Antone shrugged. "Frankly, we're not sure. In order to loose a burst of repulsor power from the South Pole, the station has to reorient its spin axis, then go through a series of power surges, pulses, transient events, and radiation releases in advance of actually firing. When Center-point destroyed EM-1271, Glowpoint's energy spikes killed thousands of colonists."

 

"No one wants to risk a repeat of that catastrophe," Thrackan said.

 

Jacen looked at him. "If it's true that you're only interested in fashioning an interdiction field, then you should be able to do that yourself. During the crisis, you were the one placed in control of Centerpoint's jamming and interdiction field capabilities."

 

"Yes," Thrackan said slowly, "but the crisis was resolved before I got to try my hand at operating Center-point. What's more, things have changed since your uncle Luke and the others shut Centerpoint down. Now neither of those systems is responding the way they once did."

 

Antone cleared his throat meaningfully. "One problem is that the station's barycenter point is no longer stable, Centerpoint has always moved about to stay properly positioned and oriented, but the repositioning maneuvers have become erratic."

 

"In other words," Thrackan clarified, "we haven't been able to initiate an interdiction field on demand."

 

"Only Anakin can do it," Antone said nervously. "As a result of his activation of the Drall repulsor, the entire system imprinted on him." He looked at Anakin. "On your fingerprints, your DNA, perhaps even your brain waves. I've been proposing this for eight years now, but no one was interested in having you return here until now."

 

"There's only one way to find out if Antone's theory merits further investigation," Thrackan said. He gestured toward what was obviously a special console. "Take the controls, Anakin. Let's see where it goes from there."

 

Jacen and Ebrihim threw Anakin troubled looks, to which Anakin responded with a nod, meant to be mollifying. But even as he moved toward the console-with every tech watching-Anakin could feel the system beginning to respond to him.

 

Vague memories of his experiences inside the Drall repulsor surfaced as he sat down and ran his hands over the console. After a moment, as had happened long ago on Drall, he seemed to glimpse a virtual array of switches and controls and linkages, all of which had little to do with the knobs and levers and dials that covered the control panel.

 

Hesitantly, he placed his hands on the console.

 

A tone sounded and a flat spot on the panel began to twist and shimmer, then swell upward, forming itself into a handle like a spacecraft's joystick.

 

When Anakin reached for it, the handle reshaped itself to fit his left hand, and everyone in the room-even Jacen-gasped.

 

In his mind, as if on a display screen, Anakin could suddenly read specs on power ratings, capacitance storage, vernier control, targeting subsystems, safety overrides, shielding constraints, thrust balancing, geo-gravitic energy transfer levels .. .

 

Unexpectedly, a graphic display appeared in the air over the handle-a hollow wire-frame cube made up of smaller, transparent cubes five high, five across, and five deep. As Anakin manipulated the joystick, the grid of smaller cubes began to take on color-greens and purple-to the accompaniment of activation tones.

 

Everyone but Thrackan was speechless. "You've done it, boy, you've done it," he enthused.

 

Anakin moved the control stick forward, and a cube of blazing orange appeared. He experimented with minute adjustments that made the cube flicker or brighten. Then he pulled the stick down as hard as he could.

 

Indicators registered an incredible burst of power, and the control room began to shudder. In Hollowtown, Glowpoint came alive and a display of blinding lightning blazed from it to the South Conical Mountains.

 

"The station is reorienting!" a technician reported.

 

"It's armed!" Antone exclaimed in awe. "It's capable of firing!"

 

A dozen separate conversations broke out in the control room, silenced only by the arrival of the New Republic officer in command of the project.

 

"An urgent message from Commenor," the colonel announced to Sal-Solo and Antone. "Yuuzhan Vong advance elements are departing Hurt space. Fleet Intelligence estimates thirty-six standard hours until they're at our doorstep."

 

In groups of three and four, at times escorted by gunboats and squadrons of Miy'til fighters or vintage X-wings, the warships of the Hapan fleet reverted to realspace over the planet Commenor, on the Rimward edge of the Core. Arrayed in a sweeping arc, the sleek Nova-c\ass battle cruisers and Olanjii/Charubah double-saucered Battle Dragons were a vibrantly colored counterpoint to the New Republic's fleet of Star Destroyers, lumpish Mon Calamari vessels, and unembellished Bothan warships.

 

Gazing at the assembled armada from the shuttle that was conveying her and Isolder from the prince's deep-camelian Song of War to Commodore Brand's flagship, Leia felt as if she and everyone she held dear were trapped in the current of a tumultuous river that was sweeping them into unknown regions, scattering some, leaving many abandoned on ravaged shores, and carrying others over the falls to oblivion . . . The feeling had accompanied her from Hapes, troubling her through all the long hours of talk with Isolder, who was seemingly as enthralled by the prospect of going to war with the Yuuzhan Vong as he had been by the chance to trade punches and kicks with Beed Thane.

 

"True to our pirate roots, the Hapans prefer swift, ruthless strikes," he had told Leia more than once during the voyage. "Hurt an enemy at the start of an engagement and he is yours, for as the fight progresses, his fear of you will intensify and will become your ally."

 

Each time he said it, Leia had recalled Ithor and Gyn-dine, and the ruthless tactics the Yuuzhan Vong had employed. Bu t the real source of her apprehension was the vision she had had following the Consortium's vote. Whenever she shut her eyes, vague images of destruction played at the edges of her awareness, as if massing for a full-scale assault. Anyone else might have been able to explain the dark images as owing to concerns for the lives of close friends and loved ones, but Leia was too attuned to the Force to dismiss them so expediently. She was convinced that the Force had shown her a possible future, while declining to provide her with a clear sense of just which paths were to be avoided. It helped slightly to be home, but in fact, proximity to Coruscant had not alleviated her anxiety. And she had yet to hear from Han, not even by a message delivered through the kids or Luke.

 

"What power we have marshaled," Isolder said from the shuttle's passenger cabin window, where he stood with his fingers pressed to the transparisteel panel. "I doubt that even the Yuuzhan Vong would fail to be impressed."

 

"Oh, they'd be impressed," Leia said, joining him. "But instead of fazing them, a display like this would only goad them on."

 

Still, as she scanned the hundreds of capital ships anchored in local space-more than a hundred of which had trailed the Song of War from Hapes-she couldn't help but be overwhelmed.

 

Painted to symbolize the Consortium worlds they represented, the Battle Dragons consisted of large dorsal saucers linked to smaller ventral ones by dozens of slender rotation struts. Ion and hyperdrive engines were wedged astern, and the bridge sat aft on the dorsal face of the upper saucer, the perimeter of which was studded with ion cannons. As a means of compensating for the ship's relatively slow weapons-recharge rate, the equally distributed cannons were mounted on a drive disk that allowed them to be rotated for fire as need be. Sandwiched between and affixed to both saucers of the Battle Dragon were sixteen massive pulse-mass mines, each of which was capable of simulating the effects of mass shadows, thus hindering ships from making jumps into hyperspace.

 

By contrast, the Nova-class battle cruiser resembled a mountain climber's two-pronged ice claw, with the ship's viper-headed bridge occupying the distal end of what would be the tool's long handle. Exceptionally fast, well shielded, and equipped for long-range reconnaissance, the cruiser boasted twenty-five turbolasers, ten laser cannons, and ten ion cannons, and could carry twelve Miy'til fighters and six Hetrinar assault bombers.

 

While the shuttle was docking inside the heavy cruiser Yald, Leia tried to arrange things so that Isolder would emerge on his own, followed by his contingent of mostly female honor guards and command staff, but the prince wouldn't have it. He insisted instead that Leia walk by his side, a pairing she knew would not only become an endlessly repeated visual bite on the HoloNet, but also prove a source of amusement for those now-aged New Republic officers who had been in favor of her marrying Isolder so long ago.

 

Even so, she managed to put on her best face as she and Isolder descended the shuttle ramp arm in arm, to the strains of a Hapes march endowed with equal measures of pomp and circumstance by a well-rehearsed hundred-member military band. Leia had disengaged herself by the time they reached the deck, but she could tell by the expression on Commodore Brand's craggy face that even he was a bit nonplussed by the regal formality of their arrival.

 

At Brand's back stood rank after rank of soldiers at attention, saluting sharply when the music concluded.

 

"Welcome aboard, Prince Isolder," Brand said, stepping forward and extending his hand.

 

Isolder threw his short cape over one shoulder and took hold of Brand's hand-nearly crushing it in his grip, Leia was sure.

 

"Good to be here, Commodore."

 

Brand smiled uncertainly as he turned to Leia. "Ambassador Organa Solo, welcome home. And on behalf of the New Republic, thank you for all you've done."

 

Leia inclined her head in a courtly bow. "Thank Prince Isolder, Commodore. He was very persuasive in winning over the... Consortium."

 

Brand nodded stiffly. "Your support might very well stem the tide, Prince Isolder. But our victory will not be earned lightly."

 

"We are prepared to earn it, Commodore," Isolder assured him. "Just tell me where to direct my forces."

 

The command staffs of both groups moved to the tactical information center, deeper in the ship. During a private moment, Brand asked Leia about the voyage from Hapes. She repressed an urge to confide in him that it had been unsettling, and instead dismissed it as uneventful.

 

Dozens of officers and technicians were already gathered in the high-ceilinged TIC, seated at duty stations or clustered around light tables and plotting panels. Once Isolder, Leia, and the rest of the new arrivals were seated, Brand came right to the point.

 

"These are our most recent hyperspace probe reconnaissance images from Hutt space," he began, gesturing toward the holograms resolving above one of the chamber's many projector wells. He turned to address himself specifically to Isolder and his commanders. "What may look like an asteroid field is actually a fleet of warships. This storm of smaller asteroids spiraling toward the fleet are coralskippers, grown on the surface of the planet below."

 

"Grown?" one of Isolder's female officers asked.

 

Brand nodded. "With the permission of the Hurts, the Yuuzhan Vong transformed the planet to serve as a sort of weapons garden, similar to the ones at Belkadan and Sernpidal, from which these fighters have been harvested and equipped with the organic devices that both propel and shield them."

 

A new image took shape in the well's cone of projected light a close-up view of the coralskippers attaching themselves like barnacles to the spindly arms of an enormous Yuuzhan Vong carrier analog. Elsewhere warships were maneuvering into battle groups, encircled by swarms of coralskippers.

 

"The enemy is massing for a strike," Brand remarked unequivocally, "and judging by the numbers of ships involved, they have their sights set on a target of greater significance than Ithor, Obroa-skai, or Gyndine. We have determined that target to be Corellia, which we have deliberately left inadequately protected in the hope of inviting an attack."

 

Leia's eyes widened in alarm as a holographic image of a moonlet-size sphere resolved above the projector.

 

"Centerpoint Station is the heart of Corellia's defense," Brand went on. "A repulsor and gravity lens, the station is capable of creating an interdiction field that will stretch from Corell clear to the frontier of the Outlier systems. At this moment, the station is on standby alert and prepared to initiate the field on our command."

 

"Commodore," Leia interrupted.

 

Brand turned to her and nodded. "Yes, Ambassador, your sons are already aboard Centerpoint. I apologize if some of this comes as a surprise, but all information regarding Centerpoint has been issued on a need-to-know basis."

 

Leia looked away from Brand to hide her distress. She also refused to acknowledge Isolder's inquisitive stare.

 

"When the Yuuzhan Vong fleet emerges from hyperspace in the Corellia system, the interdiction field will rob them of the ability to go to lightspeed, and will essentially hold them fast. When that much has been achieved, many of the warships anchored here, and at Kuat and Bothawui-all of which have been retrofitted with hyper-wave inertial momentum sustainers produced by the Fondor shipyards-will launch, penetrating the interdiction field at its farthest extreme, and advance through a series of micro jumps to engage the enemy."

 

Brand swung to an ancillary holoprojector, above which was displayed a schematic of the HIMS. "For those of you unfamiliar with the hyperwave sustainer, the device relies on a gravitic sensor to alert a ship to an impending interdiction field, as well as to initiate a rapid shutdown of the hyperdrive. Simultaneously the sustainer allows for the creation of a static hyperspace bubble, which, while incapable of furnishing thrust, holds the ship in hyperspace while it is carried forward by momentum."

 

Brand turned to his audience. "Our ships will have one heck of a time trying to maintain formation, but they will be able to get the drop on the enemy fleet."

 

He looked over at the Hapans. "Prince Isolder, since your ships are not HIMS-equipped, your command will be responsible for preventing Yuuzhan Vong vessels from attempting an escape through the Outlier systems. The reasons for assigning you this task are twofold. Your Battle Dragons carry pulse-mass mines, which can effectively extend the limits of Centerpoint's interdiction field. To assist you in this, we are placing at your disposal four Immobilizer 418A Interdictor cruisers. But more important, your ships' weapons-linked battle computers provide for pinpoint accuracy against single targets, which is precisely what is required to dumbfound the dovin basals that protect Yuuzhan Vong vessels."

 

"Ordinarily we prefer swift, ruthless strikes," Isolder said. "But if surgical strikes are called for, then you shall have them, Commodore."

 

Leia managed not to wince. She knew, though, that she could take no more of Brand's briefing. His every gesture and assumption filled her with dread, no less so than Isolder's brash eagerness and posturing self-assurance.

 

Retreating from the surrounding din, she reached out with the Force for Anakin and Jacen, then for Jaina, Luke, Mara, and some of the other Jedi. Each returned a subtle resonance, which, if nothing else, allayed her concerns temporarily. But when Leia tried to reach out for Han-whom she could sometimes feel, even through his denial of the Force-all she got back were images of a raging torrent and a plunge into measureless blackness.

 

 

TWENTY-FOUR

 

 

Han fought to keep from drowning. Lungs screaming for oxygen, he broke the raging surface of the mud dy torrent, spewing water like a Coruscant downspout gargoyle and flailing his arms to keep from being sucked under by the current. The water level in the drainage ditch was rising fast. It was likely that the flood would soon bob him to within a meter of the top of the retaining walls, but probably not before the water dumped him unceremoniously into the river that allegedly ran past Facility 17.

