Jacen clicked once to confirm that everything was going to plan. A second later, a powerful jolt ran through the Dreadnaught. For a second he thought that that one almost imperceptible click might have given them away, until he realized that what he'd in fact felt w as the dovin basal of the slaveship grabbing on to Bonecrusher.

 

Everything's going according to plan, said Mara. His aunt had sent out a bubble of both encouragement and reassurance to everyone on board.

 

Another jolt followed, accompanied by the sound of twisting metal. He feared for the structural integrity of the ship; without the inertial dampeners, it wasn't used to such stresses on its frame. Thankfully, though, it held.

 

When everything settled down again, the stars were no longer moving as fast, and the slaveship was rotating, too, anchored to the hull of Bonecrusher by the Yuuzhan Vong's version of artificial gravity. It was coming at them tentacles-first, like something out of a nightmare.

 

He clicked again, this time speaking into the comm.

 

"They've got us," he said. "And our friendly slaveship is moving in fast."

 

"Any sign of the ships?" Mara asked.

 

"I think it's safe to assume that most of them have gone back to their capital vessels," he answered. "They seem to have left just enough to"

 

A voice over the comlink cut him off. Although not allowed to transmit, the Dreadnaught's receivers were still intact.

 

"This is Commander B'shith Vorrik," said an abrasive Yuuzhan Vong voice. Jacen was initially nonplussed. The villips the Yuuzhan Vong used to communicate among themselves didn't transmit over electromagnetic frequencies, unless they were modified by an oggzil. The only reason they would use one of those would be to speak to the enemyand that was confirmed with Vorrik's next words "All infidels will surrender immediately, or be destroyed."

 

Jacen's heart sank. The commander knew they were there. The plan had failed; it had all been for nothing!

 

Wait, Jacen, Mara sent, sensing the despair welling up inside of him.

 

"We have no intention of surrendering to become slaves" came another voice over the receiver.

 

The growled words came from Grand Admiral Gilad Pellaeon. Jacen almost laughed out loud in relief the Yuuzhan Vong's ultimatum had been addressed to the Imperials, not Braxant Bonecrusher at all.

 

"Surrender the Jedi you harbor among you," Vorrik continued.

 

Jacen chuckled grimly to himself. Clearly the tactics they had introduced to the Imperials hadn't gone unnoticed.

 

"Why should we turn on those who help us?" Pellaeon replied.

 

"What good is the help if it results in your destruction?" Vorrik responded.

 

"You attacked us without provocation," Pellaeon shot back. "It would seem our destruction was always your intention."

 

"The presence of the Jedi is provocation enough," Vorrik growled. "Your resistance is provocation! Your very existence is provocation! Now, power down your weapons, infidel, and surrender."

 

"I have a better idea," Pellaeon said evenly. "Leave the system now while you're still in a position to do so."

 

Jacen knew that the Grand Admiral was playjng for timeeither that or he wanted to seem as if this was what he was doing. With the Dreadnaught powered down around him, there was no way of telling the disposition of the Imperial forces, but he assumed that Pellaeon was still working to the original plan to make it appear as if they were in retreat. B'shith Vorrik's announcement was probably nothing more than an attempt to hurry things along.

 

The Yuuzhan Vong commander's laugh boomed out from me receivers. "If you were counting on the cowardly attack to our rear flanks to change the course of this battle," he said, "then you should know that it has failed. Your survival, now, fool, rests solely upon my goodwill."

 

Grand Admiral Pellaeon hesitated just long enough to give the impression that this news had rattled him.

 

"I don't think there's an atom of goodwill in the entire Yuuzhan Vong culture," he said. There was a tremor in his voice. Jacen had to admit, the Grand Admiral was playing his role well. "We would sooner die than submit to you, Vorrik."

 

"Then so be it," Vorrik said, laughing again. "And may Yun-Yammka devour your bodies as well as your souls."

 

The Yuuzhan Vong commander added something more, but Jacen stopped listening. A faint click had indicated that Saba and Danni had arrived in position and were preparing to cross over to the slaveship.

 

Cross over . . . Jacen shook his head. If that wasn't a euphemism, he didn't know what was. He felt Mara joining him in wishing Saba and Danni luck as somewhere on the damaged hull of Braxant Bonecrusher they prepared themselves for what they had to do.

 

He felt them leave, felt their rush of apprehension as the tentacles took them. Then their Force-signatures were muffled among the many trapped in the belly of the slave freighter. They were completely out of his reach now, and the situation out of his controlas was Pel-laeon's fight around Borosk. The only thing he could do from here on in was wait for a sign, and hope.

 

When the mouth of one of the slaveship's surviving tentacles came groping for her, Saba Sebatyne almost felt her courage desert her. A two-meter-wide, well-muscled sphincter nosing through the holes in the Dreadnaught's hull was enough to make anyone think twice.

 

Pellaeon's minions had appropriated a number of cadavers from the nearest Star Destroyer's morgue and scattered them around the intended blast hole. Saba felt dismay for the families of the dead soldiers, but she also knew it was necessary if they were to pull off this mission. A dead ship with no dead bodies might have aroused suspicions and put their plan in jeopardy.

 

The tentacles didn't waste time with the bodies, though, passing over the dead tissue to continue searching for something more useful. They poked deeper into the punctured hull, looking for anything aliveanything at all. Danni blanched behind her faceplate as one fumbled blindly closer, but she didn't back away.

 

Nor did Saba. Putting her faith in the Force, as well as her pressurized jumpsuit, she pushed out gently from her hiding place in the direction of one of the tentacles. With surprising speed, the tentacle noticed her and swung around to take her. Her body tensed as she remembered her people spilling out from the slaveship all those months ago, filling the void with six-pointed stars that drifted lifelessly from the ruptured wall of the ship. She closed her eyes and forced the memory down; now was not the time to be reliving such grief. She needed her wits about her; she needed to focus on the assignment at hand.

 

"For this one's home," she whispered. "For this one's people."

 

She forced her muscles to relax as she was engulfed by the maw of the tentacle and swept along a slippery, ribbed tube toward the hold of the ship. Hold? Who am I kidding? It was the slaveship's belly, and right now she was being eaten by it, her body pummeled by every muscular surge of the tentacle.

 

The contractions around her grew stronger as she approached the end of the tentacle. She wondered briefly if Danni was following, but didn't have time to check; she was too caught up in the moment and what she was experiencing to sense anyone else. Still, she wanted to reach back and feel for Danni, just to be able to touch her and find some reassurance. Just to get a hand to her right now would have made the discomfort that much easier to deal with.

 

Then, abruptly, the ride was over, and she was spat into what felt like a thick mass of jelly. She was knocked repeatedly across the face and body by the large number of hard lumps in suspension, so much so that she feared for the integrity of her faceplate. But when she finally came to a halt, she was relieved to find it was still fully intact.

 

She gasped for air and felt a pain in her ribs. Nothing seemed to be broken, but she was definitely bruised. All around her was a uniform, infrared glowunfortunately too diffuse or muffled to see by. She spread her legs to orient herself and felt objects pressing in all around her. Soft on the inside and firm in the middle, the objects felt strange to her touch. Her fingers sought purchase, but they kept slipping in the jelly.

 

Then something scrabbled at her faceplate, making her jerk backward. Her hands found the torch in her equipment pack and snapped it on. Just enough light came through the jelly to reveal that something leathery and star-shaped was trying to force its way across her face. She firmly brushed it aside and suddenly came face to face with a human.

 

She gasped with shock, then cursed herself. Of course. She was in a slaveship; what did she expect? The goop around her was probably a softer version of blorash jelly, used in combat to pin an opponent's limbs down. The thing flapping at her face might have been a gnullith, living breath masks for Yuuzhan Vong's pilots. The human floating upside down in front of herjust one of thousands trapped in the jellydidn't have a gnullith and was, as her questioning hands determined, quite dead. The black-haired woman must have drowned before the gnulliths reached heror worse, died during ingestion.

 

A pressure wave rolled through the jelly from above her, and Saba assumed that Danni had just arrived. She moved her powerful legs and arms to propel herself forward, attempting to swim for the outer shell of the belly, but it was impossible to tell if she was making any progress. And even if she was, she had no real idea of which direction she was in fact moving. It was like trying to swim through a sap pool while blindfolded.

 

She tried climbing instead of swimming, using the people around her for leverage. They all seemed to be in a state of drug-induced unconsciousness, and as such didn't respond when she grabbed hold of them. Again, she wasn't sure if she was making any real progress. For all she knew, she could have been simply pushing the bodies behind her rather than moving along them. Any sense of direction had abandoned her in her free fall. She wouldn't have minded so much had it not been for the gnulliths swimming through the jelly. Everywhere she turned she encountered their strange flapping motio ns as their slithering air tubes constantly groped for her mouth.

 

So she gave in and centered herself. Switching out the light and closing her eyes, she sought her innermost point, and then she reached out.

 

The people around her created a concentrated ball of life pressing in on all sides. She was deep within it, and had been heading deeper until she'd stopped. Reorienting herself, keeping her claws carefully sheathed and her tail limp, she used the Force itself to move her through the resistant jelly.

 

The edge gradually came closer, and she found herself reaching for it well before it arrived. It was almost as though she was groping for breath from the bottom of a lake. All of the captives were unconscious, but many of them were fearful and suffering in their dreams; not even sleep could protect them from the trauma of what their bodies were undergoing. The overlapping nightmares were suffocating, and Saba found herself humming a childhood tune she hadn't thought of for years to keep them at bay. It worked, but only just.

 

When she finally hit the edge of the belly, she clutched tightly at it, allowing herself the time to regain her strength. The interior surface was ribbed, so movement along it wouldn't be difficult once she got going again.

 

All she had to do was collect her thoughts, orient herself with respect to the ship around her, and then

 

Something clutched at her from out of the jelly. She pushed herself between a couple of the immense ribs, kicking out at what she thought to be another gnullith. But it came back, groping insistently for her. For a moment she panicked, completely flustered by the oppressive, grotesque environment. The same one the last of her people had endured, before . . . She reached automatically for her lightsaber, even though she knew that lighting it would inevitably hurt the unconscious captives pressing in around her.

