Rule control said, “you have open windows at coordinates four-two-three and four-two-five. Rothana transport is reorienting to follow you through.”
Jag passed the word to his pilots, even though the navi-computers on each starfighter had certainly received the course corrections. Configured into pairs and trios, Twin Suns formed up along both sides of the antique wedge-shaped ship and began to herd it toward the infiltration zone. Adapting their vectors to match those of the escort starfighters, coralskippers attacked from all sides, threading through the fragment cloud and augmenting it with plasma missiles and gouts of molten stone.
Flying just at the perimeter of the transport’s shields, Jag’s clawcraft was jarred by every projectile that found its target. The comm channel was a babble of voices, as pilots issued warnings of strafing runs or declared the status of their ships. Explosive light washed into the spherical cockpit of Twin Suns One from astern, and Jag glanced at his displays to see Twin Eight and Eleven vanish from the grid. With scant room to maneuver, he tried to make the most of every squeeze of the trigger, but the skips had the advantage of being able to take evasive action, whereas the starfighters were intent on protecting their ward.
Carefully trained laser bolts from Right to Rule created a sudden corridor of destructive energy around the transport and fighters. A dozen more skips became extra fodder for the meteor-gobbling dovin basals. Still in darkness, a Yuuzhan Vong cruiser stabbed by convergent blasts from three separate Alliance ships cracked open and blew apart. A second vessel, spewing blades of flame from its midsection, rolled lazily out of orbit and began to fall into the atmosphere.
The dovin basals were trying desperately to prioritize, but more and more rock fragments were getting past them. As overtaxed as they were, the gigantic biots still posed a threat to any ship that ventured too close. For that reason the transports had been retrofitted with Bakuran-designed HIMS generators, which should have allowed them to sustain momentum even in an interdiction field. At Contruum, few had expressed confidence in the retrofitting, and Jag was one of the first pilots to see why.
His group of vanguard starfighters was just passing between a pair of the Yuuzhan Vong orbital monstrosities when two overlapping singularities yawned, catching the pointed bow of the transport and dragging it hard to starboard. The ship’s aged cylindrical thrusters tried to compensate for the unexpected tug of gravity, but they weren’t up to the challenge. The jury-rigged HIMS failed, and the deflector shields followed. The transport twisted over on its side and began to founder. Armor flayed from the hull and surface modules disappeared into the swirling black mouth of the singularity. Breaches opened, venting precious atmosphere and unsecured objects. Then, deep within the vessel, an explosion flashed, and it split wide open. Ground-effect vehicles, combat droids, and acceleration couches spun outward—some of the latter with commandos still strapped into them.
In the blink of an eye Twin Suns lost another three fighters. To port, trimmed in golden sunlight, one of the newer transports was banking as quickly as its bulk allowed. Rogue Squadron had re-formed around the ship and was just beginning to shepherd it into the atmosphere. Jag looked to his right and overhead for the second transport, but couldn’t find it. What he found instead were the Wraiths, winning their duels with coralskippers even as they blazed toward Twin Suns.
Right to Rule control boomed in Jag’s ears. “Twin Suns Leader, come about to zero-zero-three. You are redesignated escort for number one transport. As soon as your group is clear, we’re going to try to burn a tunnel to the surface.”
Jag hauled on the control yoke, gravitational forces all but burying him in the seat as he slewed to port. The dozen remaining members of his group followed in formation, sticking close enough to one another to provide adjuvant shielding. Ahead of them, transport one had dropped inside the tier of dovin basals and was rushing for the surface, blunt nose aglow from friction. Twenty years earlier Coruscant had been liberated from Imperial forces by loosing a group of criminals to sow confusion, and by sabotaging the planet’s shield generators. Now liberation would depend largely on the actions of a thousand commandos and a handful of resistance fighters, and the off chance of their being able to mobilize the Yuuzhan Vong heretics into an insurgent force.
As promised, coordinated laserfire came from the capital ships. Sizzling through the atmosphere, the sustained fusillade annihilated everything in its path and burned a ragged bald patch in Coruscant’s verdant surface. It was toward the denuded area that the starfighters and transport raced, firing on the run at the few coralskippers that had survived the laser shower.