 

Rain continued to teem from the sky's granite underbelly, stinging Han's face and hampering visibility. Paddling madly with one hand, he cupped the other to his mouth and shouted for Droma, but got no response. A loud slapping noise brought him around to find the crashed landspeeder gaining on him, upright and surfing the current.

 

The narrowness of the ditch worked for and against him. With no way to be sure that the landspeeder wouldn't follow and crush him under its crumpled nose, Han angled frantically for the smooth eastern wall. Once there he managed to arrest his forward motion momentarily, which allowed the landspeeder to catch up and come alongside of him. On a downward slap of the crumpled nose, Han launched himself for the driver's door, threw one leg over the top, and rolled himself into the cab, which, with the mix of threshed grain and rain, might as well have been filled with gruel. His body sticky with the stuff, he dragged himself into the driver's seat and repeatedly flicked the repulsor engine switch on the off chance it would fire up, but the collision had disabled the ignition system. Leaning forward with his hands clamped to the brackets that had supported the retractable windshield, he scanned the roiling water ahead to both sides, finally catching sight of Droma's tail, sticking straight out of the water like a flagpole.

 

Before Han could call out to him, the speeder was carried over the top of a sluice gate and down through a stretch of cataracts where the landscape was terraced. Droma disappeared under the rapids, then surfaced, only to disappear once more. Ultimately he heard Han's call over the noise of the rain and echoing thunder and lifted one arm free of the current in a panicked wave.

 

Precariously balanced in the pitching vehicle, Han stretched out both hands and grabbed hold of Droma as the landspeeder shot past him. The weight of the waterlogged Ryn almost dragged Han out of the cab, but Droma helped by hooking his tail around a rear seat headrest and hauling himself aboard.

 

"You can just drop me at the next intersection," he said, collapsed onto the seat and panting.

 

"How far do you figure the river is?" Han shouted.

 

"Close," Droma said, tugging himself into a sitting position. "I'm just glad to be out..."

 

A persistent rumbling noise erased the rest of it. Han glanced at the sky, then put the edge of his hand to his brow and peered over the bouncing nose of the speeder. The rain and the tall stalks of grain to either side made it difficult to see anything, but dead ahead the fields seemed to end abruptly.

 

"What's that noise?" Droma asked suddenly.

 

Han whirled on him. "You said that the map showed this ditch running directly into the river?"

 

Droma nodded uncertainly.

 

"Think hard Was it a topographical map?"

 

Droma tugged on his mustache in thought. "Come to think of it, it was."

 

"And were there a whole bunch of parallel lines where the ditch met the river?"

 

Droma's eyes opened wide.

 

"Hold on!" Han yelled, even as the landspeeder was tipping forward.

 

The waterfall was no more than fifteen meters high, but the strength of the current was such that the speeder was propelled right out of the water as it went over the brink. For the briefest moment it seemed as if they would nose-dive into the swollen river below, but then the stern of the landspeeder began to tip forward inexorably, and a heartbeat later the vehicle was upside down, spilling its contents of passengers and porridge into yet another muddy deluge.

 

Han made his body rigid as he fell, breaking the water with his feet and letting momentum carry him along. Above him he heard the concussive report of the landspeeder slamming into the river facedown. Ascending, he feared that he might surface directly under the inverted cab, but as it happened he and Droma emerged with the landspeeder between and slightly ahead of them.

 

Han raised his hand and pointed to the southern bank, which was not only closer but also a lot less steep.

 

"Can you make it?"

 

"I'm not a very strong swimmer!" Droma replied with a note of desperation.

 

Han maneuvered alongside him and hooked his left arm around Droma's waist. "Just kick like mad. Leave the steering tome."

 

Droma nodded. "Just be sure to miss those rocks." Han twisted around to see them closing fast on white-water rapids, made all the more perilous by protruding boulders. He let go of Droma and rolled over onto his back, paddling hard to keep his head above water. Caught in the current, there was nothing to do but surrender to it and hope for the best.

 

The first drop took them across the face of a water-smoothed boulder and down into a pocket, from which they were quickly flushed down another drop. Skirting the edge of a froth-covered whirlpool, they rode a sinuous course between tall rocks, then plunged several meters into a swirling pool. Off to Han's left the landspeeder rammed into a sloping rock, went airborne in an end-over-end flip, and wound up impaled on a sharp-topped rock. Droma followed, barely missing the same rock and falling like a stone into the pool.

 

As suddenly as they had appeared, the cataracts were behind them, but the current was still strong enough to keep the swimmers from reaching the bank. Allowing the current to buoy him, Han craned his neck to get a look at what lay ahead. More white water came into view, but this time without rapids. Instead, a line of turbulence stretched clear across the river, as if the flow was being impeded by something just below the surface. Blinking water out of his eyes, Han saw through the rain that they were headed straight into a fine-mesh net strung bank to bank.

 

The resilient net gave as they struck it, but the current pinned them in place. Han was trying to claw his way along the net to the closer shore when a new sound from upstream compelled him to look over his shoulder. Soaring toward them on repulsorlift power a meter above the river was what might have been a flying garbage bin, except for the fact that it was equipped with a pair of reverse-articulated manipulator arms, which ended in padded jaws. Lights on the garbage bin's front panel blinked and tones sounded, as if in excitement at locating what it obviously had been sent to retrieve.

 

The same panel bore the corporate logo of Salliche Ag.

 

The three-meter-tall box slowed and hovered directly over the net. Han and Droma squirmed to avoid the thing's extending arms, but with scant effort the padded jaws succeeded in clamping around their waists and plucking them from the mesh. Lifting them out of the river, the arms swung inward. Hatch doors on the machine's dorsal surface hissed open, revealing a dark interior chamber waiting to receive them.

 

They alighted on a cushioned floor. The hatch doors closed before either of them could scramble out, and the garbage bin began to move away from the river in a southerly direction. In the amber glow of telltales, Han ran his hands over the walls, bringing them to a halt at an arrangement of sprayer nozzles. Then he cursed in sudden recognition of just what had captured them.

 

"This is a Scout Collector!"

 

"A what collector?" Droma asked, distressed even in ignorance.

 

"A biological specimen collector. We're going to be flash-frozen!"

 

They got to their feet and began to leap up and down, pounding their hands ineffectually on the underside of the compartment doors. Giving up on the effort, Droma dropped down on his haunches, breathing hard, and eventually Han joined him.

 

"The hand of fate," Droma said nastily. "But you still owe me one life."

 

Han turned to him. "What are you talking about?"

 

"I saved you aboard the Queen of Empire when Reck made you jump into the drop shaft, then I freed you from the Falcon's escape pod when Elan was trying to kill you."

 

"Yeah, so who just yanked you out of the drainage ditch?"

 

"That's the one I'm counting," Droma said.

 

"What about my getting you out of district headquarters in one piece?"

 

"That was a rescue, not a life-save. We don't know that my life was endangered, so the best we could say is that you rescued me from imprisonment."

 

Han shook his head and laughed. "All right, I still owe you one."

 

"Then pay up now-get us out of here."

 

Han clapped Droma on the back, then grew serious. "Listen, in case we don't get out of this, it's been good flying with you."

 

"I know," Droma said flatly, then added, "You mean that-about flying together?"

 

"I did mean it. Now I'm not so sure."

 

Han heard the Scout Collector's repulsorlifts cut in, and he stood up. "We're landing. If they open the hatches before our frost bath, we go for them, agreed?"

 

Droma extended his hand and Han shook it.

 

The Collector settled down to the ground. Noises could be heard from outside, then the hatches began to open. Han and Droma prepared themselves.

 

"Thank goodness you're alive," a droid voice said.

 

Han stared, waiting for his eyes to adjust to bright, overhead lights. "Baffle?"

 

A ladder was lowered into the interior, and Han and Droma clambered out. The Collector had put down in a spacious indoor facility. Overhead rumbles told Han that they were underground. Dozens of droids were about, articulating greetings in their own fashion.

 

"These must be the friends you mentioned," Droma surmised, shaking water off himself like a howlrunner.

 

"How the heck did you find us?" Han asked.

 

"We have been monitoring all developments," Baffle said. "Security scanners, security team exchanges, satellite-supplied real-time opticals, even the irrigation and sluicegate control systems. When we a scertained that you were being carried to the river, we quickly arranged for the net and Scout Collector-a vehicle that has been in storage for some time."

 

"Where are we?" Droma asked, once beyond his astonishment.

 

"Beneath the spaceport." Baffle indicated a nearby tunnel. "This leads directly to the bay where your freighter is docked."

 

Han looked at Droma and grinned smugly.

 

"Thank you for all you have accomplished," Baffle said, speaking for all the droids.

 

Han nodded in dismissal, then narrowed his eyes. "Listen, if you were monitoring us, then so was Salliche. They probably have satcam recordings of exactly what happened at the river. All of you had better clear out of here-fast."

 

"Our capture won't matter. Our goal has been accomplished. Already we are in the process of removing the remote restrainers from many of the droids you freed, and our protest demonstration is moving from the planning stage to actuality."

 

"Protest demonstration?" Droma asked.

 

"I'll explain later." Han turned to Baffle. "After what you've done, I almost hate to ask, but were you able to gather any data on the Trevee?"

 

"Yes. Our original supposition that the ship was headed for a destination Rimward of Abregado-rae was correct. That destination, however, is neither Thy-ferra nor Yag'Dhul, but the very place of my activation Fondor."

 

The name practically screamed to Han. An industrial planet in the system of the same name, Fondor was famous for its huge, orbital construction facilities. During the Rebellion, Fondor's shipyards had turned out several Super-class Star Destroyers.

 

Han turned to Droma. "Fondor is where we'll find yourclanmates."

 

Droma looked puzzled. "Then they're obviously not at Facility 17."

 

Han shook his head. "We got here too late. They cut a deal with the Tholatin crew. The Trevee is their ship."

 

Droma stared at him in anguished disbelief.

 

"If I might make a suggestion, sirs," Baffle said. "You could save yourselves three hyperspace jumps by using the seldom-used Gandeal-Fondor hyperlane. It was originally blazed by the Empire to move ships efficiently between Fondor and Coruscant, and I'm certain we could provide you with the necessary jump coordinates."

 

Han smiled broadly. "You're some droid, Baffle. I hope your message gets out."

 

"Oh, it will, sir. With the HoloNet attention our protest receives, droids throughout the galaxy will stand up for their rights."

 

"They'll have you to thank for it."

 

"I am merely a part of a greater whole," Baffle said, without affect. "It is my duty to do all I can for my comrades."

 

Han and Droma traded brief glances. "And ours," Han said.

 

Fixed in place by a dollop of organic adhesive, Wurth Skidder tracked Chine-kal as the commander completed his second circle around him. Concentric to Chine-kal's circuit stood a dozen guards armed with amphistaffs and other weapons.

 

"I'm surprised that your powers don't allow you to break free of our blorash jelly," Chine-kal mused as he glanced at Skidder's immobilized feet. "Perhaps you're not as powerful as we think you are."

 

In a flash of anger Skidder drew on the Force to create a vacuum around the Yuuzhan Vong's head.

 

Chine-kal gasped, and his hands flew to his throat. "Very good," he rasped when the Force bubble dissipated. "Very good." He breathed deeply. "Show me something else."

 

The venomous look in Skidder's eyes was proof that he was at least considering it, but the look was shortlived and soon replaced by a disdainful smile.

 

"You don't want to hurl me off my feet?" Chine-kal asked. "Put words in my mouth? Fasten me to the deck as I have you?"

 

Skidder said nothing.

 

"Can you levitate yourself as easily as you do objects?" When Skidder couldn't be goaded into responding, Chine-kal heaved a purposeful sigh. "Your reluctance to fight is as disappointing as it is incomprehensible. You-the Jedi-are a threat to us, and we are eager to exterminate you. And yet while we're a clear threat to you, you do little more than slink about, offering support or intelligence, but never really participating as warriors. Is that why you term yourselves guardians rather than soldiers?"

 

Chine-kal waved a hand to signal that he was being rhetorical. "Since you and our yammosk already have a relationship, I'll have to think of a different method of breaking you. But you will be broken in the end." He fell silent for a moment, then said, "Let me show you something."

 

The commander moved to the membranous bulkhead that was actually the outer wall of the starship and voiced a command that rendered a portion of it transparent. A gibbous planet of blue seas and green and brown landmasses hung in the blackness. Closer was a moon of fair size, what could be seen of its bright-side hemisphere dominated by a domed city.

 

"Do you recognize it?" Chine-kal asked. "The planet is Kalarba, and the moon is Hosk. The domed city is called Hosk Station, and is apparently something of a technological wonder, filled with droids and other machine aberrations." He turned to Skidder. "To us, the Jedi are no better than the machines the sundry species of this galaxy befriend as if they were living beings. The Jedi are as much a profanation of nature as Hosk Station is a desecration of the moon it has overwhelmed. I am therefore going to order the moon destroyed. You may consider the destruction indicative of the horrors that await your mind during the breaking."

 

Chine-kal turned to one of his junior officers. But before he could utter another word, the hull suddenly returned to its opaque state and the ship was jolted strongly enough to send everyone but the jelly-secured Jedi to the deck. A subaltern staggered into the hold while Chine-kal and the guards were struggling to regain their footing.

 

"Commander, we are under attack!"

 

Chine-kal blanched. "Attack? There was no sign of New Republic warships when we entered this system."

 

"The aggressors are starfighters, Commander. They were lying in wait behind the second of Kalarba's moons."

 

"Then why aren't our escort ships repelling them?"

 

"With eight coralskippers already destroyed, some of the starfighters are succeeding in reaching the ship."

 

"Where is the vessel Supreme Commander Choka dispatched?"

 

"It has not yet arrived."

 

Another powerful explosion rocked the ship. Hurrying to Chine-kal's side, the subaltern barely managed to keep him from stumbling to the deck.