 

Then a light appeared out of the reddish murk. It grew brighter as whatever was grabbing at her found purchase, and pulled. Saba realized with a flood of relief that the thing that had taken hold of her equipment belt was a human handand that the hand belonged to Danni Quee.

 

The Barabel couldn't help it. She laughed at herself, amused by her mistake and buoyed by the fading of her intense but fleeting panic. Her sissing fit continued until Danni's faceplate pressed up against hers and she could see the human woman frowning in concern.

 

"Saba? Are you all right?" Danni's voice was muffled by the thickness of their masks. "You're shaking!"

 

"This one iz very glad to see you, Danni Quee," she said, forcing herself to be calm. Given their situation, uncontrolled laughter could be just as detrimental as panic. "How did you know where to look?"

 

"Through the Force," she said. "Can't you see me that way?"

 

Saba shook her head. "There are too many people in here with us. I am drowning in their mindz."

 

Danni removed her faceplate from Saba's and looked around. It was her turn to shiver.

 

"It's dark in here," she said upon turning back to face Saba. "I'm glad I've got this light."

 

Saba nodded. "This one iz more glad that you found me."

 

"Do you know where we are?"

 

Saba concentrated again. She couldn't feel the alien ship or its Yuuzhan Vong crew, but she could sense the shape that the sac of imprisoned humans made, then work out where they were from that.

 

"We're past the halfway point," she said. "There iz a bulge that I suspect containz the ship's control centers. It'z not far from hereabout a hundred meters or so."

 

"Point me in the right direction, then, and let's go," Danni said with determinationalthough it obviously came with some effort. She was as uneasy about the whole thing as Saba was. "The sooner we're out of here, the better."

 

Saba led the way, propelling herself along the wall by digging her claws into the ribbing and pulling herself forward. Danni followed, using Saba's tail as a guide. As before, Saba had to shoulder aside unconscious or dead bodies on her way, and the extra energy this required soon tired her.

 

Movement along the wall was certainly simpler than swimming through the jelly, but it still wasn't easy. The interior of the slaveship was muscular and slippery, the surface soft but resistant to her probing digits. The ridges, she decided, were formed by vast muscle fibers wrapped around the hold, keeping the pressure in and allowing it to flex when new additions arrived. It wasn't as tough as yorik coral, small plates of which she noticed had coated the exterior. With the slaves kept unconscious presumably by a compound delivered via the gnulliths, since contact with the blorash jelly hadn't affected Danni at allit seemed obvious that the Yuuzhan Vong had ignored any threat from the inside. Saba felt reasonably confident that, if worse came to worst, they could cut through the inner layer and find a way out between the yorik coral plates. But that would mean risking explosive decompression, sending the contents of the belly out into hard vacuum . . .

 

The image of six-pointed stars tumbling into space flashed through her mind. She fought down the thought angrily.

 

I won't let that happen again! Time was passing quickly, so she forced herself to hurry. She didn't know how long the slaveship would hover around the Dreadnaught, sniffing for new captives. There had been a couple of small movements through the ship, suggestive of slight attitude adjustments, so she knew it hadn't made any dramatic moves yet. The moment it left, though, their job would become a thousand times more difficult.

 

When they reached the bulge, its dimensions became clearer. The bulge was shaped like a volcano, with a round lip surrounding a slight dimple at the top. Feeling her way to the dimple, she was disappointed to find that it wasn't an exit as she had imagined. It was, in fact, an entrance, but not one she could fit through. It was from here that fresh gnulliths were constantly pumped into the vast sac, riding on a gentle current of blorash jelly. Avoiding them proved difficult, and Saba pressed herself as flat as she could against the fleshy inner wall to present as small a target as possible.

 

Danni pressed her faceplate against Saba's. "This place is getting worse by the minute."

 

"At least they don't seem to know we're here," Saba replied. "We seem safe enough." "For now," Danni added.

 

Danni reached awkwardly for her pack and slid a fat cylinder from it. Saba helped her unscrew its cap and clear away the jelly long enough to activate its contents. Six modified Mark VII scarab droids came to life at the touch of a switch on Danni's remote controller. Each had six legs as long as a human's index finger and two retractable injection fangs. They had high-gain photoreceptors and sensitive biodetectors that had been tuned to Yuuzhan Vong rhythms and pheromones. They didn't normally need remote operators, although their sensors could be accessed from a distance. These had been further modified to give Danni a measure of remote controlsince the interior of the slaveship was a completely unknown environmentwithout jeopardizing their mission. Each scarab would lay a threadlike molecular wire behind it, virtually invisible to the naked eye, which would allow her to keep in touch without using comlink channels.

 

Heads-up displays in Danni's face mask allowed her to see what the scarabs saw. As she keyed a series of instructions into the tiny droids and sent them scuttling for the gnullith vent, Saba accessed the information and watched, too.

 

The droids soon found the vent and burrowed into its muscular sphincter. The view through infrared was little different from what Saba saw around her in the hold lots of indistinct, warm blurs and not much else. But the scarabs slid between the folds of tissue for three meters, nudging gnulliths aside with ease along their way.

 

The moment the lead scarab began to detect light, it slowed its crawl through the vent. They had clearly reached the end of the narrow passage. Danni instructed the droid to carefully extend a photoreceptor out toward the light, and found a tank filled with clear fluid that was thicker than water and held bubbles in suspension like human saliva. Throughout, the tank was teeming with star-shaped creatures that twitched and writhed in the liquid. This was the source of the gnulliths.

 

The scarab didn't detect any nearby Yuuzhan Vong biorhythms, so the droid slipped free of the vent and swam awkwardly around the edge of the gnullith pool, Ignoring the scarab's presence, the flapping star-shaped organic masks continued to swim into the vent from the bottom of the pool where, presumably, they were grown. The other scarabs followed the lead out of the pool, fanning out to find different hiding spots. The remote-control view became a mess of six slightly different images of the same place, and Saba cut them back to only the lead droid to keep it simple. The scarab found a promising passage through the bony wall, leaving its siblings behind.

 

The view became nothing more than a series of close-ups of unpolished yorik coral at very close quarters as the scarab scurried along the narrow fissure. Eventually it came to a dead end, then backtracked until it reached a turnoff it had ignored before and took that instead, That, too, led to a dead end, so the droid went back to another turning and tried that instead. After a few times of doing this, Saba began to feel frustrated. If they didn't find the equivalent of a control room soon, they were never going to be able to rescue the captives. And worse they would end up captives themselves!

 

"Got 'em," Danni said suddenly, her voice low but excited.

 

Saba snapped from her pessimism. "Where?"

 

"Scarab Four." Saba selected the view and watched biorhythm readings glowing in many colors across a view of yet another narrow fissure. The scarab was moving stealthily closer to the end of the fissure, visible just around a turn up ah ead. Bright light shone from around the corner, and Saba could hear the harsh sound of the Yuuzhan Vong language in her earplugs.

 

The scarab instinctively froze the moment it managed to get one of its photoreceptors around the corner for a look, finding itself at about shoulder height in a small control room containing two Yuuzhan Vong warriors. Brutally scarred, although not as extensively as some Saba had seen, they were elbow deep in the sort of organic controls typical for these vessels. On a strangely shaped screen before them, Saba saw something that she suspected represented the wreckage of the Dreadnaught at close quarters. It was hard to say for sure, though, because the biological display wasn't configured to frequencies her eyes were sensitive to.

 

Danni, however, was more certain. "That's Bone-crusher," she said. "At least we know we've still got a way off this thing."

 

But for how long? Saba thought as she shifted in the blorash jelly, brushing to one side yet another gnullith.

 

"I'm going to send the other scarabs in to join Four," Danni said. "We'll get them to attack once they're all there, okay?"

 

Saba nodded. Given that they hadn't been able to find a way out of the hold from within, this had become the human woman's show. Nevertheless, she still had reservations. "Only two pilotz for a ship this big?" she asked dubiously.

 

Danni shrugged in the jelly. "We're not picking up any other readings," she said. "And the scarabs have covered seventy percent of the volume ahead of us. It's not so unlikely, really. This would be dishonorable work in their eyes there's no fighting, no victory; just picking up the pieces left behind by the true heroes."

 

Saba nodded again, more reassured. If that was the case, the attack of Braxant Bonecrusher was probably the most exciting thing these pilots had seen for ages, They would be relieved and cocky, and certainly not expecting an attack from within. Their appearance gave some credence to that notion their armor was ragged, and one of them even had exposed skin showing through the vonduun crab shell.

 

One by one, the scarab viewpoints began to overlap again. They crowded together in the crack Scarab Four had found, making tiny clicking noises with their thin, metal legs as they watched the aliens going about their business.

 

"How far can these thingz jump?" Saba asked.

 

"I'm not sure," Danni replied. "They have their own attack algorithms. I'd probably just get in the way if I told them what to do."

 

"And you're sure the poison will work?" A range of anti-Yuuzhan Vong toxins had been identified by Master Cilghal; Pellaeon had instructed his security staff to fill the scarabs' poison reservoirs with it before they left.

 

"No." Danni smiled at Saba through the faceplate in an attempt to lighten the mood. "But we'll soon find out."

 

She keyed a new series of instructions for the scarabs, and immediately four of them detached their monolinks and scurried from the hole. The fifth and sixth moved forward to report what happened.

 

Saba held herself still, despite every muscle yearning to strike, and strike fast. For the time they scurried across the wall, the four hand-sized assassin droids remained invisible to them. Then Saba noticed one appear at the top of the display, cautiously creeping across the ceiling. A second one appeared to the right; a third to the left, slinking along the floor like a sinister insect. The fourth was still out of sight, and Saba found herself leaning slightly as if this would somehow afford her a better view.

 

The Yuuzhan Vong were still deep in conversation, totally oblivious to the scarabs making their way toward them. The scruffier of the pair leaned forward to adjust the trim, causing the scarabs on either side to momentarily freeze in their tracks. The one on the ceiling, however, kept moving, giving cause for Saba to hold her breath in nervous anticipation. What if they heard it? What if they looked up right now? The entire mission could be blown in an instant.