The control yoke shuddered in Jag’s grip as he powered the clawcraft into denser air. The ship rattled, as if on the verge of coming apart, but it held together. Surface features of Coruscant began to come into focus: forest-covered spires and mounds, wide crevasses brimming with mist yet to be burned off by the sun. Gradually he decreased the angle of his descent until he was flying into the sun, and parallel to the undulating terrain. Frightened by the roar of the approaching craft, flocks of black birds with three-meter wingspans took flight from the branching crowns of emergent trees.
A contour map resolved on the cockpit navigational display, showing the buildings and features of the so-called sacred precinct, from the craggy mountain that was Shimrra’s worldship Citadel to the domelike structure that housed and protected the World Brain—what had once been the most affluent and fashionable area of the planet. A counter at the bottom of the screen showed the distance remaining to the scorched landing zone, which was surrounded by dense forest and yorik coral outcroppings.
Without warning, enemy artillery fire erupted from the tree line around the clearing, fountaining molten ejecta and flaming projectiles high into the air. Flying nap of the forest, Jag spotted the distinctive sail-like spine plates of the armored beast the Yuuzhan Vong called a rakamat, and the Alliance knew as a range. The blue-green reptilian creatures were the size of small buildings, and on Borleias had proved almost impossible to stop.
“That plasma is coming from a range, east of the landing zone,” Jag said over the tactical net. “Shawnkyr, Eprill, see if you can hold it at bay long enough for Page’s Commandos to insert.”
“On our way, Colonel,” Shawnkyr responded.
At Borleias, she had urged Jag to return to their native Chiss space. Now she was as much an Alliance pilot as he was.
Dodging projectiles, Jag banked over the forest. He was doubling back to the transport when he finally caught sight of its sister ship, ten kilometers to the south and covered stem to stern in grutchins.
The Yellow Aces were pursuing the out-of-control vessel and using their lasers to dislodge the grutchins, as if picking vermin off a pet. But the acid-producing, globular-eyed insectoids had ingested large areas of the hull and, judging by the way the transport was wobbling, had already infiltrated the cabin spaces. Jag watched helplessly as the vessel bellied into the forest, cutting a wide, burning swath through the trees. Sliding for a kilometer or more, it tipped nose-first over the rim of a deep crevasse and began a slow descent toward the bottom.
Closer to the lasered clearing, Rogue and Twin Suns snub-fighters were making paired strafing runs over the rakamat and Yuuzhan Vong infantry units, creating an inferno with lasers and proton torpedoes.
Slowed by its repulsorlift engines, number one transport was a few kilometers short of the laser-denuded tableland when a large hatch opened in its ventral surface. First to exit the hatch were YVH droids, folded into foam-filled crash canisters. Then, sheathed in enviro-suits and harnessed into jet packs, came Page’s company, soaring from the rectangular opening and spiraling down to the surface. The pilots of Wraith Squadron followed, setting their X-wings down and scrambling from the cockpits.
Jag swung wide to make another pass over the forest.
With projectiles streaking out of the trees, Gavin Darklighter’s Rogues buzzed like angry hornets, torching everything that moved. Jag was racing to join them when a fireball caught the clawcraft from behind, blowing away pieces of the starboard solar panels and sending him into an uncontrollable spin.
The crowns of the trees rushed up at him, then patches of soggy ground. The clawcraft whined as it slammed into the canopy, and darkness engulfed him.
The view forward from the plush cockpit of Lady Luck revealed a panorama of stroboscopic globular explosions stretched across, as well as two or three degrees above and below, the ecliptic plane.
“That was the Alliance’s salvo,” Lando told Tendra.
Her mouth was slightly ajar, she was shaking her head in amazement. “I’ve never seen anything that was at once so beautiful and so dreadful.” Tall, even for a Sacorrian, Tendra was a regal beauty, with sparkling brown eyes and full lips.
The SoroSuub luxury yacht, a somewhat flattened and oblate vessel, was well inside the Alliance lines, but close enough for long-range scanners to capture the continuous exchanges of fire, if not detail the individual warships themselves. Lando knew that Wedge was out there somewhere, along with countless other friends and comrades he had known from as far back as the Battle of Endor.
He couldn’t remember a time when he had felt so small or alone. In a gesture that combined affection and anguish, he tightened his grip on Tendra’s hand.
No sooner had the spherical explosions faded than a pyrotechnic display of what might have been fire-tailed comets rocketed from unseen sources, splaying against deflector screens too distant to discern, and in some cases creating explosions of their own.