 

"The pilots are targeting our dovin basal drivers, Commander."

 

"Our drivers?"

 

"Their intent is to cripple us."

 

Chine-kal swung to Skidder, who was deep in contemplation. "They've come for you. But how could they know we were here ? Unless, of course, they are Jedi." He stared at Skidder, then shook his head. "No, not even you have the ability to call across space to your confederates." He glanced at his subaltern. "But this sneak attack is no accident."

 

"Commander," the junior officer said cautiously, "Supreme Commander Choka's villip communication originated on Nal Hutta."

 

Chine-kal took a moment to consider it, then scowled in revelation. "The Hutts divulged our location." He squared his shoulders and adjusted the fall of his cloak. "Ready the ship for lightspeed. We'll rendezvous with the fleet in the target system."

 

The subaltern's hands flew to his shoulders, but he remained where he was. "Commander, is it advisable to show ourselves in advance of the fleet?"

 

Chine-kal glowered at him. "Would you risk allowing the yammosk to sustain damage here, at the hands of a group of would-be rescuers?"

 

The subaltern offered a second, chastened salute. "No, Commander."

 

"Then do as I say. And one more thing See to it that Randa and his bodyguards are confined to their chambers. We'll deal with him once we have the protection of

 

the fleet."

 

Close to Hosk, Kyp Durron urged his X-wing on, even though he knew that he would not be able to overtake the accelerating Yuuzhan Vong clustership.

 

"It's going to jump," Ganner told him over the net.

 

"My droid's telling me the same thing," Kyp responded. He opened the net to the rest of the Dozen. "Listen up, everyone. Set your navicomputers to record vanishing bearings and calculate possible course projections. Deak, see if you can't tag that ship with a hyper-space beacon before it gets away."

 

"I'm on it, Kyp."

 

Not a moment later the enemy vessel vanished. Kyp fixed his eyes on the cockpit display screen while the craft's astromech unit went to work on plotting the vessel's possible destinations. Shortly, a list of star systems resolved on-screen, the most probable one highlighted in blue and flashing.

 

"I've got a high-confidence objective," Ganner reported.

 

"Likewise," Deak and a couple of the others added.

 

"Let's hear it," Kyp told them.

 

"Fondor," five voices said in unison.

 

In Hutt space, Nas Choka, Malik Carr, and Nom Anor stood on the bridge of the supreme commander's helix battleship watching a villip-choir feed of the fleet mobilization.

 

A subaltern interrupted their captivation.

 

"Supreme Commander," he began, saluting, "a message from the commander of the craft sent to collect the captured Jedi. Coralskipper pilots encountered at Kalarba report that the Creche fell under attack by a battle group of New Republic starfighters. Endangered, Commander Chine-kal's vessel fled the fray."

 

Nas Choka stared at him uncomprehendingly. "Fled to where?"

 

"To the target, Supreme Commander. To Fondor."

 

Nas Choka whirled in alarm to Malik Carr. "How soon before our advance elements reach Fondor?"

 

"Soon," the commander said, letting it go at that.

 

"The yammosk won't be adequately protected until we arrive," Nas Choka remarked, mostly to himself. "What is the status of the New Republic fleet?"

 

"Massed at the worlds Commenor, Kuat, and Bothawui."

 

"And the hyperspace routes linking Bothawui to Fondor?"

 

"Sown with obstacles."

 

Nas Choka turned slightly to favor Nom Anor with a faint smile. "It appears that you have been successful in persuading them that we plan to a ttack Corellia."

 

Nom Anor inclined his head in a nod.

 

"Then it shouldn't matter if we advance the attack." Nas Choka swung to his subaltern. "Apprise all commanders that we launch for Fondor as soon as the final coralskippers are docked."

 

 

In the passenger hold of the Trevee, Gaph danced while he sang

 

 

Life is a journey without end,

 

for the Ryn more than any.

 

From a home unknown we wander,

 

Star to star in a constant quest.

 

We abhor the stars for what they have wrought

 

Instigators of our ill-fortune,

 

Grave sentinels of our fate.

 

But we load our packs with joy;

 

And song and dance follow at our heels.

 

Now Abregado-rae awaits;

 

Home for a time,

 

Until we are forced to wander anew.

 

 

Melisma and the other Ryn capered with him or accompanied his improvised song on musical instruments. Some hummed and tooted through their perforated beaks, while the rest played drums, finger cymbals, and flutes fashioned from scavenged parts of machinery, pilfered gear, or whatever was handy.

 

The fact that the festive melody of Gaph's song belied an underlying melancholy was lost on those non-Ryn refugees who clapped in time to the music and applauded the dancers' graceful leaps and fleet pirouettes.

 

Gaph was only a stanza into a second verse when the Trevee shuddered abruptly.

 

"We're reverting from hyperspace," one of the refugees said when the musicians had stopped playing.

 

Melisma, Gaph, and some of the other Ryn hurried excitedly to an observation blister, eager for a first glimpse of Abregado-rae. But in place of the light-green sphere they had expected to see was a brownish world, partially eclipsed by clouds sullied with industrial pollutants and surrounded by hundreds of enormous orbital construction platforms.

 

"This isn't Abregado-rae," someone behind Melisma said.

 

"Then where are we?" she asked.

 

"This is Fondor," a human male supplied in understated astonishment.

 

Surprised murmurs began to spread through the crowd. Then all at once hatches throughout the passenger hold hissed open, admitting a score of heavily armed crew members. Agitated by misgiving as well as concern, the refugees backed away from the bulkheads, forming a ragged circle in the center of the hold.

 

"Slight change of plans, folks," the crew's obvious spokesperson announced when the murmuring had ceased-the same human Melisma and the other Ryn had come to call Tall. "Turns out we're going to have to drop you here."

 

"But you promised to deliver us to Abregado-rae," someone thought to point out.

 

Tall grinned. "Let's just say we overshot our stop."

 

Impassioned conversations broke out. In some ways Fondor was preferable to Abregado-rae, but the blaster rifles and the tone of Tail's announcement contributed an undercurrent of foreboding to the unforeseen development.

 

"Has Fondor agreed to accept us?" someone demanded.

 

"That's not our concern."

 

"Then where on Fondor will we be off-loaded?"

 

Tall stared at the Bimm who had asked the question. "Who said anything about Fondor?" He moved to the observation blister and pointed to a crescent-shaped shipbuilding platform. "That's where you're getting off. The facility is temporarily unoccupied, but at least you'll have breathable air and artificial gravity."

 

"What about provisions?" a human asked above the increasing turmoil.

 

"Do you plan to inform the authorities?" someone else asked.

 

Tall waved everyone silent. "We're not barbarians. We'll provide you with enough flash-dried nutrients to last you a couple of local days."

 

"A couple of days?" a voice squeaked. "It could be months before anyone finds us!"

 

"Oh, I sincerely doubt that," Tall said. "The Tapani sector is about to become very crowded. Someone's bound to notice you."

 

"Couldn't you at least bring us to Fondor?" a human female pleaded.

 

Tall gave his head a firm shake. "We can't afford to be here when the fireworks begin."

 

 

TWENTY-FIVE

 

 

With the exception of those in the Corporate Sector, few planetary systems had been exploited to the degree that Fondor had-especially for a system so close to the Core. That part of the Tapani sector had originally been designated a manufacturing and shipbuilding center precisely because of the surfeit of resource-rich asteroids and moons, and worlds ripe for abuse. But where the colossal corporations that dominated Bilbringi, Kuat, Sluis Van, and other shipbuilding centers made a pretense of picking up after themselves, no such efforts had ever been made at Fondor. With the space lanes perilous with free-floating construction debris, Fondor's several small moons looking as if something had taken huge bites out of them, and the planet itself overcrowded, polluted, and corrupted by profiteers providing diversions for the millions of workers who had nowhere else to spend their hard-earned credits, the system was a blight on the Rimma Trade Route.

 

Many were quick to assert that Fondor's nimbus of orbital docking stations and oblate zero-g construction facilities had never operated more smoothly than when the Empire had appropriated them, and in fact, conditions had clearly deteriorated over the past twenty standard years-more so since the arrival of the Yuuzhan Vong. Emerging from the Gandeal hyperlane out past Fondor's outermost moon, the Falcon was immediately detected and scanned by First Fleet command and control, which had been assigned the task of safeguarding the shipyards after the fall of Obroa-skai.

 

"Give them our actual transponder signal," Han instructed Droma while he threaded the Falcon toward a pack of freighters and warships awaiting clearance to enter Fondor space. "It's our best chance of getting through."

 

"How could the Trevee have entered?" Droma asked while he flicked switches on the console.

 

Han snorted. "A ten-year-old sheer piloting a thirty-year-old Headhunter could penetrate military security. The Trevee could have legitimate business here, or who-ever's in charge of the Tholatin operation could have provided the crew with clearance codes." He looked at Droma and grinned. "Look who I'm telling. The Ryn are probably pros at just this sort of thing."

 

"Only by necessity," Droma said ingenuously.

 

A crisp voice crackled from the cockpit annunciators. "Millennium Falcon, this is First Fleet control. Please state your point of origin and the nature of your business."

 

"Gandeal," Han said into his headset mike. "And it's more pleasure than business. We're supposed to rendezvous with friends who may have arrived ahead of us. Their ship is the Trevee. Nar Shaddaa registry."

 

The communications officer at the other end of the link took a long moment to respond. "Pardon me for asking, Millennium Falcon, but am I speaking with General Han Solo?"

 

"That's former general to you, Control," Han said jocularly.

 

"A genuine pleasure to be talking with you, sir. As to your request, the Trevee received clearance a short while ago. Unfortunately, sir, they made their cargo drop in an area off-limits to unregistered ships-especially ships with the rectenna array and firepower rating yours boasts."

 

"Just like I thought," Han muttered to Droma. "They scammed their way in." He reopened the comlink. "Control, can you at least tell us where the Trevee made her drop?"

 

"Negative, sir. I suggest you direct your request to Defense Force command downside. The best I can do from here is turn you over to Fondor command."

 

"Understood, Control. And thanks for the help."

 

"Stand by to receive routing and navigational beacon data."

 

"Standing by."

 

Han set his elbows on the console and regarded the misshapen moons and hundreds of active construction platforms that crowded local space. The bright, sweeping crescent of Fondor dominated the backdrop. "Well, this oughta be a snap. Only a couple of billion cubic kilometers to search-not to mention Fondor itself."

 

Droma glanced at him. "We could initiate a drive-signature scan for the Trevee."

 

Han thought about it. "Control said they'd already delivered their cargo. Hyperspace jumps aren't permitted inside the orbit of Fondor's sixth moon, so they'll be running on repulsor power or sublight. But they could be anywhere." He ran his hand down his face, stretching the bags under his eyes. "You've just marooned a couple of hundred refugees. What's your next move?"

 

Droma sat back, fingering his pale mustache. "Perhaps you want to hang around and spend some of the credits you just earned. Or you jump to Abregado-rae for the same purpose."

 

"Maybe. But remember, you know that Fondor is likely to be attacked sometime soon, which means the Rimma is going to get real busy, real fast, from Abregado-rae clear to Sullust."

 

Droma frowned. "In that case, you'd want to be as far from Fondor as possible. You might even want to lie low for a while before going on a spending spree."

 

Han and Droma looked at each other. "Tholatin," they said at the same time.

 

Han straightened in his chair, taking hold of the control yoke while Droma interrogated the navicomputer.

 

"The best jump point for Tholatin is just Coreward of Fondor aphelion."

 

Han cut his eyes to the star chart Droma put onscreen. With Fondor less than two months from aphelion, the jump point was relatively close to where the falcon had reverted to realspace from the Gandeal hyperlane. Engaging the thrusters, he veered the ship through an abrupt climbing bank, away from the line of navigational buoys that would have directed them to Fondor.

 

Instantly the cockpit annunciator came to life. "M/7-lennium Falcon, why are you altering course?"

 

"Uh, slight drive malfunction," Han said, spicing his voice with false alarm. "But we should have things under control momentarily."

 

"Maintain your present position, Falcon. You are entering restricted space. I repeat Stay where you are. An escort ship will be dispatched to provide assistance."

 

"Don't bother sending an escort," Han said, even as the Falcon was accelerating. "We'll return to the holding point and make repairs there."

 

"Negative , Falcon. You have entered restricted space. Return to original course headings immediately."

 

Han increased the ship's speed while the navicomputer aimed them for the remotest point of Fondor's elliptical orbit. A host of capital ships, barges, tenders, and freighters came into view, all maneuvering toward various jump points. Abruptly, an indicator on the friend-or-foe au-thenticator flashed.

 

"IR emission and ion exhaust recognition," Droma said excitedly. "Confirmation of the Trevee." He called up a magnified view of the supplied coordinates, then pointed to the run-down, pod-shaped ship at the center of the display screen. "There!"

 

Han smiled in recollection of the opticals Baffle and the other droids had provided. "That's her, all right."

 

"Millennium Falcon," the voice of fleet command and control barked. "This is your final warning."

 

"Turn that thing off," Han snapped.

 

Droma lowered the gain, then swiveled back to the console. "Deflector shields raised," he reported without being asked. "Fire-control computer on-line."

 

Han reached to his left for the servo that controlled the dorsal quad laser. When they could see the Trevee through the viewport, he tugged the throttle lever toward him, streaking the Falcon beneath the freighter, then barrel-rolled to port across the Trevee's blunt bow.

 

"Now they know we're here," he said, decelerating to hang on the Trevee's twin-thrustered tail.

 

"They're scanning us," Droma said. "Weapons powering up."

 

"Give me a schematic of the ship." Han glanced at the data Droma retrieved and tapped his forefinger against the display screen. "Their hyperdrive is just forward of the aft fin. Take over."

 

Droma tightened his hands around the copilot's yoke, gluing the Falcon to the Trevee's stern. Han centered the quad laser's targeting reticle over the freighter's sleek stabilizer.

 

"Weapons fire!"