 

She watched as the scarab crept forward another body's length until it was positioned directly above the other alien. Then, turning ninety degrees and angling its head downward, it released its grip from the ceiling.

 

The Yuuzhan Vong howled in pain and surprise as the metal fangs of the scarab sank deep into his arm. He stood abruptly, snatching the tiny droid from his arm and smashing it viciously against the wall. The second warrior stood also, looking to see what the commotion from his comrade was all about. As he did, one of the other scarabs launched itself at him, taking him under the armpit where the vonduun crab armor was traditionally weakest, but the fangs didn't dig deep enough for the poison to be effective and the scarab was instantly swept aside.

 

At first the two warriors were startled by the attack and didn't seem to realize where it was coming from. But it only took a second to recover and get their bearings. Even though they were in what would have been regarded as a dishonorable position for warriors, they were both still formidable fighters, trained by years of torture and self-deprivation to respond instantly to any crisis.

 

They reached into their armor for weapons. One had only a coufee, but the other had an amphistaff that stirred and spat viciously in his hands. The second scarab droid tried another leap at the one it had attacked, but was easily batted out of the air by the warrior, and this time was destroyed. The third and fourth scarabs quickly joined the fray, one crawling up the uninjured Yuuzhan Vong's leg and trying to plant its fangs into his thigh, the other leaping for his face. The confined space barely seemed able to contain the sudden noise and movement as the amphistaff whirled and scarab fragments smashed against the walls.

 

Danni bit her lip as she ordered in the fifth assassin droid. It jumped on the back of the unbitten warrior, managing to get a decent purchase. Finding a gap in the vonduun crab armor, it emptied its reservoirs directly into the Yuuzhan Vong's bloodstream. He shouted in alarm as his partner disposed of it with a single, precise slash of his coufee. The strong, slender needles, however, remained embedded in the warrior's flesh. With seemingly little effort or discomfort, he twisted around and yanked them out. Wincing only slightly, he held them up to the light to see. All-too-alert eyes squinted malevolently at the tiny machine.

 

"The poison isn't working!" There was a nervous panic in Danni's voice.

 

"Grakh," the Yuuzhan Vong spat, throwing the nee-dies aside. The other struck the biological console in front of him and shouted more angry words in their own tongue. Alarms began to wail as one of the warrior's hands went into the control sacs. A villip everted itself on the console and the head of a distant superior began to add more shouting to the racket.

 

The droids had failed and the alarm had gone out.Re-inforcements would no doubt arrive soon. Saba's heart lurched into her throat as she felt a shudder roll through the ship and realized that the slaveship's drives had just fired at full thrust. In the organic screen, the strangely distorted shape of Braxant Bonecrusher began to shrink. She gripped the flesh of the wall impotently as the crush of bodies seemed to tighten around her. There was nothing she could do but watch helplessly as her only hope of survival receded into the distance . . .

 

The chuk'a was a simple creature, bred to turn the base compounds found in stone and dust into pearly building material, and when asked to rest its slumber was complete. There was a specific series of stimulations to be applied in order to bring it to life again; the ex-shaper Yus Sh'roth would have been able to tell Nom Anor what they were. He would also have warned against startling the chuk'a out of its hibernation because, under the circumstances, that could only mean disaster.

 

The dagger in its side wrenched the creature from its sleep, thrusting it into a world of painthe shock of which triggered a defensive spasm that caused the chuk'a to retract its anchors from the sides of the shaft. The mass of the chuk'a was too great for the bottom of the structure it had built, and to which it was still attached. As a result, the shell on which Nom Anor and Kunra stood gave way, sending them hurtling downward, along with the creature.

 

Luckilyalthough it didn't feel so at the timethe slope of the vent provided enough friction to slow their fall. It also made the chuk'a and its attached chunk of shell tumble, sending its two passengers bouncing around inside the small space, smashing against hardened shell and occasionally slashing themselves against sharp edges. Nom Anor rolled himself into a ball to protect his stomach and head and tried to relax every muscle in his body.

 

Kunra was somewhere nearby, howling in fear as they continued to plummet. Through the shell they could feel the chuk'a frantically scrabbling for a grip on the sides of the walls as they swept past. Its stubby limbs had no success, and fared badly against the unyielding surfaces. With shell to protect it on just one side, it was sorely battered by the tumble and fell silent and limp just moments before they reached the end of the vent.

 

Nom Anor and Kunra had no warning that it was coming. One moment they were bouncing off the ferrocrete walls; the next they were tumbling in free fall. In its own way, that silent descent was worse than the crashing and bumping. It was impossible to know what awaited them at the bottom of their fall or how far it might be, and there was nothing to check their acceleration.

 

With a bone-jarring crunch followed by another brief moment of weightless spinning, then a second impact that seemed even more brutal than the first, the chuk'a reached the end of its downward journey. The sound of shell cracking was loud in Nom Anor's ears as the plug broke in two and fell in pieces around the bod y of the creature that had created it. His remaining momentum carried him several meters across the surface of what felt like a giant bowl. The refuse of centuries crunched and crackled under him as he groaned and rolled onto his side. Every centimeter of him was screaming with pain, as if his entire body had been pummeled by dozens of amphistaffs at once.

 

When silence had settled around him, Nom Anor struggled to sit upright. It hurt, but he refused to acknowledge it with a groan or a cry. He had learned over the years not to become a slave to unavoidable pain, but to use it as a goad. With teeth clenched, he moved through the rubble on his hands and knees to where the lambent had fallen nearby, a lonely star in a world of darkness. He took it and examined the place where they had come to rest.

 

It was indeed a shallow bowl, but one made of some kind of metal and surrounded by a lip almost a meter high. That was all he could see; the bowl seemed to be hanging in a vast and empty spacea space so large that echoes off its distant walls and ceiling were smothered by the silent shadows. There was no sign of the bottom of the vent, nor of any other wreckage that had followed them down. That meant that the Shamed Ones' nest was still intact. Had it become detached from the vent walls and followed them down, the warriors riding along with it would have been the least of Nom Anor's worries.

 

The chuk'a itself appeared to be dead. Its mollusklike form had burst and splattered over a large area of the bowl, its body cushioning its passengers and their shell saddle from the bulk of the impact. Lumps of gray flesh oozed clear fluids everywhere he looked, while jagged fragments of shell lay among the organic wreckage, some still settling.

 

Suddenly, into the quiet, Kunra cried out in pain. Fearful of how far the sound would carry, Nom Anor quickly rose to his feet and circled the body of the chuk'a to where the ex-warrior lay. The Shamed One was on his back, one leg impaled on a chunk of shell. Trying to sit up, Kunra reached for the approaching lambent glow, but the movement was too much for him and he fell back down with another cry.

 

"Help me," he panted breathlessly when Nom Anor stood over him.

 

"Why?" Nom Anor felt nothing but contempt for Kunra's pitiable whining in the face of pain.

 

"What?" the ex-warrior spat.

 

"Why should I help you?" Nom Anor repeated calmly.

 

"Because I'm bleeding to death!"

 

Nom Anor directed the light from the lambent over Kunra's extensive injuries. From the way the dark fluid was spurting from the leg wound, along with the alarmingly pale taint to Kunra's skin, it seemed likely that the ex-warrior's assessment of his condition was correct.

 

"You left your friends to die," Nom Anor said. "Do you think you deserve to live?"

 

"Do you?" It was clear from Kunra's expression that just talking was causing him a lot of discomfort.

 

"They weren't my friends."

 

"Niiriit" Kunra stopped, wincing from a pain that was both physical and mental.

 

Nom Anor crouched down beside the ex-warrior. "That's been bothering you since I came alonghasn't it, Kunra?" he said, grinning despite the terrible throbbing of his own injuries. "Once I arrived, she had no interest in you anymore. You were no one."

 

Kunra winced and sucked air through clenched teeth. "You ruined everything," he managed to hiss out.

 

Nom Anor shook his head. "And you weren't even there for her at the end, were you?" he said. "If you had really cared"

 

"All right!" Kunra gasped. The blue sacks under his eyes were growing as white as his scars. "I didn't care enough to die with her. Is that what you want to hear? I didn't care enough. Just help me. Please! I'll do anything. Don't let me die!"

 

Kunra's pleading became fragmented and confused. The pulsing from his leg had slowed to a trickle. Nom Anor waited until the ex-warrior had lapsed fully into unconsciousness before kneeling beside the injured man and reaching into the pack he had brought with him, removing the few medical provisions he had pilfered while on his upward excursions with I'pan.

 

The Shamed One's leg wasn't broken. That was lucky. Nom Anor had decided that he would expend the effort to deal with the wound, but there was a limit to what he could treat. He injected microscopic knuth bugs into the dying man's circulatory system to replace the lost blood. Clip beetles closed the wound, once the coral had been removed. A porrh wash kept harmful germs at bay and a neathlat covered the wound beneath a living bandage. There would be nothing for the pain, though; it wasn't the Yuuzhan Vong way. And even if he did have something, he would not have administered it. He wanted Kunra to be completely focused when he awoke. Focused and grateful.

 

While he waited for that moment to come, he explored his surroundings. The lip of the bowl wasn't uniform all the way around. There was an indentation at a point where a long, exceedingly massive arm led off into the darkness, presumably attaching the bowl to a wall in the distance. The top of the arm was flat and roughly two meters wide; he would have to walk across it, if there was anywhere to walk to. Below the bowl there was nothing to be seen at all, and he wasn't about to take a chance on another fall.

 

As he stood staring into the darkness, he realized that he had passed an important hurdle. He had not just endured the underworld of Yuuzhan'tar; he had endured an attack from his own kind. He was now most definitely a fugitive, and that hammered home the fact that mere survival was not enough. Any peace he found in the catacombs would always be an illusion, whether it was the heresy or his name that brought the warriors down upon him.

 

Kunra moaned. Nom Anor went over to him and pressed the coufee against the injured man's throat just as his eyes flickered open.

 

"Understand this," Nom Anor said. "I could have let you die. But do not allow the fact that you are alive deceive you into believing that I won't kill you out of hand, now or in the future."