“Nas Choka’s response,” Lando said dryly.
He flipped a switch on the communications console and swiveled his chair slightly toward the cockpit’s audio pickups. “You watching this?”
“Can’t take my eyes away,” Talon Karrde answered from Wild Karrde, five hundred kilometers Rimward and, like Lady Luck, running mostly silent.
Scores of other starfighters, converted yachts, and blockade runners allied with the loosely knit Smugglers’ Alliance were deployed between Wild Karrde and Errant Venture, which was closest to Zonama Sekot, and thus almost a quarter of the way to the outer-system world of Stentat.
“How long are we just going to sit here and watch?” Lando asked Talon.
Talon laughed bitterly. “Now is as good a time as any to make our meager but skillful contribution to the cause.”
“All right, then.” Lando straightened up his seat and was preparing to wake up the ship’s systems when Talon commed him again.
“Hold on a minute, hero. My scanners are picking up something peculiar. I’m sending you the coordinates now. You might want to have a look.”
Tendra was already realigning the scanners when Lando glanced at the display screen. A sizable number of Yuuzhan Vong ships had separated from the main body of the armada. Accreting velocity, the group was vectoring for the sunward fringe of the battle belt.
“A flanking maneuver?” Lando said. “Maybe an attempt to jump behind Alliance lines?”
“I don’t think so,” Talon answered. “When they pulled this stunt at Mon Calamari, the ships jumped for Contruum.”
Lando frowned. “Kre’fey’s long gone from Contruum. But they could be hoping to bait Wedge’s battle group into pursuing them.”
“Unless they’re heading back to Coruscant.”
Tendra dialed the scanners to maximum magnification. The computer-assisted portrait painted by the instruments showed a diamond-shaped formation of destroyer and heavy cruiser analogs, with a solitary but otherwise unremarkable vessel occupying the center.
“Major firepower,” Lando said.
“They’re going to hyperspace,” Talon updated.
“Did you get a departure vector?”
“Coming up,” Talon said.
Lando and Tendra heard Talon expel his breath in unhappy surprise.
“Zonama Sekot,” Lando surmised.
“Didn’t that Vong priest, Harrar, say that Shimrra wasn’t likely to risk an attack?”
“Guess he doesn’t know his Supreme Overlord as well as he thinks he does.”
“I’ll let Booster know.”
Lando silenced the comm and swung to his wife.
“Navicomputer is plotting a course to Zonama Sekot,” Tendra said.
Gingerly, Han placed the palms of his hands against the faintly glowing hull of the Sekotan ship. Warm to the touch, the perfectly smooth skin was a shimmering green, lit from within in a way that brought to mind the bioluminescence of some denizens of the deep ocean. Low to the ground, broad where the cockpit was, and composed of three seamlessly joined oval lobes, the ship was a smaller version of the shuttle that had carried him from the Falcon to the surface of the planet. But unlike the shuttle, it was armed with plasma cannons that might have been—and probably were—patterned after those of a coralskipper.
Speechless, Han continued his survey of the wondrous ship. Small compared to Jade Shadow, which sat on its hard-stand nearby, the Sekotan fighter was equivalent to an X-wing in size, though it more closely resembled a vintage Surronian Conqueror or one of the latest generation of Mon Calamarian starfighters. The single-pilot cockpit was an all-too-organic shade of red—made more unnerving by an instrument array that pulsed and throbbed.
The gentle internal radiance of the tripartite fuselage was most intense along the forward edges, which were knife-sharp. In contrast, the trailing edges were rounded over, with the drive tucked into the space between the two rear lobes. Han had overheard Magister Jabitha tell Kyp that the original Sekotan ships had had Haor Chall type-seven Silver-class light starship engines, with expensive hyperdrive core units and organiform circuitry. But the ships the Jentari had built for the Jedi lacked a conventional drive—unless dovin basal analogs had come to be considered standard equipment.
The similarity to coralskippers didn’t end with gravitic propulsion devices and volcano-like weapons emplacements. Though it required the pilot who had bonded with its formative seed-partners, a Sekotan craft was alive and, to a degree, capable of independent action.