 

The words had scarcely left Droma's mouth when blue hyphens of energy raced toward the Falcon, splashing against her forward deflector shield and jarring the ship without doing damage.

 

"Ion cannon," Droma said. "They're maintaining target lock. Hyperdrive is enabling."

 

Energy streaked from the freighter's aft cannon turret. Droma tipped the Falcon to one side, then the other, then rolled out to starboard and kept the ship inverted while Han lined up his shot.

 

Violent light pulsed from the quad laser's reciprocating barrels, blowing the Trevee's fin away and scoring a ragged line along her aft hull. Gouts of molten alloy streamed from the freighter as she banked in desperation, firing continuously at her pursuer. Droma powered the Falcon through a loop, giving Han a clear shot at the freighter's overheated cannon, which Han quickly put out of its misery. Then, for good measure, Han took out the worthless shield generator.

 

"Open a frequency to the ship," he said.

 

"No response." Droma glanced at the sensor suite screen. "They're heading straight out of the system, all speed."

 

Han compressed his lips. "What do they think they're doing? They can't jump and they can't outrun us." He turned to Droma, who was still staring at the scanner display. "What? What?"

 

"Six New Republic fighters-X-wings. Coming up fast on our stern."

 

Han cursed to himself. "A chase group from fleet command." He slipped into the headset and adjusted the controls.

 

A new voice issued from the speakers. "-heave to, Falcon. Don't make us go to guns."

 

Han quirked a grin. "Let's see you try," he said, mostly to himself. He opened the comm. "This is Captain Han Solo of the Millennium Falcon. We're not looking for a fight, squadron leader. Patch me through to the flight ops commander." He covered the mouthpiece with his hand. "Time to pull rank."

 

"I'm already listening in, Captain Solo," a bass voice said in irritation. "You're in violation of security regulations. Any further infractions and you'll be seeing the brig before this day is out-regardless of your history or who you're married to. Are we clear?"

 

The remark served only to incite Han further. "You've got more important things to do than arrest me, Commander."

 

"Don't press your luck, Captain Solo. Follow your escorts to fleet HQ and I'll consider entertaining your notion of what my priorities should be."

 

"Listen to me, Commander. The Yuuzhan Vong have targeted Fondor for attack. I don't know exactly when, but it's going to be soon. I suggest that the fleet be put on full alert."

 

"That's absurd, Solo. We've received no such information."

 

"I don't have time to go into all the details-"

 

"The chase group is breaking off," Droma interrupted, eyes fixed on the scanner screen.

 

Han glanced at the display and snorted a laugh. "I don't often enjoy name-dropping, but ..." He let his words trail off. Droma's mouth was hanging open, and he had one quivering hand raised to the viewport. Simultaneously with a chime from the hyperwave warning indicator, Han swung forward to see that they were soaring straight into what anyone else might have believed was an uncharted meteor storm, but what he knew to be enemy vessels, decanting to realspace by the hundreds.

 

Instinctively, he stood the Falcon on her side, weaving her through a swarm of carrier, destroyer, and cruiser analogs, none of which appeared to take the slightest interest in the Falcon or even the much larger Trevee.

 

"Evasive action!" Droma said, finding his voice at last. "Countermeasures!"

 

Han wrestled with the controls. "What do you think I'm doing!"

 

Warships continued to materialize to all sides, more than Han would have believed possible-and certainly more than enough to engage and ultimately overwhelm Fondor's defenses. Already the vanguard vessels were firing, launching molten projectiles and blinding streams of plasma at picket craft and warships alike. Han swerved the Falcon away from the main battle group, then accelerated as the Trevee had done, still shooting for the aphelion coordinates, now if only to distance itself from the onslaught.

 

"That's why they were running," Han remarked. "They knew the Yuuzhan Vong were on their way." His face contorted by anger, he triggered a short burst from the quad lasers, though more to terrorize the crew of the Trevee than to further disable the ship. Then, just when it appeared that both ships had made it safely through the throng, a final enemy vessel emerged. Looking more like a wedded cluster of tough-skinned bubbles than a chunk of scabrous coral, the new arrival narrowly missed colliding with the Trevee, but sent it into an out-of-control tumble nevertheless.

 

Intrigued, Han leaned toward the viewport to have a closer look at the ship, then immediately changed course, vectoring directly for the newcomer.

 

"One on one," he snarled. "We can live with those odds."

 

With the Falcon up on its side once more, Han and Droma assailed the clustership with sustained bursts from the dorsal and ventral quad lasers. Most of the bolts were engulfed by gravitic anomalies long before they reached the ship, but a surprising few got through. The reason became clear when Han realized that the vessel was taking rear fire from a motley group of New Republic fighters. Overtaxed and distracted, the dovin basals that shielded the Yuuzhan Vong vessel were obviously failing.

 

Caution forgotten, Han at once sharpened the angle of their attack and shed velocity so that the clustership would come across the Falcon's vector. When it did, he and Droma opened up with both guns, hammering the enemy with massive outpourings of energy. Gas and flame belched from the ship, then one of the spherical components imploded, deflating as if pricked by a pin. Slowing, the ship began to list to port, then rolled completely over, like a defeated creature showing its belly to an aggressor.

 

"Thanks for the assist, YT-1300," someone said over the hailing channel.

 

"The pilot of the lead X-wing," Droma clarified.

 

"That's no military squadron," Han said.

 

"When did the fighting start, YT?"

 

Han opened a channel to the fighters. "The enemy checked in just ahead of you. The shipyards are already under bombardment. Who are you guys?"

 

"Kyp's Dozen," the pilot said.

 

"Kyp Durron! What in blazes are you doing out here?"

 

Put off his guard, Kyp fell silent for a moment. "Han, is that you?" he asked tentatively.

 

"None other."

 

"Is that a new paint job, or did you accidentally bring the Falcon too close to a star?"

 

"Long story."

 

"So is ours. We've been chasing that bubble ship since Kalarba. The Yuuzhan Vong have captives aboard, Wurth Skidder among them. What about you?"

 

"The freighter at your starboard marooned a group of refugees somewhere in this system. I figure we can convince them to show us where they made the drop."

 

"If you're headed back into that fray, you could do with some support. I'll assign two of my people to fly with you."

 

"I'll take them. But what are you planning to do about the captives?"

 

"Go aboard and rescue them."

 

Han uttered a laugh. "Leave it to a Jedi to take on the impossible."

 

"It's our mandate," Kyp said.

 

"We'll be back to help out as soon as we can," Han promised.

 

"May the Force be with you, Han."

 

"Yeah, you too."

 

At Orbital Shipyard 1321, the Star Destroyer Amerce was nearing completion-one of thirty such massive warships being readied at Fondor, in addition to hundreds of smaller vessels. Owing to having had to retrofit a flotilla of ships with hyperwave inertial momentum sustainers, several of the major yards had fallen behind schedule, but confidence was high at 1321 that work on the Amerce would conclude within a local month. The launch would finally mean leave for the tens of thousands of shipfitters who had spent the better part of a standard year working on the great ship, shoulder to shoulder with droids and other machines, frequently for back-to-back shifts, and sometimes in zero-g for days on end.

 

Creed Mitsun, human foreman of a mixed-species crew of electricians, was more eager than most for leave.

 

The substantial credits he'd amassed were programming an escape route from his bank account, and his companion of the past two years-an exotic dancer who worked in Fondor City-was threatening to return to Sullust if Mitsun didn't get himself down the well before too long.

 

Lately not a relative day passed when Mitsun didn't wake from dreams that were every bit as fatiguing as work itself without fearing that the Amerce would never be completed and leave would never be granted. To make matters worse, space raid drills had become quotidian events, jarring everyone from sleep long before they were required to report to work.

 

Today was no exception.

 

Adding his elaborate groan to a chorus of similar protests issuing from all corners of the bunkroom, Mitsun buried his head under a pillow and declined to move, despite the unrelenting howling of sirens and the insistent appeals from the Bothan female who had the bunk opposite his.

 

"Come on, Chief," she pleaded, trying to shake him into motion. "You know what happens if we don't report to our stations."

 

"I don't care," Mitsun said, his voice muffled by the pillow. "How do they expect us to finish the Amerce if we're asleep on our feet for most of our shifts?"

 

"Please, Chief. If you get suspended, things'll be worse for everyone."

 

Mitsun started to wave her away, but suddenly found himself rudely tossed from his third-tier bunk to the hard deck.

 

"What's the idea?" he stammered, hauling himself to his feet, only to see that the Bothan female and almost everyone else in sight had been similarly displaced.

 

Without warning, the facility sustained a follow-up blow, powerful enough to topple several banks of bunks and hurl everyone halfway across the hold.

 

"This is no drill!" someone yelled.

 

Mitsun heard the words but refused to give them credence. Stepping over sprawled bodies, he hurried to the outer hull bulkhead and slammed the heel of his hand against the release stud that raised the hold's night curtain and blast door.

 

By the time the curtain had pocketed itself, several other workers had joined Mitsun at the underlying transparisteel panel, beyond which the Amerce lay half in ruins, holed and venting its guts into space.

 

From the direction of Fondor's closest moon came a storm of asteroidlike ships, so fixed on demolishing Shipyard 1321 that they weren't even bothering to discharge weapons, but were instead accelerating toward the battleship and the facility.

 

"Leave cancelled," Mitsun said to himself as he caught sight of two coralskippers hurtling directly for the bunkroom.

 

Leia followed briskly on the heels of the colonel who had fetched her from her cabin aboard the Yald, saying only that it was urgent that she join Commodore Brand in the tactical information center quickest. She and Brand's adjutant were stepping from the turbolift on the secure deck that housed the TIC when she nearly collided with Isolder, who had obviously just arrived from the Song of War.

 

"Do you have any idea what this is about?" he asked her.

 

The question was pointed, though without his being aware of it. What had begun at Gyndine as vague misgiving and had swelled to apprehension as a result of the vision on Hapes had now become unmitigated dread-as tangible as any fear or phobia she had ever experienced-even while its source and substance remained veiled.

 

Hours of meditation had allowed Leia to determine that part of her apprehension was centered on Anakin and Jacen and the forecasted attack on Corellia. But just how her concerns for them were connected to the foreboding that swirled like excited electrons around Isolder-and more specifically around Commander Brand's battle plans-she could not say or even guess at. She knew only that her composure was unraveling, and that forces were converging in a way that no one had anticipated.

 

"Leia?" Isolder said.

 

Thejedi's weapon is her mind. When ajedi is distracted, when she loses her focus, she becomes vulnerable...

 

"I'm sorry, Isolder," she said at last, "but I don't know what this is about."

 

He studied her in silence while they hastened for the war room and entered side by side. Brand, looking stricken, gazed up at them from his tall stool alongside a sprawling horizontal plotting panel. In fact, beneath all the frantic activity, everyone in the enormous room seemed to be moving in a daze.

 

"On-screen," Brand ordered one of the technicians, as Leia and Isolder approached.

 

Leia glanced at a nearby array of holographic displays, instantly aware that she was seeing her vision realized-or at least some part of it. Whether the realtime images were being transmitted from satellites or an orbital facility was impossible to discern, and unimportant in any event. One holo showed dozens of Yuuzhan Vong and New Republic warships firing mercilessly at each other, while wings of snubfighters and coral-skippers slalomed through the wreckage of orbital docks.

 

Another holo revealed ships close to completion blackened, ruptured, and keeled over in their berthing spaces, command towers and gun turrets in ruins, clouds of debris making it impossible to get a clear fix on anything. Elsewhere, Yuuzhan Vong carrier analogs were hurling tempests of coralskippers toward weapons platforms and the surface of a world already afflicted by industrial devastation.

 

"That's the Amerce" Brand said grimly, indicating one of the destroyed ships. He pointed to another holo display. "That's the Anlage."

 

Leia looked at him in confusion. "Those aren't Corel-lian vessels."

 

Brand showed her one of the saddest looks she had ever seen. "The Yuuzhan Vong have struck at Fondor. They deceived us into believing they were going to attack Corellia, and they hit Fondor." The words tumbled from his mouth without emotion. "Our greatest hopes go with those ships. The First Fleet is doing all it can, but the enemy is literally flinging their coralskippers at any target that presents itself."

 

"The Hapan fleet is prepared to launch," Isolder said.

 

"No!" Leia found herself saying. Brand and Isolder stared at her. "No," she repeated quietly.

 

Brand looked at Isolder. "Thank you, Prince Isolder, but I've already ordered elements of the Fifth Fleet to launch from Bothawui. We're waiting to hear from them."

 

Leia swung to the communication console, her heart racing.

 

"Commenor command, this is Task Force Aleph," a distressed voice said. "The enemy has seeded all routes linking Bothawui and Fondor with dovin basal remotes. Half the task force has been yanked from hyperspace, and six ships have been diverted into collisions with mass shadows. We're in harm's way, sir. We have no choice but to retreat to the Outer Rim and jump to Fondor from Eriadu or Sullust."

 

"They'll arrive too late," Brand muttered, then turned to Isolder. "You say your forces are prepared?"

 

Isolder straightened to his full and considerable height. "Eager, Commodore."

 

Leia's breath caught in her throat, and the TIC began to spin before her eyes. She had to hook her arm through Brand's to keep from falling.

 

 

TWENTY-SIX

 

 

As near as anyone had been able to determine, coral-skippers didn't dock inside their carriers. Instead they were launched from and recovered by the carriers' elongated and branchlike projections. These facts passed briefly through Kyp Durron's mind as his X-wing loosed two proton torpedoes straight at the sphere the Millennium Falcon's quad lasers had perforated and collapsed. The torpedoes did little more than blow a hole in what remained of the deflated globe, but one large and gaping enough to accommodate any of the disparate fighters that made up the Dozen.

 

"Eleven and Twelve, you have rear guard," Kyp said over the tactical net. "The rest of you form up on me. We're going inside."