 

Kunra didn't appear frightened; he was probably too weak from his injuries to feel anything much apart from shock.

 

"I'm not fool enough to think that, Nom Anor" Kunra said. Fluid rattled in his lungs as he spoke; he coughed once to clear it, spitting the gray-green mucus into the dust at his side. Then, fixing his wavering eyes on Nom Anor again, he said "I am too aware of your reputation. You do nothing that doesn't benefit your own cause."

 

"And what is my cause now, Kunra?" Nom Anor emphasized the question by applying increased pressure with the blade.

 

"You tell me," Kunra gasped.

 

"I want many things, and in time I intend to get all of them. Your time, on the other hand, is decidedly limited. You can either agree to help me achieve these things, or I will kill you now. There is no other option."

 

Kunra rolled his eyes and attempted to laugh, but the pain was obvious beneath the facade. "I don't suppose I could have a little time to think about it, could I?"

 

"You have already held me up enough," Nom Anor said coldly. "Choose now, or die indecisive. It matters not to me."

 

The ex-warrior closed his eyes, then nodded once. "I guess I will help you, Nom Anor."

 

"Good." He was satisfied that the answer was truthful. Kunra was a coward; he would do anything to save his life, even if it meant betraying himself. Such desperation would make of him a fine bodyguard, for a time.

 

They would understand each other on that score, at least. "There are just two more things you need to know," he said, withdrawing his blade from Kunra's throat and sheathing it under his belt. "The first is that you will never question my instructions. Not more than once, anyway, for there will be never a second time."

 

He paused to let the point sink in.

 

Kunra nodded. "And the second?"

 

"You will never use my true name again," he said. "If it was my name that led Niiriit and the others to"" their deaths, then I would avoid something similar happening in the future."

 

"What should I call you, then?"

 

"I haven't decided upon a name yet," he said. " Amorrn will do for nowthe name I used in the upper levels when I visited with I'pan. But I fear that even this might be recognized now. I shall let you know when I have chosen .mother."

 

He held out a hand and helped Kunra to his feet. The ex-warrior's leg was tender, but he could walk, at least. Yuuzhan Vong biotechnology was more effective on living tissue than was the machinery of the infidelor even, Nom Anor suspected, the nebulous Force of the Jedi.

 

"Where to now?" Kunra asked, standing in a position that favored his good leg.

 

"Up," Nom Anor stated flatly, glancing into the darkness overhead. "I have some business to attend to there."

 

Saba's comlink clicked at the same time Danni said "Wait, Saba! Look!"

 

Through the remaining scarab's senses, Saba saw one of the Yuuzhan Vong warriors at the controls of the slaveship slip to his knees, then slowly slump over to one side. The second was having troubles of his own. Going to the aid of his fallen comrade, he lost his balance and fell forward, striking his head on the control console. He regained his footing just long enough to stand up again, then he, too, went down in a heap.

 

"The poison worked!" Danni's words were carried on a barely suppressed and incredulous laugh of relief. "It just took a little longer than we expected it to."

 

"It doesn't change anything," Saba said soberly. "We're still drawing away from Bonecrusher."

 

The Barabel drew her lightsaber at the same time she opened a comm channel. There seemed no point maintaining a communications blackout any longer.

 

"Jacen, this iz Saba," she said urgently. "Our cover has been blown. Please acknowledge."

 

His reply was muffled by the layers of the people and blorash jelly packed in around them. "I hear you, His-ser," he said. "And we already guessed as much. We have contacts closing in across the board, moving in to p ick you up right now. Will you be able to get out okay?"

 

Danni's expression had quickly gone from elation to one of dismay. Like Saba, she knew the only way out would be to cut through the hull, and that would result in the almost certain deaths of all the captives they'd come to rescue.

 

But maybe there was a way, Saba thought. It was risky and went against virtually every spacer instinct in her body, but it just might work.

 

She had sworn not to let such a thing happen again...

 

"Jacen, empty the flight deck," she said hurriedly. "Keep Jade Shadow in dock and tell Mara to have the tractor beam ready."

 

Danni's eyes grew wide in the reddish darkness. "Saba, you're not?"

 

"We truly have no other choice," Saba shot back sharply. "Now, hang on to something."

 

Saba pressed the business end of her lightsaber flat against the fleshy wall of the slaveship interior. The sound it made on ignition was horrific as it boiled through flesh to the vacuum outside. The ship quivered as she dragged the blade along the wall, turning a hole into a slit one meter long, then two meters. The tissue resisted parting even when the lightsaber had moved on, cauterizing the edges and killing nerve endings. A great bulge developed as muscles pushed in from all sides, resisting the pressure differential by fighting to keep the lips of the hole together. But Saba kept cutting, bracing herself as best she could against the ribbed flesh, readying herself for the inevitable.

 

When the rent in the belly wall reached five meters, Saba felt the muscle tremble and give way. The slit peeled open, emptying the contents of the slaveship out into the vacuum in one thick stream

 

"Saba, what are you doing?" The exclamation came from Mara. "Those people are going to freeze to death out here!"

 

"No they won't," Saba replied, fighting the current that was trying to pull her through the gap also. The people bumping into her as they were sucked through the hole only made her task that much harder. "The insulation from the blorash jelly should hold for several minutezlong enough for you to get them into the flight deck."

 

"And what are they supposed to do for oxygen in the meantime?"

 

"The gnullithz, of course."

 

"Saba, the gnulliths won't work in a vacuum!"

 

"They won't be in a vacuum; they'll be in the blorash jellywhich iz where they've been getting the oxygen in the first place." She grunted heavily as a couple more bodies collided with her on their way out. "Trust this one, Mara. Get them to the flight deck az soon as possible and everything will be all right." / hope, she added silently to herself. Mara chuckled nervously. "This is a crazy idea," she said. "One only a Barabel would attempt!"

 

Saba sissed softly to herself, taking Mara's words as the compliment they were intended to be. With both hands on the pommel of the lightsaber, she widened the hole as far as she daredtoo much would send the slaves spraying across the sky in an arc too wide for Mara to catch them all; but too small a hole would mean the slaveship wouldn't empty fast enough, giving the Yuu-zhan Vong reinforcements time to arrive. After a few moments she snapped off her lightsaber and crawled around the hole to where Danni was clinging desperately to the command bulge.

 

"Time to get out of here," Saba told her, wrapping around the woman's shoulders an arm that was almost as long as Danni was tall.

 

"About the only thing going for this plan of yours, Hisser," Danni said, "is that it can't be anywhere near as bad as the way we came in."

 

"Here we come, Mara," Saba said over the comlink. Clutching Danni close to her chest, she let go and was instantly swept up by the current and sucked unceremoniously out into space. Limbs from the other captives continued to batter her as they flew out, so she tucked herself around Danni to protect her. Then the slight acceleration she had felt through the slaveship was gone and she was spinning in space, two living people in a clump of about forty held together by the blorash jelly. The stuff stiffened around her as though setting, keeping the pressure in.

 

"We're out," she said shortly. "Keep talking," Jacen said. "It'll give us a trace." "Nogetotherz" But that was all Saba could manage. The blorash jelly was continuing to set, pressing at her chest and making it almost impossible to breathe, let alone talk.

 

Trapped and with little else to do but wait, she stared out through the translucent jelly at the galaxy spinning idly around her, wondering if this would be the last thing she ever saw. She thought back to how her own people had spilled from the slaveship above Barab I. Had any of them been conscious to ask similar questions? Or had they been like all the rest of the captives here, unconscious and oblivious to the danger they were in?

 

As she continued to drift through space, Saba noticed several lights that were brighter than the other stars. The biggest of these was Borosk's sun, spinning lazily around them, while others she imagined to be TIE fighters that had been launched by Bonecrusher to make room for the people rescued from the slaveship. As yet there was no sign of attack from the Yuuzhan Vong, which was fortunate.

 

"Beautiful," Danni ground through a clenched jaw, her eyes fixed on the view of the massive globules of solidifying jelly drifting nearby. The reddish spheres were glittering in the sunlight, spinning around them in a lengthening spiral with its starting point in the side of the rapidly deflating slaveship.

 

Saba didn't have the breath or the energy to comment. All she could do was stare, and morbidly wonder what would happen to them when the jelly set completely. ..

 

But the thought was broken when the bubble that contained them jerked suddenly, bringing their gentle roll to a complete and abrupt halt. A sense of falling swept over her, and with immense relief Saba realized they had been picked up by Jade Shadow's tractor beam. Their bubble-along with a dozen or so otherswas slowly being drawn down into hold of Bonecrusher.

 

"Got you," Jacen said. There was no hiding his relief. "Are you two okay in there?"

 

"I'mhere," Danni said with effort. "Not sure aboutSaba."

 

Danni seemed to be coping with the solidification of the jelly better than Saba was. Maybe, Saba thought as the tightening across her chest worsened, it had something to do with the smaller lung capacity of humans. A Barabel would find it much harder to breathe in higher pressure since it took more energy to inflate the larger rib cage. Danni and the other humans, though, could survive more readily on small, rapid breaths.

 

Theorizing was all very well. Knowing the problem didn't help her find a solutionespecially when she could feel darkness closing in around the edges of her vision. She closed her eyes so she didn't have to think about blacking out, concentrating instead on Jedi breathing techniques to conserve her energy.

 

This was disrupted when another rough jolt sent them tumbling end over end. Saba thought she could hear Jacen talking, but he sounded far-off and vague. Soon she heard other voices, and she thought for a second that they might be the droid brains joining in on the discussion, but again she couldn't be sure. Everything was too hazy.

 

Flashes of light coincided with a faint and distant tapping sound, and she knew instinctively that Braxant Bonecrusher was taking hits to its reactivated shields. She should have felt relief that she had been rescued, but all she could think of was the other people in the blorash jelly. She just hoped they had been rescued before the Yuuzhan Vong had arrived.

 

A thrill of fear rushed through her when the flashing abruptly intensified. Surely the Yuuzhan Vong couldn't be that close? But no, she thought numbly. These flashes were from laser light, not plasma.

 

With some effort, her eyes flickered open and she looked around to see what was going on.