Han wasn’t the only person in awe. Working overtime, the Jentari had been able to shape ships for all the Jedi who had participated in the recent ceremony. Delivered from the cybernetic assembly lines by huge manta-shaped dirigibles, the Sekotan fighters crowded the canyon-rim landing platform. None of them had been flown, but Han could feel the eagerness of the pilots—Kyp, Corran, Lowbacca, dark-complected Markre Medjev, facially scarred Waxarn Kel, the stocky Chandrilan woman Octa Ramis, slight Tam Azur-Jamin, gallant Kyle Katarn, the ever-brooding Zekk, the Barabel Saba Sebatyne, and the Twi’lek female Alema Rar—all of whom were circling their individual crafts, much as Han was circling Kyp’s.
“Well, she’s not the Falcon,” Han said, “but I’m sure she’ll do until the next living ship comes along.”
Kyp took his gaze from the ship long enough to glance at Han and laugh. “Wish I could tell you to take it for a spin.”
Han nodded. “Yeah, I wish you could, too.”
Distracted, Han wasn’t aware of Leia’s approach until she slipped her arm through his and rested her head against his shoulder. He turned slightly, expecting to see her smiling as broadly as he was. Instead, she was anything but joyful.
“What’s wrong?”
“Luke just heard from Booster. A Yuuzhan Vong battle group is headed here.”
Han stared at her. “I thought—”
It was all he got out before Luke, Mara, Jaina, Danni, Kenth, and some of the other Jedi arrived at the landing platform. The last to show up were Magister Jabitha, Jacen, and Harrar. The pilots hurried from their Sekotan ships to join the circle that quickly took shape around Luke.
“We were hoping for more time, but that’s not going to happen,” Luke began. “The Yuuzhan Vong are on the way, which means you’re going to have to get your ships airborne and give yourselves a crash course in piloting them.” He swung to face Tesar Sebatyne. “The shuttle will take you and the rest of the Wild Knights to your blastboat and fighters.”
Saba nodded to her son. “Good hunting, Tesar.”
“Now do I get to fly my X-wing?” Jaina asked.
Mara shot her a cautionary look. “We’ve been through this.”
“May I say something?” Harrar said.
Everyone turned to him in surprise.
“Assuming some of you are going to Coruscant, your war party will benefit by having both Jaina Solo and Jacen Solo as comrades. Our warriors are very superstitious, and the sight of the celebrated Jedi twins—united—could demoralize them. The capture of one such as Jaina Solo would count for more than her death.” The priest paused to glance around. “Our forces failed at Borleias because Supreme Commander Czulkang Lah was fixated on capturing the Jedi who had come to be associated with Yun-Harla. It was my personal failing that I supported Czulkang Lah’s actions.”
Tahiri looked at Jaina. “At Borleias I told you not to accompany Luke and Mara to Coruscant, because I was afraid that your presence would endanger them. Now I agree with Harrar that you should go.”
Jaina folded her arms across her chest. “Nice to see that everyone is so comfortable with deciding my destiny.”
Jabitha stepped forward before anyone could respond. “Sekot has requested that Cilghal, Tekli, and Danni Quee remain on Zonama.”
Danni looked at Luke in stark confusion. “I thought I’d be going with you and Mara to Coruscant.”
Luke shook his head. “Sekot obviously feels that you’re needed here.”
“If I can accept not flying, then you can accept staying here,” Jaina said.
Han and Leia traded uneasy looks.
Luke took his lightsaber from his belt, ignited the blade, and held it over his head. Wordlessly, the other Jedi began to follow suit. Taking note of Leia’s hesitation, Han nodded in encouragement.
“Go,” he said quietly, “you’re as much a Jedi as any of them.”
The Jedi tightened up around Luke, angling their light-sabers slightly so that the tips pointed toward his, and in the end creating a stand of colorful blades that thrummed ominously in the crisp air.
“This day has been years in the making. What we do from this moment forward will test our fealty to the Force in a way that the Jedi haven’t been tested in more than a generation. Be mindful that we are not the purveyors of conflict and inequity, but the guardians of peace and justice. Above all, we want what the Force wants, no matter where that leads us. If some of us are not seen again today, that does not mean that our actions will have been in vain or will not be remembered.”
Han looked to those who didn’t have lightsabers—the few outside the circle: Jabitha, Harrar, and Danni—wondering where he fit in. But he added his voice to the rest when they said, as one, “May the Force be with us!”