 

Kyp urged his craft on, ignoring the strident protests of its astromech droid, which was clearly baffled by whatever readings the enemy ship was giving off. The Yuuzhan Vong were oxygen breathers, he reminded himself, which meant that their ships somehow manufactured atmosphere. He was less certain about gravity, though he surmised that the same dovin basals responsible for propulsion and protection provided gravity. As for places to land, he was willing to make do with any parcel of level deck, even if he had to pilot the X-wing to the heart of the ship to find that. 3D7

 

Ganner's modified Y-wing and seven other starfighters followed him through the breach opened by the torpedoes. The pair left behind would have to deal with anything that flew to the cluster ship's aid, at least until the Falcon and the remaining two fighters returned.

 

Kyp's determination took a quantum leap as soon as the X-wing entered the ruined sphere. Vacuum had bled the module of atmosphere, but gravity was close to human standard and there was ample room for all nine fighters to settle down on a deck that wasn't much different from the pitted hulls of the enemy warships. The Falcon's powerful guns had made a mess of things, but even without the damage it would have been difficult to discern just what they were looking at. Kyp suspected that the hivelike structure at the rear of the space was a neuroengine of some sort, and that if he popped it open, he might find a couple of stunned dovin basals curled up inside.

 

"Breathers and blasters," he said over the net as the X-wing's canopy was opening.

 

Recalling his first contact with the Yuuzhan Vong in the Outer Rim, and the grotesque creature whose secretions had burned through the transparisteel of his XJ, Kyp had expected to find similar monstrosities waiting, but in fact, the hold was deserted. Ganner had obviously been thinking the same thing. Jumping agilely from the cockpit of the Y-wing, he said over the rebreather comm, "They've probably withdrawn to protect the yammosk."

 

"Then they've already simplified our mission," Kyp told him.

 

They unhooked their lightsabers from the belts of their flightsuits and thumbed them on, the sibilant hiss of the energy blades loud in the deserted chamber. Everyone else carried either a sidearm or a blaster rifle.

 

"Watch your step," Kyp advised. "The Yuuzhan Vong have been known to make use of an immobilizing living jelly."

 

Warily they advanced on the wall of the adjacent sphere, ignorant as to whether they were moving forward or aft. Like the walls of the collapsed module, the curving bulkhead had an organic, membranous appearance. They searched futilely for anything analogous to a hatch release.

 

"There has to be a way of opening a portal from one sphere to the next," Deak said. "Maybe they're separated by hydrostatic fields." But while resilient, the bulkhead did not admit him when he pressed himself to it.

 

"Maybe it recognizes only Yuuzhan Vong," Ganner suggested.

 

"Now isn't the time to debate it," Kyp said. "We're not on a scientific survey."

 

He thrust his lightsaber straight into the curve. When the tip had sizzled through, Kyp rolled his wrists, gradually opening a circular hole large enough for them to step through. The hold on the far side of the bulkhead was no different from the one they had left.

 

"No oxygen," Ganner reported after glancing at an indicator strapped to his wrist.

 

They moved in single file into a passageway that might have been the gullet of an outsize creature. Colonies of microorganisms attached to the walls and ceiling provided a faint green bioluminescence. Eventually they came to another curving bulkhead, but this was equipped with an iris portal that admitted them into a sealed antechamber. The fact that the chamber served as an airlock didn't become evident until they stepped from it into a spacious hold that held breathable air.

 

There also were the Yuuzhan Vong warriors Kyp and Ganner had expected to encounter earlier on.

 

They were thirty strong, some sporting chitinous armor, some without, but all of them armed with double-edged blades or the living staffs Kyp knew were capable of being employed as whips, clubs, swords, or spears. For a moment the two groups stood still, studying each other, then one warrior stepped forward and bellowed a phrase in his own language.

 

He made it sound like a statement, but the charge that immediately followed confirmed it as a war cry. Deak and the other non-Jedi opened fire with their blasters, dropping ten or more of the unarmored warriors before they had made it halfway across the hold. Kyp and Ganner glided into the press of survivors, their feet barely leaving the deck, telekinetically disarming some of their opponents even in the midst of parrying blows from stiffened amphistaffs or crosscuts by coufee blades and deflecting spears. One by one the Yuuzhan Vong succumbed to vertical slashes to the head or horizontal thrusts that found the only vulnerable places in the living armor, just below the armpits.

 

The two Jedi worked as a team whenever possible, back to back, or alongside each other, refusing to surrender any gained ground and minimizing the movements of their blades. Their relatively easy victories told them that the warriors were a different breed than the seasoned fighters they had battled on the Ithorian herd ship Tafanda Bay. Even so, some of the non-Jedi weren't faring as well. Two of Kyp's Dozen died-one beheaded by a coufee, the other pierced by a thrown amphistaff.

 

When Kyp and Ganner had thinned the throng, they separated to engage the last of the warriors one on one, Kyp entering into a savage battle with an opponent a head taller than him and as deft with his staff as Kyp was with his lightsaber; Ganner using a Force-summoned telekinetic burst to hurl his adversary into a trio of Yuuzhan Vong who had ganged up on Deak. Two of the three dropped to the deck, giving Deak the time he needed to raise his blaster rifle and kill the third, along with the one Ganner had thrown.

 

Kyp perceived the events peripherally. With his feet planted right foot forward, he held the lightsaber at waist level, its blade elevated acutely, gyrating his wrists to answer and divert the sweeping slashes and overhead blows of the Yuuzhan Vong's stiffened amphistaff. That Kyp remained rooted in place provoked the warrior to greater ferocity. Lunging, he thrust the vital weapon at Kyp's midsection, at once ordering it to lengthen and strike with its fangs. The amphistaff's abrupt transformation from sword to serpent caught Kyp by surprise, but only for a moment. Twisting the lightsaber around the pliable staff, he suddenly snapped the energy blade upward, flinging the staff from the warrior's grip and severing the Yuuzhan Vong's hand, just at the gap where his forearm guards met his gauntlets.

 

The dismembered fist fell to the deck, dark blood oozing from the warrior's truncated limb. The Yuuzhan Vong looked at Kyp in startled disbelief, then lowered his head and rushed forward, intent on ramming Kyp off his feet. A side step sabotaged the effort. As the weakened warrior stumbled past him, Kyp brought the lightsaber to shoulder height, then drove it into his foe's armpit, killing him instantly.

 

He stood over the fallen Yuuzhan Vong for a moment, then glanced around the hold at the carnage he and the others had wrought. Ganner and Deak were kneeling by their dead comrades.

 

"We'll remember them later," Kyp said, motioning everyone onward with the ignited lightsaber.

 

They moved deeper into the ship, crossing the threshold into yet another sphere without encountering any opposition. Since entering the vessel, Kyp had been struck by the fact that the Force was mute not stifled, but silent. His Jedi skills hadn't been affected or compromised in any way, but it was as if he had entered a blank space on a map. All at once, though, he felt something through the Force, and a bit farther along they came to a sealed portal, similar to many they had passed, save for the feelings it roused.

 

Kyp turned to Ganner, who nodded in affirmation, then he thrust the blade of his lightsaber into the center of the portal. When he retracted the blade, air rushed noisily through the hole into the space beyond, and the portal irised open. Inside, scattered across a pliant floor fouled by sweat and more, sprawled a mixed-species mob of captives. Dressed in ragged robes and tunics, they were a gaunt lot, but alive. Gradually they began to stir as the hold filled with oxygen.

 

Kyp approached one of them-a gray-haired human who had probably started with a good deal more weight than some of the others. Near him lay two Ryn males and a female.

 

The man's rheumy eyes blinked open and played across Kyp's face, focusing finally on the deactivated lightsaber in his right hand.

 

"They're holding him on the deck below this one," the human said weakly. "Next module aft. But be careful, Jedi. He may not be the Wurth Skidder you remember."

 

Several of the more technically minded of the hoodwinked and now marooned Ruan refugees had succeeded in getting some of the orbital facility's systems on-line, so anyone who wished was able to watch the fall of Fondor in full color.

 

Most of the Yuuzhan Vong fleet was still dispersed in a broad arc out past Fondor's outermost moons, but a dozen or so carriers, heavily reinforced by escort craft, had moved Coreward. Like siege weapons of old, the carriers had flung their coralskippers against any targets that presented themselves, destroying New Republic warships and construction barges alike. But having thrown the First Fleet into disarray, they were now being more systematic about attacking the shipyards and pounding distant Fondor with flaming projectiles and streams of plasma.

 

Gazing at the chaos through an observation blister, Melisma decided that the Yuuzhan Vong weren't likely to spare even an empty shipyard, which-at the present rate of destruction-meant that the Ruan group had less than an hour to get their affairs in order. Most of the refugees had already come to grips with this and were off by themselves, crying quietly or praying to whatever gods they worshipped. But others were shrieking in fear and anger, insisting that efforts be made to alert Fondor command to their plight or, failing that, surrendering to the Yuuzhan Vong, even though that would mean sacrifice or captivity.

 

True to the fatalism they embraced as a creed, the Ryn were singing. The fact that they were capable of going to their deaths with grace and dignity had actually managed to impart a sense of calm to some of the distraught.

 

Melisma turned from the viewport to listen to the melodious lament R'vanna was leading. "If these folks realized that our forgeries are what got them into this situation, we'd be dead already," she told Gaph.

 

Her uncle only shrugged. "Even without the documents we provided, the pirates would have found some way. Remember, child, these people paid to leave Ruan."

 

"Is that your way of absolving us of guilt?"

 

"We're guilty of getting ourselves into this mess. But that, too, is the Ryn way. If it's not others abusing us, we're abusing ourselves."

 

Melisma sighed. "Do we deserve this then-for not accepting Ruan's offer to work in the fields?"

 

"No one deserves to die this way, no matter what they have done. But listen, child, we're not dead yet, and until we are, we should enjoy the moment."

 

Melisma glanced out the viewport. "I don't know that I have any song left in me, Uncle."

 

He laughed. "Of course you do. There's song even in a final breath."

 

She forced a smile. "You begin."

 

Gaph smoothed his mustachios in thought. His right foot began to tap, and he had his mouth open to sing when a Sullustan stationed at one of the data consoles shouted for everyone's attention.

 

"The Trevee is returning!"

 

The singing and crying ceased, and groups of folks began to crowd around the console and into the observation blister. Someone off to Melisma's left pointed to a sleek shape, weaving its way toward the abandoned facility between missiles and plasma discharges.

 

"It's definitely the TreveeV the Sullustan confirmed.

 

Hopeful exclamations gushed from all sides.

 

"Maybe they had a change of heart."

 

"Impossible. They got caught up in the battle and are looking for a place to hide."

 

"Someone learned what they did to us."

 

"That is the probable explanation," Gaph said in an authoritative voice. He gestured in the direction of the approaching transport. "I can't imagine where that YT-1300 freighter joined the Trevee, but I'm certain that the other two ships are New Republic starfighters."

 

 

Anakin's enabling the Centerpoint Station's interdiction field and starbuster capabilities was momentarily forgotten in the wake of the devastating news the New Republic colonel brought to the control room.

 

The Yuuzhan Vong had launched a sneak attack on Fondor.

 

Real-time images of the battle received over military channels and HoloNet feeds had fomented panic among the Mrlssi, whose home system bordered Fondor in the Tapani sector. For everyone else in the control room the images prompted a curious mix of relief and desperation. Here was Centerpoint, all dressed up and nowhere to go.

 

Thrackan Sal-Solo broke the mood.

 

"There is something we can do." He whirled on Anakin, a wild look in his eye. "We have the time-space coordinates of the Yuuzhan Vong fleet." He hurried to a console and called up a star chart. "Their warships are clustered Rimward of Fondor's fifth and sixth moons. We can target them by focusing Centerpoint's repulsor beam."

 

"We have no authority to take such actions," a technician said, loud enough to be heard over a dozen separate conversations that broke out. "We could miss and hit Fondor or even its primary. We can't assume the risk."

 

"We must assume the risk," a Mrlssi argued. "Fondor is lost if we do nothing."

 

The New Republic colonel glanced at Sal-Solo, who shook his head. "I can't promise that we'll hit our target."

 

Everyone turned to Anakin.

 

And Anakin looked at Jacen and Ebrihim, who had his hand clamped over Q9's vocoder grille.

 

Jacen wanted to say something, but all words fled him. He had a sudden memory of Anakin from months earlier, practicing lightsaber technique in the hold of the falcon.

 

"You keep thinking of it as a tool, a weapon in your war against everything you see as bad," Jacen had told him at the time.

 

"It's an instrument of law," Anakin had maintained.

 

"The Force isn't about waging war," Jacen had said. "It's about finding peace, and your place in the galaxy."

 

He set himself boldly between Sal-Solo and the console at which Anakin sat. "We can't be a part of this," he announced.

 

Thrackan peered around him at Anakin. "The First Fleet is being decimated, Anakin. The task force launched from Bothawui can't possibly arrive in time to help."

 

"The Tapani is our home sector," a Mrlssi said. "You must take the risk for our sake-as a Jedi must."

 

"It's our only chance to score a decisive victory," the colonel urged. He cut his eyes to the joystick Anakin had conjured. "It bears your imprint, Anakin. It answers to you and no one else."

 

"Anakin, you can't," Jacen said, wide-eyed. "Step away from it. Step away from it now."

 

Anakin glanced from his brother to the controls before him. Not through the Force but through Centerpoint itself, he could sense his distant targets. He felt as wedded to the repulsor as he often felt to his lightsaber, and he knew with the same conviction precisely when and how to strike.

 

 

TWENTY-SEVEN

 

 

Lightsabers clenched in two-handed grips, Kyp and Ganner approached the chamber in which Wurth Skidder was apparently being held. The absence of guards in the dark and humid corridor had Kyp thinking otherwise, but no sooner had his lightsaber coaxed the chamber's portal to open than he caught sight of Skidder. And immediately he grasped what the captive-Roa-had meant by saying that Skidder wasn't likely to be his old self.