 

"No, Saba," Danni panted from close by. "Keep them shut. It won'tbe long myscaly friend."

 

Despite Danni's reassurance, though, it was hard to maintain a Jedi calm with all the flashing going on, as well as the jelly solidifying around her like ferrocrete. But she tried to stay focused just the same.

 

Her ears detected a faint sizzling-crackling sound that gradually grew louder. The mass of jelly shook violently. She felt the pressure across her body ease slightly, and then a few seconds later ease some more. Soon Danni was squirming out of her grip, and she realized with great relief that she could breathe properly again.

 

Saba opened her eyes and the world flooded back in. Between flashes of automatic cutting lasers and robot manipulators grabbing at her, she heard droid brains announcing that the release had been achieved with "optimal efficiency," while TIE fighters reported on the defense of the Dreadnaught. And there was Jacen standing above her, tearing chunks of jelly from Danni's jumpsuit, then helping Saba do the same. The Barabel's mind was still fuzzy, and her hands were stiff and unwieldy as circulation gradually returned. It took her several minutes before she could fully comprehend the scene around her. She was on a landing deck. More than fifty rough spheres of solidified jelly filled the confined space almost to its limit. From the spheres protruded arms and legs, along with the occasional head of the unconscious human captives. Cutting lasers were beginning to work on several of the spheres, releasing the people so they could be treated. She could feel them through the Force all would need medical attention to reverse the effects of the drugs supplied by the gnulliths, but it looked very much like the majority of them would live.

 

She laughed out loud as Jacen and Danni helped her to her feet. Danni threw her arms about the Barabel in a show of both relief and gratitude, while Jacen slapped her shoulder plates in a congratulatory gesture. An immense feeling of satisfaction rushed through Sabaso stro ng was it, in fact, that for a moment she was afraid that her legs would fold beneath her.

 

"Initial jump locked in," the droid brains announced over the pounding of turbolasers.

 

"Take us out of here," Jacen said as he turned away from Saba and Danni to return to his disabled TIE cockpit to oversee Bonecrusher's escape. Saba watched him go with a strong pounding in her chest. She could sense Jacen's pride in her. To him, this was what it meant to be a Jedi to save lives, to protect freedom, to resist evil. She was glad, in a war with so many horrors, to have been able to give himand herselfsomething to be proud of.

 

How better could they be remembered?

 

Saba opened her mouth fully, sucking in a lungful of the sweetest air she had possibly ever tasted.

 

"This is Captain Syrtik of the Galantos Guard," announced the leader of the approaching Y-wings.

 

Blunt-nosed and older than Jag Fel by several decades, the clumsy fighters followed a strictly controlled flight path out of Galantos's gravity well. Their ion engines were outdated but still powerful enough to overtake Pride of Selonia on its way to reinforce Twin Suns Squadron. The

 

frigate's turbolaser batteries tracked the Y-wings as they passed, ready for any sign of hostility.

 

"State your intentions, Captain Syrtik," said Captain Mayn.

 

"We're here to help." The leader of the incoming fighters sounded grimly determined. "Just tell us who to defer command to and we'll do whatever we can." "Councilor Jobath finally saw reason, eh?" Mayn said.

 

There was a slight hesitation before Syrtik's reply "Actually, Captain, I'm proceeding without orders."

 

This time it was Mayn's turn to hesitate. "Very well," she said. There was no hiding her surprise. "Link up with Twin Suns Squadron for instructions. We'll be with you as soon as we can."

 

"Captain Syrtik, this is Twin Suns Leader," Jag said over the comm a second later. "Switch to channel twenty-nine for those instructions."

 

Jag closely surveyed the battle through his monitors. The two slaveships had closed together to make a smaller target while the reorganized coralskippers maintained a tight defense. The armored blastboat analog was still hanging back, protected by a trio of determined skips.

 

He changed to the new channel. "Our priority up to now has been to knock out the slaveships," he said. "But that situation has changed. Those scarheads are getting themselves together, so we're going to need to take out that last ship. Whatever's doing the thinking for them, it's in there."

 

"A yammosk?" Jaina asked.

 

"I think so," Jag said. Then, for the benefit of the newcomers, he added, "We have jammers in Selonia. Until they arrive, though, we'll have to make do on our own."

 

He paused, frowning at the screen. He had noted the absence of the Falcon, but the significance of it hadn't sunk in at first. The battered freighter had quietly looped back to Galantos once the Y-wings had appeared, almost as though it had other business to attend to. It was probably nothing, but he couldn't help but feel uneasy about it. Tahiri was aboard the Falcon . . .

 

He pushed the thought down. He had enough to contend with as it was without adding more to his plate.

 

"We're going to divide you into three," he told their new allies. "One squadron will come with me to take out the rear ship. Twin Two has already made some progress on the slaveships so she'll keep that up, with help of the second squadron. The remainder will provide distractions as needed."

 

"You have no specific instructions at this time?" asked a new, slightly tremulous voice.

 

Jag rolled his eyes as he remembered how precise and organized the Fia liked to be. He had assumed that the fighters would be piloted by species more suited to the interior of a Y-wing cockpit; presumably they had made substantial alterations to the standard couches to accommodate their bottom-heavy physiques.

 

"You'll be fine," he said. "Just follow our lead, okay? Right, now let's split up." He picked one of the squadrons at random from the rapidly approaching trio. "Blues, you're with me."

 

"That's Indigo, actually," Captain Syrtik corrected him.

 

"Sorry, Indigo. Twin Two will take Red."

 

"Cerise."

 

Jag shook his head irritably. "All right, then that leaves Green for"

 

"Reseda," he was corrected again.

 

"Okay, then that leaves Reseda Squadron for the general approach. Is everyone clear on their part?"

 

A chorus of affirmatives sounded out over the open line.

 

"Right, Indigo Leader, switch to frequency seventeen and we'll begin our run."

 

As the new arrivals swept into the battlefield, Jag took a second to reprogram the diagnostic displays in front of him. The number of ships had more than doubled, and without any idea of how well the Fia could fly, he needed all the technical backup he could get.

 

"Are you okay with this, Sticks?" he asked on a private channel.

 

"A-okay," Jaina replied. Her X-wing peeled off to lead her new flock in a tight loop around the slaveships, herding a pair of cautious skips before her. "But let's hope this will be over soon."

 

"I hear you," he said. "I'm afraid the Fia's pedantry might turn this into the longest melee we've ever been involved in."

 

"Not what I was hoping to hear, Jag," Jaina said tiredly.

 

The obvious fatigue in her voice concerned him. He still didn't know the full story of what had happened at N'zoth, but it would have to wait until the immediate problem was dealt with.

 

He guided his new wingmates around the slaveships and along a rolling strike path toward the blastboat analog. Skips immediately swooped in to deter them, dividing the Y-wing formation into quarters. Two of the old boats stayed with Jag, but they only managed to keep up because he showed restraint and kept his maneuvering to a minimum. As soon as the first of the skips appeared in his targeting reticle, however, he let his instincts take over.

 

The skip danced across his scopes, narrowly avoiding the stutterfire he sent arcing toward its coral-armored back. Dovin basals snatched energy out of the vacuum, greedily absorbing everything he threw at them. His two wingmates added to the barrage, but they hadn't yet picked up the new techniques. Their input was little more than a distraction. Nonetheless, he appreciated all the help he got.

 

"Like this, guys," he said, hugging tight to the skip's tail and sending pulses of energy waves at it, then quickly launched a proton torpedo down the throat of the overloaded dovin basal. The coralskipper exploded into highly energized dust particles that peppered his cockpit as he passed through the remains of the ship.

 

"Got it?" he said when he was sure there was nothing else on his tail.

 

"An ingenious technique," one pilot said. "But does the efficacy increase in direct proportion to the irregularity applied to the?"

 

"We don't have time for that, Indigo Five," said another pilot. "We can discuss those kinds of details later."

 

Jag breathed a sigh of relief as he sent a wave of laser-fire arcing into the side of the blastboat. His wingmates did the same, dodging plasma bolts sent in return.

 

Around Borosk, triumphant battle reports from Fleet Group Relentless were more than overshadowed by the terrible losses endured by Protector and Stalwart. For every battle group that came close to the yammosk-bearing vessel identified by the Galactic Alliance, five more failed and were destroyed. It was a grueling, frustrating situation to watch, and Pellaeon couldn't help but wonder why this was the case. Was it because of an inherent mistrust of the Jedi who had brought these techniques to them, or simply an inability to follow new tactics quickly?

 

He continued to listen in from his bacta tank on the ongoing battle.

 

"Blue Three, keep up that covering fire. I'm going in!" "Red Seven, watch your tail."

 

"I have a strong lead in sector fourteen, White Leader."

 

"On your right and above, Green Tenon your right!"

 

"I'm hit! Stabilizers failing! Going to" Then silence, as another life fell to the aliens' plasma fire.

 

Listening to the babble on the open channel was doing little to ease Pellaeon's mind, but he maintained his vigil because it gave him a taste of the battle as a whole. He couldn't direct each component within it, but there was some value in viewing it from above. Were the frontline troops panicked, excited, reluctant, enraged? Such things could make an enormous difference in the outcome of a conflict, and a good commander was wise never to ignore it.

 

Overall, his gut feeling was that they were losing ground. The retreat back to Borosk's mine rings had been tactical at first, allowing him to concentrate Imperial forces around the planet and resist the enemy on more fronts simultaneously. He had seen secondhand what had happened on Coruscant when the Yuuzhan Vong had attacked there, and while Borosk wasn't facing as great a force, it also wasn't as well defended. He'd hoped he could hold the planet long enough for the Yuuzhan Vong to lose patience or for their resources to run low. But the navy was losing more than it was gaining. The persistence of the Yuuzhan Vong was quickly taking its toll on the morale of his soldiers, and that directly impacted upon their battle performance. He knew that if this wasn't turned around soon, it could cost them everything.

 

"Maintain shielding trios as ordered!" one pilot barked.

 

"Who are we kidding?" another returned. "This is never going to work, and you know it."

 

"Can it, Gray Four. We've got better things to do than listen to your whining."

 

A shrill whistle cut across the open channel, requesting his attention on the private line. Pellaeon turned away from the battle and took the call.

 

"What is it?" he asked wearily.

 

The voice of Captain Yage replaced the ambience of battle. She had become his de facto aide-de-camp during the fight for Borosk, deflecting unwanted inquiries and making sure only important ones got through.

 

"I have a report from Lieu tenant Arber, sir," she reported crisply. "The GAM has been installed in Defiant and is ready for a test run."

 

"Excellent." Pellaeon felt a grim satisfaction rise in him. Imperial ships didn't carry gravitic amplitude modulators as standard issue; indeed, such devices were rare and expensive. This one had been brought in from a neighboring system as a matter of urgency and reprogrammed by Imperial engineers according to the Galactic Alliance specifications. If all went well, and it jammed the Yuu-zhan Vong war coordinator as Skywalker promised, it could prove to be the turning point in the battle.

 

"Instruct Lieutenant Arber to forgo the test run and proceed directly to a combat run," he ordered. "And inform Captain Essenton that she is to give Arber her full cooperation. She's a cranky old thing, but when she sees what the GAM can do, I'm sure she'll come around."

 

Yage didn't question Pellaeon's opinion, although she knew as well as he did that no Imperial had actually seen a yammosk jammer in operation. Everything rested on the word of Skywalker and his Galactic Alliance. If they were wrong, the edge he needed to win the battle, if not the war, might not even eventuate.

 

He watched the Star Destroyer Defiant turn about and break from the defensive orbits the other capital vessels were maintaining below the ion mines. A swarm of TIE fighters and blastboats accompanied it, fending off coral-skipper attacks and cutting a path through to the cluster of Yuuzhan Vong capital vessels that had been identified as containing a yammosk. The enemy was taking great pains to ensure that this one was at all times defended against previous attempts to knock it out by Fleet Group Stalwart.

 

As before, the Yuuzhan Vong clustered around the yammosk ship like insects protecting their queen, swarming en masse to deflect the attack and stinging the assailants wherever possible. Defiant was hammered by streams of plasma bright enough to make the blazing of its ion engines look dim. Its shields were snatched at by dovin basals and attacked from every angle. It retaliated with fire from its turbolaser cannons, stuttering at the new frequencies as it removed entire flying groups of coralskippers out of the sky. The space around it became thick with debris, swirling nebulae of burning gas and fiery remnants flashing with discharging energy. Pellaeon admired Captain Essenton's skill and determination as she flew the Star Destroyer onward, into the enemy's ranks. Defiant was like a giant, poisoned dart plunging deep into the heart of the enemy.

 

As soon as it was in range, Lieutenant Arber activated the yammosk jammer. Pellaeon knew roughly how it worked, even if the precise details were beyond him. The machine broadcast coded gravitic pulses designed to interfere with similar pulses used by the yammosk to communicate with the vessels under its command. Knocking out the yammosk had the effect of removing the mind behind the coralskipper attacks; jamming their signals was supposed to confuse them. Pellaeon thought again of the swarming-insects analogy, imagining the effect to be something like blowing smoke onto a hive to make the insects' movements sluggish.

 

The effects were obvious and instantaneous. What had been a deadly dance suddenly became clumsy and uncoordinated. The myriad coralskippers, lacking central direction, were forced to rely on their own judgmentand Pellaeon knew well how poor that could be for a single fighter caught in the middle of a large battle. Without access to central command, the battle devolved into hundreds of tiny skirmishes.

 

There were still flashes of order in places as the yam-mosk fought the jamming signals and briefly regained control of some of the battle groups under its influence. But through it all, the pointed hull of Defiant continued to stab, firing torpedoes and concussion missiles relentlessly, committing every spare fighter to a concentrated attack on the group of capital vessels protecting the central yammosk. The yammosk fought back as best it could. Even confused coralskippers found it hard to miss a target as large as a Star Destroyer. Laser banks were kept busy by a stream of suicide runs focused on the bridge tower; blastboats formed a primary defense around the besieged ship, forcing the attacks to concentrate on certain approach runs and picking off the skips as they came. The Yuuzhan Vong forces weren't directed enough to target the blastboats in response, so the tactic cut huge swaths through the coralskipper forces that were supposed to be defending the yammosk.

 

TIE fighters descended on the target ships, raining down energy upon them that no amount of dovin basals could absorb. At that point, the yammosk knew it was going to lose and began expending the nearby capital ships in fruitless attempts to divert the attack. But realizing that putting the yammosk out of action was in fact the way to ultimate victory, the Imperial forces remained focused, refusing to be distracted from their goal by any new tactics. Attack run after attack run peppered the core vessel until it began to list around the center of its mass, venting atmosphere and bodies from numerous holes in its hull. But still the yammosk fought, and the self-destruction of two of its sister vessels blew enough energy and matter across the battlefield to momentarily stall the Imperial attack. The shock wave swept space clean on all fronts, knocking TIE fighters out of control and overloading the targeting sensors of Defiant's turbo-laser banks. Coralskippers tumbled and flickered like hot ash over a bonfire.

 

One TIE fighter pilot who was quicker to recover than most managed to score a direct hit on the yammosk's life-support tank, assigning the many-tentacled creature to the vacuum in a writhing ribbon of ice crystals. The Defiant turned about, taking out the remaining capital ships as it went and decimating the enemy remaining in the area.

 

Pellaeon couldn't help but be pleased with the outcome. It had been a bold and ultimately effective move, and it sent a clear message to the commander of the Yuuzhan Vong fleet we can hurt you!

 

But the battle was far from over, and while the Defiant had been busy, a hole had been punched through the minefields that Right to Rule was only just beginning to clean up. The demand on planetary turbolasers and shields was increasing as more and more coralskipper attackers were approaching the ground. If there was another yammosk somewhere in the Yuuzhan Vong fleet, it would soon take over command of the attack.

 

Time. That's what it all came down to. Pellaeon didn't know how long the Yuuzhan Vong's Commander Vorrik could commit himself to smashing the Imperial Navy, but if his mission had been a simple strike to break the Empire's spirit, then he had gotten himself a much more protracted conflict than he had bargained for.

 

Captain Essenton of the Defiant reported that they had located a second yammosk. She requested permission to target it, and Pellaeon gave it to her. Keeping the pressure on was the most important thing right now, even if it meant opening up the planetary defense to attack. And the more they destroyed, the better their chances were of success. He could feel that the battle was nearing a turning point of some kind. He just hoped it would be in their favor.

 

Almost in response to his thoughts, Luke Skywalker's voice suddenly came over the receiver. "Admiral, I thought you might like to know that Bonecrusher is on its way back."

 

"And the mission?" he asked the Jedi Master hopefully.

 

"A success, I'm assuming," came the reply. "I spoke only briefly to Mara before they made the jump to hyper-space, but she seemed satisfied."

 

Skywalker, probably sensing the mood of the Imperial forces, had fallen back from the front line and docked his X-wing with Widowmaker. Watching from the bridge, he had had nothing but a calming effect on Yage's crew.

 

Pellaeon smiled. "In that case I imagine we'll soon be hearing from our Yuuzhan Vong friends."

 

"It would be a mistake to become overconfident right now, Admiral," Skywalker cautioned. "The Yuuzhan Vong aren't inclined to retreat, even when the odds are against them."

 

"They're not stupid, either," Pellaeon said. "If what you say is true, Shimrra simply can't afford to commit to a long campaign here, and Vorrik will know that. Disobeying orders may hurt him more in the long run than running away from a battle."

 

The Jedi Master didn't say anything to that, but the silence itself was revealing.

 

"I know what you're thinking," Pellaeon said softly. "Jacen told Moff Flennic that the Empire is nothing compared to the Galactic Alliance; that we're just a distraction. He was right, and that means I am right, too. Shimrra wants to intimidate us, not destroy us, and from Vorrik's point of view he has already achieved that objective. He's flattened Bastion; he's forced us to retreat to Borosk; and he'll probably take a swipe at the shipyards on the way out. He can make a good case that he's done his job."

 

Another whistle cut across the channel. "Broadcast from the enemy, sir," Captain Yage said.

 

"Put it over an open comm," Pellaeon said. "I want everyone to hear this."

 

"I will but delay the inevitable," Vorrik was saying, spitting out the words with even more than his usual bile. "There will be no mercy. None of you will be spared. Your homes will be razed and your remains will be used as fertilizer for our crops! Your worlds will be absorbed into the glorious Yuuzhan Vong empire as it engulfs the galaxy whole. You will"

 

"Maybe I'm missing something, Vorrik," Pellaeon interrupted. "But I'm not seeing any evidence of this great plan of yours. We're destroying your yammosks; we've killed your spies; we're taking back those you thought were captives. You don't have the muscle to take this planet, let alone the others. Your threats are as empty as your boasts are shallow." "You will eat those words when" "Empty," P ellaeon repeated over the commander's renewed tirade.

 

"we turn your abominations into slag and"

 

"Empty!"

 

"grind every trace of you into the dust from which you were born!"

 

"Empty, Vorrik!" Pellaeon bellowed. The Yuuzhan Vong commander emitted a sound like that of a womp rat being strangled, but he didn't give him the chance to speak. "It's time for you to make good on your promises, Commander either destroy us or get out!"

 

"By the gods of my people, infidel, I promise that you will choke on those words!"

 

"Maybe one day, Vorrik," Pellaeon said, "but not today. You really should have thought twice about this gambit of yoursespecially if you didn't have the resources to pull it off in the first place." In the heartbeat between words he lost all hint of mockery and adopted a cold and serious tone. "We have no intentions of surrenderingnot now, not ever. You may win the occasional battle against us, Vorrik, but the Empire will always strike back. That / promise you."

 

Vorrik began another howl of abuse that Pellaeon ignored. "You tell Shimrra from me that if he wants to get the job done, then he's going to have to send a much bigger fleetand a more competent commander to oversee it."