 

Stripped naked, he was lying faceup on the floor with his legs bent backward at the knees and his arms extended beyond his head. Surrounding him-and plainly responsible for the cartilaginous growths that wedded him to the deck at knees, insteps, shoulders, elbows, and wrists-were a dozen or so crablike creatures, a few of whom managed to skitter to safety before Kyp's and Ganner's lightsabers could be brought to bear on them. The screeching others were cleaved and dismembered, their legs and pincers flung to all quarters of the hold.

 

Kneeling, Kyp wedged his hand under Wurth's neck and gently lifted his head. Skidder groaned in agony, but his eyes fluttered open.

 

"You're the last person I expected to see here," he rasped.

 

Kyp made himself smile. "You think we'd let you execute this mission on your own?"

 

Skidder licked his lips to wet them. "How did you find me?"

 

"The Hutts got a message to us through one of their smugglers."

 

Skidder's eyebrows beetled in puzzlement. "I thought they'd joined the opposition."

 

"I guess they've seen the light."

 

"That's good to hear," Skidder said in genuine relief. He glanced at Ganner, then added, "I sensed you when you attacked the ship before it jumped."

 

"That was at Kalarba," Ganner said.

 

"Where are we now?"

 

"Fondor."

 

Skidder showed them a startled look. "Why-"

 

"Fondor was always the target," Kyp said. "The fleet has been caught by surprise."

 

Skidder shut his eyes and nodded. "I tried to learn our destination-the yammosk's destination."

 

Kyp compressed his lips before replying. "We managed to cripple the ship before it made planetfall, but the Yuuzhan Vong are prevailing even without the war coordinator."

 

"There are captives aboard," Skidder said, as if suddenly remembering. "The plan was to familiarize the yammosk with our thought patterns-"

 

"We've got them," Ganner cut him off. "Deak and some of the others are with them. Now we just have to see about freeing you."

 

Wurth laughed, shortly and bitterly. "Chine-kal promised to break me, and he has."

 

"Chine-kal?"

 

"The ship's commander." Skidder's face contorted and he moaned in pain.

 

Concealing his hopelessness, Kyp took a closer look at the surge-coral protrusions that anchored Wurth to the pliant deck. "Our lightsabers should make short work of these," he started to say, when Wurth shook his head violently.

 

"There isn't time. You have to leave."

 

Kyp looked hard into his comrade's eyes. "I won't leave you, Wurth. We'll find a way to help you. The Force-"

 

"Look at me," Skidder interrupted firmly. "Look at me through the Force. I'm dying, Kyp. You can't help me."

 

Kyp opened his mouth to reply, but instead loosed a resigned sigh.

 

Skidder smiled with his eyes. "I'm prepared, Kyp. I'm ready to die. But there are two things I need you to do before you leave this ship."

 

Kyp nodded grimly and leaned his ear closer to his friend's mouth.

 

"Randa and Chine-kal," Wurth managed to say. "Find them."

 

Alone in the Falcon's cockpit, Han had one hand gripped on the yoke and the other on the servo that operated the dorsal quad laser. Triggering staccato bursts from the weapon, he blew away two approaching coral-skippers. From somewhere behind the Falcon a third skip vectored in on a strafing run against the shipyard, but before Han could even swivel the gun turret, the enemy craft was pulverized by fire from one of the battered X-wings that flew with Kyp's Dozen.

 

"Good shooting," Han said into the mouthpiece of his headset.

 

"Thanks, Falcon," the voice of the ship's female pilot came back. "You soften them up, I'll put them away."

 

"Will do," Han told her.

 

He brought the Falcon about to recon the Rimward side of the empty yard in which the Ruan refugees had been marooned. Below, Droma, the second fighter pilot, and some of the pirates were organizing the recovery, with the Trevee berthed where a construction barge or tender might have anchored if the facility had been operational. With the Yuuzhan Vong fleet continuing to encroach on Fondor, the Tholatin crew-reluctant rescuers early on-were suddenly desperate to wrap the mission and launch for clear space.

 

Noise crackled from the cockpit annunciators, and a grainy video image of Droma appeared on the comm display screen.

 

"Han, the Trevee is loading, but fifty or so folks are still unaccounted for. Apparently they figured they could escape detection by hiding out."

 

Behind Droma, grinning broadly, were clustered some ten other Ryn, including the two he had introduced earlier as Gaph and Melisma. Melisma was now cradling a Ryn infant in her arms.

 

"You can't hide from plasma," Han barked toward the audio pickup.

 

Droma nodded. "We'll search them out."

 

"Yeah, well, don't waste any time. Looks like a Yuuzhan Vong carrier escort has taken a sudden interest in the place."

 

Droma nodded and signed off.

 

As the Falcon came full circle around the shipyard, the Trevee once more loomed large in the forward viewport. The transport's hyperdrive was ruined, but the sublight drives were more than capable of moving the ship out past the enemy fleet-providing it got away in time.

 

Even as Han was thinking it, the Yuuzhan Vong carrier escort hove into view off to port, keen on targeting the shipyard with the projectile launchers concealed in its pitted starboard bow.

 

Han throttled the Falcon toward the intruder, firing steadily, but the escort was too resolved on destroying the shipyard to be bothered by a lone assailant. Just then, though, the X-wing appeared on the scene, succeeding in getting the escort's attention with two well-placed proton torpedoes that impacted against its blunt nose.

 

Han banked harder to port, racing the Falcon through a storm of flaming projectiles to come to the fighter's support, but he failed to arrive in time. Plasma gushed from the escort and caught the X-wing just as it was breaking off from its reckless run. Wingtip lasers and stabilizers melted like candle wax, and the pilot lost control. Trailing gobs of solidifying alloy, the fighter went into a crazed roll, splitting apart before perishing in a fiery explosion.

 

Han's eyes narrowed in hatred. "Nobody takes out my wingmate."

 

Whipping the Falc on around, he went for the escort with the quad lasers blazing. Chunks of yorik coral exploded outward from the ship, and a thick blade of flame streaked into space. The ship rolled to one side like a wounded beast. At the same time, the comm screen came to life.

 

"We're away," Droma said. "Aiming for clear skies."

 

Han powered the Falcon through an ascending loop, then veered off to starboard, glimpsing the Trevee and its fighter companion just as they were accelerating from the threatened facility. The dying escort spotted them, as well. Missiles sought the fleeing vessels, but the escort reserved the bulk of its barrage for the shipyard itself. Punctured throughout by projectiles, the facility began to disintegrate, then it blew apart, unfurling flames that scorched the tail of the accelerating transport. Then the escort, too, disappeared in a flash of blinding light.

 

"You have my word that I will devote the remainder of my days to repaying the debt I have this day incurred," Randa bellowed in Basic as he trailed Kyp and Ganner through the clustership, the slapping sounds of his muscular tail loud in the passageway.

 

"Thank Skidder, Randa," Kyp said over his shoulder. "If it'd been up to me, I would have left you with your dead toadies."

 

"Then I will repay the debt in honor of Skidder," Randa said, unfazed. "You will see."

 

As it happened, the two Jedi didn't have long to wait. Rounding a corner in the passageway, they found themselves faced with a phalanx of Yuuzhan Vong warriors, into whose midst Randa charged, knocking half a dozen aside before any of those left standing could land blows against the Hutt's mostly impervious hide. Kyp and Ganner followed up the brash offensive, felling their opponents with precise strikes to susceptible spots in the warriors' armor.

 

The three of them fought their way toward an enormous maw in the bulkhead, from beyond which emanated a stench even more pungent than that given off by Randa. Inside the vast chamber, encircled by attendants who clearly had meager familiarity with the coufees they brandished, stood a Yuuzhan Vong commander, a long cloak hanging from his transmogrified shoulders and a villip communicator in his hands. Behind them, raised up on tensed tentacles in a circular tank of foul-smelling liquid, was a maturing yammosk, a large tooth glistening in its rictus of a mouth and its massive black eyes riveted on the intruders.

 

Again Randa rushed forward, flattening several of the attendants and whipping his tail around to whack the villip out of the commander's hands. The attendants began what would have been a fruitless defense, but the commander ordered them to lower their weapons.

 

"I congratulate you on getting this far," he said after two of the attendants had helped him back to his feet.

 

Kyp angled his lightsaber to one side, the blade extended in front of him. "Move out of the way and we'll go the rest of the distance."

 

Chine-kal turned slightly to glance at the yammosk. "Of course. The life of a yammosk for that of a Jedi. It strikes me as equitable."

 

From off to Kyp's left, Ganner hurled his ignited light-saber square into the creature's left eye. As the sulfurous-yellow energy blade struck, the yammosk shrieked and its tentacles flailed, generating waves that cascaded down over the yorik-coral retaining wall of the pool and washed across the deck. The yammosk reared up and began to sway from side to side. Gradually the tentacles stopped moving, and the creature sank down into the tank, dead by the time Ganner called the lightsaber back to him.

 

Chine-kal's sadness endured for only a moment. "Well executed, Jedi. But you have doomed us all."

 

A shudder passed through the ship even as the words were leaving his mouth.

 

"The yammosk controls the ship," Randa explained. "The pilot dovin basals are now in the throes of death."

 

Chine-kal grinned faintly. "No one gets out of here alive."

 

Kyp returned the grin. "This won't be the first time you've misjudged a situation, Commander." He scanned the attendants, then set his gaze on Chine-kal. "Any or all of you are free to come with us." When it was obvious that none of them were going to budge, Kyp shrugged. "Suit yourselves."

 

He backed into the passageway, Ganner to one side, Randa to the other. Another death-throe spasm sent the three of them pitching against the bulkheads. Regaining his balance, Kyp started off the way they had come, but Randa stopped him.

 

"I know a more direct route."

 

They had just entered an adjacent module when Kyp's comlink toned.

 

"What's your situation, Kyp?"

 

Kyp recognized Han Solo's voice. "We're outward bound. The ship's destroying itself."

 

"A splinter group of Yuuzhan Vong warships are on their way. Not much chance of our holding them off."

 

"Then don't risk it."

 

"Somehow I knew you'd say that. Where are the captives?"

 

"They're being moved to the module we punched through."

 

"How many?"

 

"One hundred, give or take a few."

 

Solo muttered something. "The Trevee is defenseless. We'll have to cram everyone aboard the Falcon."

 

"Can you bring the Falcon close enough to extend a cofferdam?"

 

Han snorted. "That's the least of our problems."

 

"There's an airlock in the central module, but from the outside you probably won't be able to identify it. Look for our signal flare. Otherwise, I'll have Deak or someone lead you to it."

 

"Don't worry, I'll find it."

 

"Somehow I knew you'd say that," Kyp said. "By the way, can you accommodate a Hutt?"

 

Solo launched a surprised laugh. "A Hutt? Sure, the more the merrier."

 

"Then you'll be glad to hear that one of the captives asked me to send his regards."

 

"Who?"

 

"Roa."

 

"Take the shot!" Sal-Solo hissed through his clenched teeth. "Take it!"

 

"For the Mrlssi," a more plaintive voice added.

 

"For the sake of the New Republic," the captain said.

 

"No, my boy, no," Ebrihim and Q9 said.

 

As many voices vied for prominence in Anakin's mind as in the control room. He heard the heartfelt words of his mother and father, the harsh voice of Jacen and the understanding voice of Jaina, the counsel of Uncle Luke. . .

 

Anakin ignored all of them and looked at Jacen. "Tell me," he said.

 

Jacen responded quietly and calmly, almost as if he had subvocalized the response. "You are my brother, and you are a Jedi, Anakin. You can't do this."

 

Anakin took a deep breath and moved his hand away from the handgrip trigger. The tension in the room broke with a collective exhalation of disappointment. The technicians grumbled and the Mrlssi hung their heads in defeat. The next thing Anakin knew, someone had shoved him forcibly from the control seat.

 

"I'll take the shot," Thrackan Sal-Solo shouted angrily as his hand closed on the trigger.

 

Led by the Yald, the task force from Commenor decanted outside the orbit of Fondor's outermost moon. Following them into realspace came the Battle Dragons and battle cruisers that made up the Hapan fleet, positioned to engage the Yuuzhan Vong armada at close range.

 

Commodore Brand had allowed Leia to join him on the bridge, where she stood just behind his command chair, gazing through the wraparound viewport at the reverting Hapan warships. Closer to Fondor, explosions flared in the night as vessels and shipyards succumbed to the enemy onslaught.

 

"Fleet command and control reports casualties in excess of 50 percent," an enlisted-rating updated from his duty station. "Some of the shipyards are managing to defend against coralskipper suicide strikes, but the fleet has been unable to attenuate bombardment from the enemy warships."

 

Brand swiveled his chair to study various threat-assessor displays and vertical plotting panels. "The Ha-pans will put the fear into those warships," he assured in a voice loud enough to be heard throughout the bridge.

 

Leia hid her trembling right hand beneath her cloak and cut her eyes from the viewport to the plotting panels. She reached out with the Force for Anakin and Jacen. Where earlier the effort had only increased the gravity of her distress, she now experienced relief. A transcendent calm enveloped her, and the apprehension she had known since Hapes was suddenly gone.

 

But the serenity was fleeting. Almost instantly something raw and uncontrollable flooded into her awareness. Again she reached for Anakin and Jacen, and at once realized that her concerns for them had dammed a deeper though less personalized fear, which suddenly rushed in.

 

She swung to the viewport to see the Hapan fleet forming up into battle groups and already beginning to close with individual enemy warships.

 

"You may fire when ready," she heard Brand telling Prince Isolder, but as if at some great distance.

 

All at once, a flash of radiant energy illuminated local space. From Rimward of Fondor's outermost moon, or perhaps gushed from hyperspace itself, came a torrent of starfire a thousand kilometers wide. Coalescing into a savage beam of focused annihilation, it tore into the midst of the dispersing Hapan fleet, consuming every ship in its path, atomizing some in the blink of an eye and holing others with spears of seething light. Weapons, superstructure, and antennae vaporized by the skewering beam, the ships exploded outward, vanishing in globes of brilliant mass-energy conversions. Even those ships outside the limits of the beam were hurled violently off course, slagged along their inward-facing sides, or thrown into collisions with one another. The mated saucers of the Battle Dragons broke apart and disintegrated, and the battle cruisers were snapped like twigs. Fighter groups vanished without a trace.