 

He killed the line before Vorrik had the opportunity to say anything further, then relaxed into the soothing embrace of the bacta tank's fluids. He was happy with his handling of the Yuuzhan Vong commander, even if provoking Vorrik was a calculated risk. But his words had been as much for those in his own navy as for Vorrik. If the Yuuzhan Vong commander did decide to defy his orders and stay, Pellaeon wanted to make sure he had the entire navy behind him.

 

Thankfully, though, within moments of breaking contact, half of Vorrik's ships had begun to withdraw. The other half lay down a pattern of fire designed to deter the Imperial forces from taking advantage of the retreat. Pel-laeon's commanders knew better than to jump right in, but they did make use of the opportunity to take the battle to the other side. Planetary turbolasers poured energy at the fleeing enemy, while the Defiant sent waves of confounding gravitational fluctuations into the mess of retreating ships. Squadron leaders, too, took advantage of every break in the rearguard action to sneak through and attack from behind.

 

Then the capital ships were entering hyperspace and the Yuuzhan Vong fleet was committed to withdrawal. The many views available through Pellaeon's breath mask showed Yuuzhan Vong vessels pouring out of the system in battle groups of various sizes. Some were as small as a cruiser analog with coralskippers firmly attached; others consisted of several capital ships flying in synchrony, coordinated by the yammosk still hiding in their midst.

 

Pellaeon watched them go with a feeling of relief that he knew he shouldn't indulge. He was no navigator, but he'd had plenty of experience at estimating the courses of ships entering hyperspace. Even without seeing the data, he could tell that the retreating fleet was heading to more than one destination.

 

"Where are they going?" he asked Yage.

 

"Initial vectors suggest that two-thirds of the fleet is heading out of Imperial territory."

 

"And the remaining third?"

 

"Are heading in the opposite direction," Yage said. "We can't obtain a precise fix, but we think they might be heading for"

 

"Yaga Minor," he finished for her.

 

"It would appear so, sir," Yage said. "He probably thinks he can get away with it while our forces are committed to mopping up here."

 

Pellaeon considered this for a moment before saying, "Have Stalwart press the attack. I'd like to keep their evacuation as undignified as possible. And I want Relentless and Protector on their way to Yaga Minor immediately. Defiant and Peerless, too. Flennic is going to need all the help he can get to keep those shipyards safe."

 

"What about Right to Rule, sir?"

 

Responsible in part for guarding Widowmaker and other tactical Imperial vessels, the ageing Star Destroyer had seen little battle from its position in the inner orbits of Borosk.

 

"It stays," Pellaeon said. "I have other plans for the old boat."

 

"Yes, sir."

 

When Yage had gone, Pellaeon opened a private channel with Luke Skywalker. "Well, Jedi," he said, "we did it."

 

"You did it," Skywalker came back. "I didn't do much more than watch, Admiral."

 

"Which was precisely what was needed," the Grand Admiral countered. He had no intention of allowing the Jedi Master to underrate his own part in this victory. "While we may never take orders from you, Skywalker, I think you have proven today that sometimes it works to our advantage to accept your help."

 

"The line between the two seems very fine, Admiral," Luke said.

 

Pellaeon smiled at the world-weary tone in the Jedi Master's voice. He was no stranger, either, to having to reconcile conflicting elements within his own people. Sometimes it took much more than a common enemy to bring old foes togetherand although he had just

 

won his first battle against the Yuuzhan Vong, he knew that the war was still waiting. The hardest part was yet to come.

 

"Indeed it does," he said somberly as he scanned overviews of the Yuuzhan Vong pullback. "Indeed it does."

 

Another squawk signaled a new entrant to the private channel. Pellaeon accepted it and heard the voice of Sky-walker's nephew.

 

"This is Braxant Bonecrusher," Jacen Solo said from the makeshift bridge of the Dreadnaught. "We have a hold full of people requiring urgent medical attention. Please advise."

 

"Bonecrusher, this is Widowmaker," he heard Yage respond. "You are instructed to dock with medical supply platform Hale Return. Details to follow."

 

As the battle computers on the two vessels exchanged data, Pellaeon studied the Dreadnaught via long-range scanner. Battered by two successive rounds of enemy fire, its hull was literally smoking in places from where it had been punctured. He knew that part of the plan had been for the ship to give this appearance, but he could tell by the way it moved that some of the damage it had sustained was very real indeed.

 

"You took some hits," he said.

 

"No more than expected," said the young Jedi, playing down the severity of their condition. "The trick worked perfectly."

 

"Well done, Jacen," Luke said. "You did wellall of you."

 

There was a slight pause as Jacen examined the course data he had received and confirmed the battle droids' trajectory through the milling Imperial Navy.

 

"What happened to the war?" he asked, sounding both surprised and relieved.

 

"It went away," Pellaeon said sardonically.

 

"But not far," Luke added. "And not for long, either."

 

"Don't worry," Pellaeon continued. "We'll be ready for it when it comes back. The Yuuzhan Vong will rue the day they dragged me into this."

 

"Don't let your confidence over this one victory cloud your judgment, Admiral," Luke said. "The Yuuzhan Vong will not take this defeat lightly. This is just the beginning, I assure you."

 

Pellaeon didn't need to be cautioned, "I think you're right, my friend," he said, nodding in the bacta tank, "The beginning of their end."

 

The word quickly spread through the Fian squadrons, and despite their inexperience and a number of losses, the Y-wings were managing to score the occasional strike against the Yuuzhan Vong attackers. On one occasion, Jag barely had time to notice the skip on his tail before it was knocked out of the sky by a wave of fire from his port side.

 

"Nice shooting, Seven," he said in thanks, banking to warn off another skip that was trying to get on the Y-wing's own tail.

 

A barrage of weapons fire announced the arrival of Pride of Selonia, following on from a devastating pass over the nearest of the two empty slaveships that were making their way down to the planet to begin the harvesting of the Fian population. The bladder-shaped alien vessel had split along its back and burst like an overripe fruit, causing an ugly spillage of reddish fluid. Jag watched as thousands of tiny, flapping shapesYuuzhan Vong gnullithsescaped from the massive rent in the slaveship, wriggling and dying in the vacuum like flash-frozen birds. Jaina and her Cerise Squadron friends sent a swarm of torpedoes arcing into the breach, then hurriedly retreated as the multiple explosions tore it to pieces.

 

"One down," she said triumphantly. It was good to hear the assertive tone return to her voice. "How're you doing, Jag?"

 

Jag returned his attention to the blastboat. It had turned about as though to withdraw, but he wasn't fooled. The Yuuzhan Vong weren't emotionally capable of accepting loss so gracefully. They were up to something, he was sure.

 

"It's got to be a ruse," he warned his wingmates. "Get too close and it'll"

 

The warning came too late, though, as three Y-wings came in tight to strafe the underside of the listless vessel. All of a sudden the blastboat's dovin basals unleashed their combined energy. The flash that followed was so bright it seemed to turn the blastboat transparent before blasting it into atoms. The resulting shock wave took out the three Y-wings and seriously rattled a further five nearby.

 

Jag sighed once the shock wave had fully dissipated. "Sorry, Indigo," he said. "I should have warned you sooner."

 

"Not your fault, Twin Leader," Indigo Five reassured him after a slight pause. "We are sorely uneducated in the art of fighting Yuuzhan Vong. We have only ourselves to blame."

 

A reduced Indigo Squadron swung in to help Jaina finish off the remaining slaveship, while the combined Twin Suns and Reseda Squadrons quickly disposed of the remaining skips. In no time at all, the battle was over, and Jag allowed his grip on the ship's controls to finally relax.

 

When his heart rate had slowed and he was sure there were no more coralskippers about, Jag contacted the leader of the Galantos Y-wings.

 

"So tell me, Captain Syrtik," he said, "what happens when you go back? Will you be court-martialed for this?"

 

"That depe nds," the stoic Fia said. "Our charter is to protect Galantos from attack, but we are under the direct command of the councilor and his primates. If they charge us with defying a direct order"

 

"But is that what you did?" Jaina broke in. "Did they really tell you not to help us?"

 

Jag noted the dangerous edge to Jaina's voice and said nothing. Emotions often ran high in the wake of a battle.

 

"It depends on how you define order," Syrtik said.

 

"I can't believe those space slugs," Jaina went on. "Here we are trying to save their skins and they have the nerve to" The unfinished sentence resolved in a heavy sigh. "No, it can wait. But when Mom hears about this, there's going to be trouble."

 

"I think there's going to be trouble anyway," Jag said. "After all, they did try to keep her prisoner on Galantosand they may have even intended to trade her for amnesty when the slaveships arrived."

 

There was nothing but silence down the line. Then on the scopes, Jag saw Jaina's battered X-wing empty its remaining torpedoes into the side of the single ruined slave-ship, spraying its contents against the starry backdrop.

 

"Are you all right?" he sent to her along a private channel.

 

"No, I'm not all right," she snapped back. "I mean, why do we bother, Jag? What's the point of trying to defend these people when they insist on stabbing us in the back? It just doesn't make any sense!"

 

"I'm sure Miza would ask the same question, Jaina."

 

She was silent for a moment as the name of the dead Chiss pilot sunk in. "I'm acting like a child, aren't I?"

 

 

"Actually, you're acting like Jaina Soloand that's nothing to be ashamed of, I assure you."

 

She laughed softly. "Thanks, Jag."

 

"Anytime." He glanced at his scopes. The Y-wing squadrons were already heading back to Galantos, their numbers reduced by roughly a quarter. Selonia was launching probe droids to investigate the wreckage of the slave-ships while the remainder of Twin Suns Squadron was slipping one by one into its docking bays.

 

"We have a lot to catch up on," he said. "Maybe we should dock and debrief in person."

 

She laughed again, and this time it seemed to come more naturally. "Why, that must be one of the most romantic things anyone has said to me in years."

 

He smiled, glad to hear her sounding more like her old self. "Then it's a date?"

 

"Sure," she said as her X-wing swung around to match course with his. "Why not?"

 

On the far side of the planet, well away from the action, the Millennium Falcon was slipping into the same orbit as the small yacht that had followed them up from the surface. Tahiri watched on silently from behind Anakin's parents, uncomfortable with the obvious tension in the cockpit. Han was still rankling over being outvoted after Tahiri had suggested they should try to find the yacht so they could learn more about the mystery man who had saved them. Han had wanted to go and join the battle with the others, and while Leia had said she would have liked to have done this also, she ultimately had sided with Tahiri.