 

Leia was dumbfounded. Nothing in the Yuuzhan Vong arsenal had prepared her for devastation on so immense a scale. For a moment she was certain she was in the grips of another terrible vision, but it quickly became clear that the violence was real.

 

Her stupefaction deepened when the beam didn't diminish as it punched through the Hapan fleet. Lancing deeper into Fondor space, the shaft of r aging power went on to graze Fondor's penultimate moon, effacing a portion of the cratered planetoid as a surgical laser might a tumor. Then it ripped unabated into the heart of the enemy armada, obliterating masses of coralskippers and pulverizing several of the largest warships. Finished with its work or not, the beam then shot past Fondor, singeing the northern hemisphere in its passing, perhaps to destroy some even more distant target.

 

All systems had failed on the bridge, and for a long moment, even as consoles and display screens flickered back to life under emergency power, everyone was simply too stunned to speak or cry out, much less make sense of what they had just witnessed.

 

"Some sort of repulsor beam," a tech finally said in a stark disbelief. "Delivered through hyperspace."

 

"Centerpoint," Leia said, as if in shock.

 

Brand and several others turned to her.

 

She looked at the commodore. "Someone fired Center-point Station."

 

Han embraced Roa as he came through the airlock in the Falcon's port-side docking arm.

 

"Fasgo's dead," Roa said when Han let him go.

 

Han shook his head in dismay. "He could have been a friend."

 

"As I was saying on the Jubilee Wheel, fortune smiles, then betrays . . . then smiles once more."

 

Han ran his eyes over his friend and managed a grin. "You know, you don't look half bad."

 

"The half that does I'll have repaired. Did my ship survive?"

 

"Waiting for you at Bilbringi."

 

Roa loosed a sigh and turned to help a Ryn female out of the airlock. "Han, I'd like you to meet-"

 

"Any chance you have a clanmate named Droma?" Han interrupted.

 

The female looked surprised. "I have a brother named Droma."

 

Han's grin broadened. "You'll be seeing him soon enough."

 

Roa scratched his head. "Seems I've a lot to catch up on."

 

"That doesn't begin to say it."

 

The clustership was already beginning to come apart. Han's fear that he might have to separate prematurely from the trembling ship only made him work harder at getting all the rescued captives aboard. By the time the last of them boarded, the forward hold, bunk rooms, galley, and utility spaces were packed. Han could only hope that the Falcon's air scrubbers would hold out long enough to sustain everyone through a jump to Mrlsst or elsewhere in the Tapani sector. Even assuming that life support continued to function, they were going to be a hungry, dehydrated lot when and wherever they ultimately touched down.

 

With the airlock resealed, Han, Roa, and two of the Ryn threaded their way to the cockpit. Han squeezed into the pilot's seat and began to maneuver the Falcon away from the Yuuzhan Vong vessel. Through the forward viewport he could see what remained of Kyp's Dozen launching through the hole they had blown in the ruined module.

 

Roa helped bring the quad lasers on-line as Han nosed the Falcon over the top of the spherical module, expecting to have to engage the enemy warships that had broken from the armada to render aid to the crippled yammosk vessel. Instead he was greeted by a sight that tugged a gleeful cry from him.

 

"Hapan Battle Dragons!" he said, glancing at Roa. "Now we're getting somewhere."

 

He was about to add that Leia had more than likely been responsible for enlisting the Hapans' support when an intense, white radiance blinded him. The Falcon died, then was tossed through an end-over-end ride that deposited her two thousand kilometers from where she had been.

 

The Yuuzhan Vong had coaxed Fondor's sun to go nova, Han told himself. They had wiped out the entire system.

 

When his vision returned and the moans and groans of his tumbled cargo had died down, Han saw that three-fourths of the Hapan fleet and half the Yuuzhan Vong armada were gone.

 

On his helix flagship, Nas Choka recaptured enough of his self-control to keep some of the dismay out of the incredulous look he showed Malik Carr and Nom Anor. Against the backdrop of a razed moon, the villip-choir field showed the blackened skeletons and husks of untold numbers of Yuuzhan Vong and enemy ships.

 

"They killed most of their reinforcements to eliminate half of our force," the supreme commander said. "Is such savagery commonplace?"

 

Nom Anor shook his head, as much in response as to clear it. "A mistake. It has to be a mistake. Their reverence for life has always been their weakness."

 

"Then perhaps we've managed to bring out the primitive in them," Malik Carr said in a stunned voice.

 

A herald appeared. The villip in his trembling hands bore the strained features of Chine-kal.

 

"The yammosk has been killed," Chine-kal gasped through his communicator, "and the ship is dying. The Hutts betrayed our location to the Jedi. The Jedi captured on Gyndine will die with us, but two of his confederates and Randa Besadii Diori-the murderers of the yammosk-escaped. We-"

 

The villip fell silent suddenly, then everted to its featureless form. Chine-kal was dead.

 

Nas Choka turned away in disgust. "Recall all operational coralskippers," he instructed his subaltern. "Order the rest to commit what destruction they can. All warship commanders will prepare their ships for departure. We have accomplished what we set out to do. Now we have a score to settle with the Hutts."

 

 

TWENTY-EIGHT

 

 

Viqi Shesh sat regally in the straight-backed chair at the center of the deposition balcony, adjusting the fall of her long skirt while Gotal Senator Ta'laam Ranth, head of the Senate Justice Council, studied the display of the personal data device he wore on his left wrist. Shesh's trio of lawyers occupied the table behind her, but they weren't included in the twice-normal-size hologram of Shesh that commanded the attention of the amphitheater's capacity crowd. As a consideration to Ranth, the recording droids normally present at closed-session senatorial inquests had been sequestered in a separate room, to assure that their energy output didn't overwhelm the Gotal's acute senses.

 

"Senator Shesh," the furred and flat-nosed Ranth resumed at last, "it has already been established that the Advisory Council was briefed by Commodore Brand regarding the eventual deployment of the Yald flotilla, and that Commodore Brand, speaking for the Defense Force command staff, stated at the time that Corellia was assumed to have been targeted for attack."

 

"That's true," Shesh said in a composed voice.

 

"Then how is it, Senator, that the flotilla wound up being deployed at Bothawui?"

 

Shesh set her interlocked hands in her lap and lifted her chin slightly. "Commodore Brand failed to make a convincing case for deploying the flotilla at Corellia, so the matter was put to a vote."

 

"In his written statement, Chief of State Fey'lya asserts as much," Ranth said in the monotone that was characteristic of his species. "But we now know that it was never the intention of the command staff to argue too strongly in favor of Corellia."

 

Shesh nodded. "As I understand it, Admiral Sow's plan called for the enemy to be lured into the Corellian sector by leaving Corellia undefended. Deploying the flotilla there would have compromised the admiral's strategy."

 

Ranth's pair of conelike sensory horns twitched. "In other words, what passed for a briefing was more in the way of a manipulation."

 

The most well-tailored of Shesh's human lawyers objected. "Senator Shesh has been asked to provide an account of the briefing, not to pass judgment on the tactics or methods of the New Republic Defense Force."

 

The five members of the chamber's mixed-species tribunal conferred and sustained the objection. Ranth was clearly disappointed but forged ahead.

 

"Senator Shesh, was yours in fact the vote that swayed the council?"

 

"My vote broke the deadlock, if that's what you mean."

 

"What convinced you that Bothawui would be targeted?"

 

"It would be more accurate to say that I didn't believe Corellia would be attacked."

 

"Why was that?"

 

"I didn't accept that the Yuuzhan Vong were prepared to launch an attack on the Core."

 

"Was Fondor mentioned as a possible target?"

 

"It was not."

 

"Had Fondor been mentioned, how might you have voted?"

 

The same lawyer objected, but Ranth quickly waved his furred hand in dismissal. "I withdraw the question." He approached the deposition balcony. "Did you have occasion to meet with the command staff prior to the briefing on Corellia?"

 

Shesh nodded again. "I did. Several days prior to the briefing I met with Commodore Brand, who asked me to speak with Consul General Golga before he departed for NalHutta."

 

"Did you meet with Golga?"

 

"Soon after."

 

"What was the nature of your discussion with the Hutt consul general?"

 

"We discussed the separate peace the Hutts had forged with the Yuuzhan Vong, and the possibility of their furnishing intelligence to the New Republic."

 

"Did Consul General Golga indicate at the time that the Hutts might be inclined to provide such intelligence?"

 

"He implied as much, yes."

 

"And you were willing to accept him at his word, even though the Hutts were considered to have allied themselves with the enemy?"

 

"Objection," another of Shesh's lawyers barked. "It has been demonstrated that the Hutts attempted to supply intelligence by renewing spice shipments to Bothawui when it was still being considered a potential target."

 

Ranth swung to the tribunal. "And by so doing, the Hutts only reinforced the belief that Corellia would be targeted instead."

 

The tribunal's Mon Calamari chief looked at Viqi Shesh. "Senator, do you wish to answer Senator Ranth's question?"

 

Shesh smiled faintly. "I can only conclude that the Hutts were trying to keep their options open. I also believe that the Yuuzhan Vong were well aware of the possibility that the Hutts might attempt to leak intelligence to us, and that they exploited the possibility as a means of orchestrating the events that ensued. The fact that Nal Hutta is now bracing for an invasion suggests that Borga was more dupe than conspirator."

 

The Mon Calamari nodded and fixed one eye on Ranth. "The Hutts are not the subject of this inquest, Senator. Can you show good cause for pursuing this line of questioning?"

 

Ranth inclined his head, gazing at the tribunal from beneath his jutting brow. "I am merely trying to establish the sequence of events that led to the sneak attack on Fondor."

 

"Proceed," the Mon Calamari told him.

 

Ranth turned to Shesh. "Senator, early on, the command staff's suppositions about Corellia were bolstered by information regarding the scarcity of spice in certain planetary systems. Chief of State Fey'lya asserts that the Advisory Council was aware that the information had been supplied by Talon Karrde and the Jedi Knights."

 

"We were so informed."

 

"Can you think of any reason why former Imperial Remnant liaison Talon Karrde or the Jedi Knights might have wished to mislead the Defense Force?"

 

The lawyer nearest Shesh shot to his feet. "Objection. Calls for speculation."

 

"No, I'll answer it," Shesh countered. "I don't for a moment accept that either Talon Karrde or the Jedi were trying to mislead us."

 

The Gotal studied her. "Are you suggesting that they were also manipulated by the enemy?"

 

Shesh straightened in the chair. "I'm suggesting, Senator, that the Jedi are not infallible, and that we shouldn't look to them as saviors. For all anyone knows, the Yuuzhan Vong have brought to our galaxy a power superior to even that of the Force."

 

On a hover platform close to where the Justice Council was convened, Isolder's former bodyguard, As-tarta, opened the hatch to the prince's personal quarters aboard the shuttle that was to return the Hapans to the Battle Dragon Song of War, just then in stationary orbit above Coruscant. Astarta showed Leia her most barbed glare before leaving the two of them alone.

 

Isolder was standing at the cabin's broad viewport, his back turned to the hatch. In the aftermath of the Battle of Fondor, events had conspired to prevent them from seeing each other for almost two weeks, and the Song of War was scheduled to launch for Hapes later that day.

 

Leia waited for him to turn from the view of Corus-cant's impossibly tall towers before moving toward him, but the pained expression on his face brought her to a halt after only two steps.

 

"Isolder, I'm so sorry," she blurted, eyes brimming with tears.

 

He compressed his lips, biting back whatever he had in mind to say, then sighed deeply. "Leia, we spoke of this before the fleet left Hapes. I told you then that I would never hold you accountable for any untoward outcome. We knew what we were risking by going to war."

 

Having expected him to say just that, Leia nodded silently.

 

Frowning, Isolder stepped away from the viewport to regard her. "But you knew what was going to happen. You sensed it."

 

Leia let out her breath. "I sensed some tragedy in the making, but I didn't know when or where, or even if it would transpire. I knew that some of what I was feeling owed to concerns for my children. But I couldn't separate those from sudden doubts about having brought you into this, or about Commodore Brand's strategy for Corellia."

 

Unable to continue, she shook her head mournfully. Isolder glanced away from her for a moment. "I've been asking myself if it would be easier to have been defeated by the Yuuzhan Vong rather than by misdirected fire from a weapon we didn't even know existed." "A weapon enabled by Anakin," Leia said quietly. "Who also refused to fire it," Isolder was quick to point out. "Leia, you must understand, we accept what has happened to us, without hostility or regret." She held his sad gaze. "What will happen now?" He ran his hand over his mouth. "Well, I don't anticipate a triumphant homecoming. The Consortium has split along lines dictated by the vote that landed us here. The naysayers have declared a victory, despite the fact that we have all suffered a dreadful loss. They're calling for a policy of isolation-as if the Transitory Mists alone will be able to protect us from the long reach of the Yuuzhan Vong."

 

Leia nodded. "A similar rift has occurred in the New Republic Senate. The sneak attack on Fondor has galvanized the Core Worlds into preparing for the worst, but at the expense of alienating many of the Inner Rim worlds. Support for Fey'lya has been shaken, and the senate will probably demote or demand resignations from Commodore Brand and Admiral Sow, even though they are desperately needed."

 

Isolder considered it. "That is the difference between the Consortium and the New Republic, perhaps between the old and new ways. Representatives of the New Republic are free to express their outrage without fear of breaching decorum or provoking an honor duel." Isolder snorted a self-deprecating laugh. "I don't know which is the best method of governing, but I know that the Ha-pans will put on a brave front. Already the people of my world are saying that our fleet, though destroyed, saved the day for Fondor and the New Republic."

 

"And you would have."

 

Isolder shook his head. "That is unknown. But we will at our next engagement with the Yuuzhan Vong. I'm sure of that now, because we are compelled to make the deaths suffered at Fondor count for something."

 

"You'll at least have the quick-recharge weapons technology Archon Thane wanted," Leia said.

 

Isolder worked his jaw. "Scarcely a consolation, but it will have to suffice." He looked at Leia. "War benefits those who devise ever more expedient methods of destruction. Let us hope we can outmaster the Yuuzhan Vong at their own game."

 

Perched on the edge of his father's favorite chair in their apartment on Coruscant, Jacen watched in dismay as a 3-D image of Thrackan Sal-Solo took shape above the HoloNet well. The voice of the Sullustan news anchor continued.

 

"Former head of the so-called Human League, Thrackan Sal-Solo is being credited with turning the tide at the Battle of Fondor. While scores of New Republic warships were destroyed in the Yuuzhan Vong's sneak attack on Fondor's orbital construction facilities, Sal-Solo's bold use of a hyperspace repulsor beam not only drove the invaders into retreat but destroyed a significant portion of their fleet."

 

The well projected an image of Centerpoint Station. "The repulsor beam was fired from Centerpoint Station, in the Coreliian system, which, ironically, was used eight years ago during Corellia's unsuccessful bid for independence from the New Republic. One of the many arrested for fomenting that crisis, Sal-Solo was released from prison to assist in rearming the station, and there are unconfirmed reports that he was the only one willing to assume the risk of triggering the weapon against the enemy fleet.

 

"As to what's next for Sal-Solo or Centerpoint, that depends on whom you ask. With a vote of no confidence looming for Governor-General Marcha, Duchess of Mastigophorous, some feel that Sal-Solo will be recruited to head the newly formed Centerpoint Party, which advocates independence for the five worlds that comprise the Coreliian system. Centerpoint Station itself remains in the hands of the New Republic, but whether it will-or indeed can-be employed again as a long-range weapon depends largely on how successful Coruscant is at justifying the secondary destruction suffered at Fondor by the Hapan fleet."

 

The images of Sal-Solo and Centerpoint began to derezz, and the head and upper torso of the Sullustan news anchor reappeared.

 

"In other news, a protest demonstration on Ruan, mounted by a group of recalcitrant droids-"

 

"You ever going to get tired of listening to reports about Corellia?" Anakin interrupted from the doorway to the family room. "We turned Cousin Thrackan into a hero. What else needs to be said?"

 

Jacen silenced the HoloNet. "Cheer up. At least this report didn't mention us by name."

 

Anakin scowled. "Good. Now all we have to do is hope that Dad doesn't hear about it."

 

"Since when does Dad care about the news? Besides, you're the one the HoloNet should be calling a hero."

 

"For what-enabling Centerpoint?"

 

"No, for not triggering it. That's what'll make Dad and Uncle Luke and anyone else who knows the full story proud of you."

 

Anakin snorted a laugh and shook his head. "You still don't get it." He stared at his brother. "I could have fired Centerpoint without hitting the Hapans. I saw it all, Jacen-in my head. I would have known where to direct the repulsor beam, and precisely when to fire. I even knew that Glowpoint wasn't going to annihilate everyone in Hollowtown."

 

"Then why didn't you fire? What stopped you?"

 

"You mean aside from your telling me not to?"

 

Jacen's brows knitted in concern. "You were that sure of yourself?"

 

"Yeah, I was. And my actions would have been defensive. If someone is aiming a blaster at your ally, do you raise your lightsaber to prevent it, or do you do nothing because a Jedi isn't supposed to take aggressive action? I mean, where's the line, Jacen? We're in a war for survival, and defense sometimes means having to eliminate the opposition."

 

Jacen shook his head. "I don't know where the line is, and I promised myself on Ithor that I'd stop trying to look for it. I just think there has to be some other way of responding-without having to raise a sword to deflect one raised against you."

 

Anakin smirked. "Well, when you figure it out, I hope you'll let me in on it."

 

Jacen looked up at him. "Oh, I will, brother. You can count on that."

 

As they had done on Karrde's previous visit to Yavin 4, Luke and Talon followed the winding path to the Great Temple.

 

"All I managed to do was place the Jedi in a worse position with the New Republic Senate and military," Karrde was saying. "That's why I felt I had to apologize in person."

 

"No one is expecting an apology," Luke told him. "If actions were always judged by their consequence, we'd spend half our lives making amends. You came to us with a plan, and we went along with it. We're partners in the outcome."

 

Karrde looked skeptical. "Unfortunately, that kind of reasoning doesn't go far with Bors k Fey'lya and his allies. As happened after Ithor, they need someone to blame for what happened at Fondor, and I've set the Jedi up as the perfect fall guys."

 

Luke took a moment to respond. When he had first learned of the events at Fondor, he had felt betrayed- not by Karrde so much as by the Force. Almost as betrayed as he'd felt when Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda had conspired to keep secret the real identity of his father. But the sense of betrayal had passed through him in an instant. The Force hadn't concealed anything from him; he had simply misunderstood that it was the Yuuzhan Vong rather than the Jedi who were employing deception, stealth, and misdirection. What continued to bother him, though, was the possibility that the mere presence of the Yuuzhan Vong was enough to mute the clarity of the Force.

 

"Success and failure are sometimes intertwined," Luke said finally. "Inadvertently or not, the Hutts misled us. But it was their information that allowed Kyp and Ganner to rescue those held captive aboard the yam-mosk vessel."

 

Karrde allowed a nod. "Everyone is too busy assigning blame to note the rescue of the captives or the destruction of the yammosk vessel. I'm only sorry that Kyp didn't arrive in time to save Skidder."

 

"Wurth made his choice on Gyndine."

 

Luke left it at that, choosing not to add that Skidder's sacrifice had widened the gulf between Kyp's faction and some of the other Jedi. Where Skidder had sought to avenge the deaths of Miko Reglia and Daeshara'cor, Kyp and those who stood by him now had Skidder's death to avenge.

 

"If the Hutts deliberately misled us, they were repaid in kind," Karrde said bitterly. "Fondor was one of the most profitable markets for the Besadii, and they lost some of their finest ships and most enterprising smugglers during the battle. Now Borga has to prepare for war with only half the clans supporting her and the rest holding her responsible for the Yuuzhan Vong's betrayal. Several clan leaders have decamped Nal Hutta for Ganath, Ylesia, even Tatooine, and with the Yuuzhan Vong fleet blockading Hutt space, the New Republic couldn't help even if it wanted to. Borga will be lucky if she doesn't birth her child prematurely."

 

Karrde came to a sudden halt in the middle of the path and swung to Luke. "Do you think the Yuuzhan Vong realize what they've accomplished? They've sundered

 

the Hutts, created a schism in the senate, taken the Ha-pans out of the war, sabotaged the import of the Jedi." Before Luke could respond, he added, "Did you have any inkling it could end this way?"

 

Luke heard the voice of his former Jedi Master Always in motion is the future. Hard to see.. .

 

"The future isn't fixed," he said. "It's made up of possibilities. I saw without seeing."

 

Karrde blew out his breath. "What can we do now?"

 

Decide you must how to serve them best. Help them you could. But you would destroy all for which they have fought and suffered.

 

Luke took Karrde by the shoulders. "We can learn from our mistakes."

 

Leia had raced home from the shuttle departure platform only to find that Anakin and Jacen had already left. Now, with Isolder's cheerless departure still on her mind and C-3PO and Olmahk helping her pack for an afternoon flight to Duro, the house comm system chirped, chirping insistently even after she had activated the answer-message function.

 

Throwing her hands up in a gesture of surrender, she accepted the call. Han's was the last face she expected to see appear on the display screen.

 

"It's just me," he said, smiling lopsidedly while she gaped at his image, feeling as if months had passed since they had spoken. The display showed that he was calling from an Abregado-rae space terminal.

 

"I see you shaved off your beard," she said finally.

 

He rubbed his chin. "Yeah, too itchy."

 

"Well, at least you look like your old self again."

 

He scowled, started to say something, then began again. "Grim business about what happened to the Ha-pans at Fondor. How's Isolder doing?"

 

"I figured you'd hear the news sooner or later-even in a playground like Abregado-rae."

 

"Hear about it?" Han said. "I saw it!"

 

"You what?"

 

"I was there-at Fondor."

 

"You were at Fondor," she echoed in disbelief.

 

"Droma and I were chasing after his clanmates. Some of them had managed to get themselves marooned in a deserted shipyard facility, and the rest were prisoners aboard a yammosk ship. Anyway, it's a long, boring story. The point is, I saw the Hapan fleet get wiped out. But I thought Fondor's primary went nova. I didn't know it was Centerpoint."

 

Leia pushed her hair back from her forehead. "You realize that Anakin and Jacen were there."

 

Han took his lower lip between his teeth. "Did they fire it?"

 

Leia's nostrils flared. "Do you think they'd do something like that?"

 

Han's brow furrowed. "Take it easy. You know I don't listen to the news."

 

Leia thought about telling him about Thrackan Sal-Solo's sudden rise to fame, but decided against it, knowing that Han would find out soon enough.

 

"Where did you bring the refugees you rescued?"

 

"Here. But they can't stay for long. Abregado-rae is pulling in the welcome mat."

 

Leia sighed. "SELCORE is searching for a world suitable for relocating everyone. We thought we were going to be able to count on Ruan, but Salliche Ag is suddenly refusing to accept any refugees."

 

Han averted his eyes momentarily. "About Ruan," he started to say.

 

"SELCORE is getting some unexpected help from Senator Shesh," Leia went on. "I'll let you know as soon as I hear anything."

 

Han nodded. "Long as it's somewhere the Ryn won't be treated like riffraff."

 

"You have my word on it." Leia paused, then added, "Will Droma be remaining with his clanmates?"

 

"Yeah. The way I figure it, he and I are about even."

 

"So where does that leave you, Han?"

 

"I'm not sure. What about you-are you finally home for good?"

 

"I'm leaving this afternoon for Duro."

 

"Same old Princess Leia," he said with a sneer. "Then I guess it doesn't matter where I end up."

 

She narrowed her eyes for the cam. "Same old Han Solo."

 

He tried to lighten the moment with a laugh. "We are a pair, aren't we?"

 

"I don't know, Han. You tell me."

 

His eyes flashed. "Well, look, be sure to let me know what planet SELCORE decides on."

 

"Anything to help the refugees," Leia said with counterfeit good humor.

 

"That's what I've been saying all along."

 

Leia folded her arms. "In that case, our paths are bound to cross one of these days."

 

"I don't know, sweetheart, it's a big galaxy."

 

"Only as big as you make it," she said, deactivating the comm.

 

In her new office, Viqi Shesh watched a full-color 3-D recording of herself being interviewed by reporters as she had emerged from the closed-session inquest into the command staff's monumental blunder regarding Corellia and Fondor. Although she had been compelled to answer

 

"No comment" to most of the reporters' questions, she decided that she had carried herself well and had surely succeeded in stealing the limelight from Senator Ta'laam Ranth and others.

 

The holorecording was about to recycle when the intercom built into her greel-wood desk sounded a tone.

 

"Senator Shesh," her human secretary said, "there's a Pedric Cuf here to see you. He admits to not having an appointment, but he claims that you have been trying to contact him for the past few months."

 

Shesh zeroed the holoprojector and leaned back in her swivel chair. "I've been trying to contact him?"

 

"That's what he says."

 

When Shesh glanced at the holo display for the reception room, she saw a very tall and gaunt human smiling for the cam. "Send him in," she told her secretary.

 

Cuf entered the office a moment later, tendering a brief but dignified bow before settling into the armchair to which she waved him.

 

"I have long anticipated this meeting," he began in Core-accented Basic. "I had hoped to speak with you sooner, but I've been preoccupied with business matters in the Outer Rim and in Hutt space."

 

Shesh brought her interlaced hands to her lips and studied Cuf over the tops of her extended forefingers. "I trust that matters concluded to your satisfaction."

 

Cuf smiled without showing his teeth. "To be perfectly honest, my associates and I were recently taken somewhat by surprise by a hostile bid for power by a Corel-lian firm. But, otherwise, yes, everything has been working out to our satisfaction."

 

Shesh could feel the blood racing through her veins, but she managed to keep her composure. "Why have you come to see me now?"

 

"My superiors thought it a good idea that we become acquainted. To begin with, they wanted to thank you for your efforts of some months past, in seeing to it that some missing property was returned to us."

 

Cuf let the statement hang in the air. Shesh guessed that he was referring to Elan, the phony defector the Yu-uzhan Vong had attempted to foist on the Jedi Knights, but she couldn't be certain that he wasn't a New Republic Intelligence agent, hoping to trick her into revealing her part in that affair or the Fondor calamity.

 

"I don't recall helping return any property to you," she said after a moment. "And to be frank, I don't recall attempting to contact you. Perhaps you have me confused with someone else."

 

Pedric Cuf stared at her. "I see. Well, perhaps I have made a mistake. It wouldn't be the first time a Hutt has led me astray."

 

"A Hutt," Shesh said.

 

Cuf laughed shortly. "And here I was, all set to launch into a discussion regarding the eventual disposition of"-he gestured broadly to the windows at Shesh's back-"all this." He stood up. "A pity we can't do business, Senator. I suspect we would have made a good team."

 

She watched him head for the door, then said, "Did I mention that I like your suit?"

 

He stopped and turned to her, his smile back in place. "Yes, it fits me like a glove, don't you think? Masks all my imperfections, truly allows me to blend in. I had it specially made by a company that's simply out of this world."

 

"Does the comp any produce a line of women's wear?"

 

"They offer an exquisite line. In fact, I'm certain they could supply you with outfits perfectly tailored to your needs." Cuf paused briefly. "That is, of course, if you might, on occasion, be willing to put business before politics."

 

Shesh waved Cuf back to the chair. "Politics is a practical profession," she said. "If someone has what you need, then you do business with him or you go without. And personally, I've always been more interested in business than I have in politics."