 

"We're a diplomatic mission," she had argued in the face of Han's tight-lipped resistance. "And if diplomacy means retreating from a fightor cowering around the

 

back side of a planet, as you so eloquently put itthen that's what we have to do."

 

"But they need our help," Han had protested. It was obvious he didn't have much of an argument. He just preferred the fighting to the diplomacy.

 

"Twin Suns Squadron and Captain Mayn are more than capable of dealing with a small contingent of Yuuzhan Vong," Leia said. Then, more softly and with a reassuring hand on her husband's shoulder, she added, "Besides, in a war, diplomacy can be just as important as aggression. You'd be surprised at just how many deals are done under circumstances like this."

 

"I thought it was this very kind of thing that made you want to get out of politics," he said, glowering at the controls as he brought the Falcon around.

 

Leia sighed, tired of trying to make him see reason. "Only one of the reasons, Han," she returned.

 

Before he could respond, she had turned her attention back to the scanners. Tahiri knew that the argument was over. Leia was a strong-willed individual, and she wasn't the kind to waste time bickering with her husband over something that, as far as she was concerned, had been resolved.

 

Noticing the growing tension in the cockpit, C-3PO had taken it upon himself at that moment to leave, dismissing himself with the flimsy excuse that his activators needed calibrating. Tahiri suspected, though, that this was a standard excuse the golden droid used whenever things got too uncomfortable between his human owners. Tahiri wished she had a similar excuse. If she hadn't been needed, she might have slipped off as well. Her senses were swimming disturbingly after the elation on the landing field and their escape. She felt light-headed, peculiar. ..

 

Keep it together, she told herself, doing her best to concentrate on real things, not illusions.

 

Traffic over the planet was light, so finding the yacht wasn't going to prove too difficult. Ion trails led from a hundred or so launches to upper orbit. It was relatively easy to rule out the fighters and the large freighters. Only a handful remained in tight and low, waiting for rendezvous. Tahiri knew instinctively, through the Force, that the being who had rescued them would be waiting for them, as he'd said he would be. Although she didn't know what he had to say, his mention of the Peace Brigade had convinced her that he knew what he was talking about and that they should hear him out. The silver totem she had found in the diplomatic quarters was missing from her pocket, but it was proof that the Yuuzhan Vong had obviously been involved for a while. The arrival of the slaveships wasn't just a coincidence, she was sure.

 

The tact that she had responded so strongly to the totem still disturbed her. Its presenceor the past presence of its owner, at leasttroubled her, nagging as it did at the back of her mind. It surprised her, too. She hadn't realized that she was so sensitive to echoes of the Yuuzhan Vong. Instead of fading away, as she had fervently hoped it would, the nagging was only getting stronger.

 

No, she told herself firmly, shaking her head and focusing on the task at hand. Reaching out with the Force, she sought any sign of the person she had recognized on the Al'solib'minet'ri City landing field. Then . . .

 

"There," she said, pointing. The small Corellian craft was hugging the upper atmosphere below. Shell-like in shape, with several small blister ports sprouting thrusters and rudimentary shield generators but no apparent armaments, its engines were silent. "That's it."

 

"Are you sure?" Han asked. He still sounded moody.

 

She nodded, feeling with the Force again. "As sure as I can be."

 

"Millennium Falcon," crackled a voice out of the sub-space communicator. It was the same voice Tahiri had heard back on the landing field. "Hailing Millennium Falcon."

 

"Yeah, we hear you," Han said. "Mind telling us who you are?"

 

"A friend," came the reply.

 

"Let us be the ones to decide that."

 

"Do we know you?" Leia asked.

 

"We have never met, but you know my kind," the being said. That he wasn't human was becoming increasingly clear to Tahiri, although she couldn't quite pin down his species. There was a faint singsong quality to the voice that she'd heard before, although she couldn't for the life of her remember where.

 

"What kind is that?" Han asked.

 

"I apologize for the reception you received on Galantos," the voice pressed on, ignoring the question. "There was nothing I could do to prevent it. I would have warned you when you arrived, had I known in advance you were coming, but by the time I found a way into the

 

diplomatic rooms you were already imprisoned. I had to wait for an opportunity to help you more overtly and a time when it no longer mattered if my cover was blown."

 

"You're a spy?" Leia asked.

 

"Not exactly," said the mystery voice. "But I can help you."

 

"We're already in your debt," Tahiri said.

 

"Any debt you may have had with me, Tahiri Veila, was cleared when you helped me escape," he said. "And we hold the Solos in high regard for the many times they've helped us in the past. So no, there is no debt. I am simply glad to have met youand to have made a difference."

 

"What can you tell us about Galantos?" Leia asked. "Jaina says that the Yevetha are destroyed. Is that correct?"

 

"Fian probes to N'zoth confirmed that the Yevethan shipyards have been destroyed, but they didn't stick around to look any deeper. The Fia are deeply afraid of their neighbors; what happened here twelve years ago traumatized their culture. The Yevetha may have been routed almost to the last ship by the New Republic, but they were still there, in the cluster, and the Fia always knew that one day they would emerge to try again. Last time the Fia survived, thanks to the help of the New Republic; this time, however, the New Republic might not be able to defend them."

 

"And the fear of the Yevetha returning would only have grown as the Yuuzhan Vong crisis deepened," Leia put in.

 

"Exactly. The Fia aren't by nature a warlike species, and they knew their feeble attempts to arm themselves would never be sufficient. If the New Republic lost, who would protect Galantos from the Koornacht Cluster? So when a group approached them a year ago, promising to end the Yevethan threat, you can imagine how very tempting an offer it was."

 

"This is where the Peace Brigade comes in, right?" Tahiri asked, fighting the disorientation in her mind to concentrate on the conversation. "Resources in exchange for safety."

 

"That's right. The Peace Brigade took minerals they needed for exchange with other parties, and N'zoth was destroyedtaken by surprise, thanks to the tactical information the Fia gave the Brigaders, who in turn passed it on to the Vong commanders. That way, the Fia hoped to ensure th eir own safety by dealing with the Peace Brigade. After all, they feared the Yevetha much more than they feared the Yuuzhan Vong, who have yet to make significant impact on this side of the galaxy. That seemed to be it. Galantos was safe at last."

 

"All without our knowledge," Leia said.

 

"Courtesy of the communications blackout."

 

"Was that also part of the deal with the Peace Brigade? Galantos cutting itself off from the New Republic?"

 

"Yes."

 

"But why?" Tahiri asked.

 

"For fear of reprisals," the stranger replied.

 

"From the Peace Brigade?"

 

"From the New Republic. You don't take kindly to those who consort with the enemy."

 

"With good reason," Han said. "I can't believe we spent so much energy trying to save a bunch of mass murderers from a fate they probably deserve. If we hadn't come along when we did, the Fia would be crated up in one of those slaveships right now and headed for one of the occupied worlds. We should have left them to it."

 

"You don't mean that, Han," Leia said.

 

"Don't tell me you're going to forgive them for what they did." Han looked as though he couldn't believe what he was hearing. "The Yevetha don't know how to lose. They're as bad as the Vong in that respector were, anyway. They would've fought to the last, and the Fia knew it. That makes them as guilty of genocide as the Yuuzhan Vong."

 

"The Fia were manipulated into it," Leia said. "The Yevetha would have quite happily destroyed the Fia and all of us, too, for that matterbut I never once heard you advocate their slaughter. The Fia are as much victims in this as anyone else."

 

"They sure would've been," Han said bitterly, "if we hadn't come by when we did."

 

"People do stupid things, Han." Leia's lips were thin and white, as though she was keeping her own anger in check. "I'm not saying that I approve of the Fia and their actions, or that I'm not angry at how they treated us. It's just that I can understand them, their fear of losing everything. The Yuuzhan Vong wanted slaves and information on potential threats. The Fia gave them both by pointing out the Yevetha. They also set themselves up as a slave target by getting

 

complacent and cutting themselves off from their allies. But that doesn't make them our enemy. No one deserves to be enslaved, no matter what they've done. We're here to reopen communications and save lives, not here to cast judgment over who deserves to live or die."

 

Han reluctantly acknowledged the point with a grunt.

 

"Then we showed up," Tahiri said, made uncomfortable by the argument. She felt oddly threatened when Anakin's parents nagged at each other. "Tipped off by you, I presume. A message found its way into the Falcon's computers, telling us where to go."

 

"Yes," said the voice on the other end of the line. "I had been trying to get word out of the system for some time, but there was no way to tell if I had succeeded. Obviously, I had, and it was acted on at your end. When you arrived, Councilor Jobath panicked and sent an underling to spare him the difficulty of meeting you face to face. Primate Persha also panicked and in turn lumbered you with an assistant. I'm sure Thrum would have liked to find someone else to palm you off onto, as well, but he was the bottom of the ladder, and he handled the situation accordingly. Because you were able to explore the city and seek vital clues, you were soon on the way to guessing the truth."

 

"It also gave you the opportunity to get closer to us," Leia said.

 

"That's right," he said. "At first I was able only to leave a note in your escort's flight computer, but I had limited time and I could not explain myself properly. Then when the Yuuzhan Vong arrived, security was tightened even more. The Fia thought the slaveship was just a freighter come to take more resources."

 

"Except they were the resources," Han said with a shake of his head.

 

"Yes."

 

"I have to admit," Leia said, "it's a clever plan. The Yuuzhan Vong are stretched too thin to take this region by force. Instead, they rely upon factions within to do half their work for them. It's efficient and deadlyand I don't dare assume that this is the only place they've tried this tactic."

 

"That would be an incorrect assumption, Princess." The voice over the comm was grimly serious. "There are numerous communications blackouts in place in this quarter of the galaxy. Your intelligence networks are aware of many of thesehence your mission. What is difficult to tell is which ones are innocent, and which ones are the work of the Peace Brigade and the Yuuzhan Vong. In some places, the answer is known after the fact, when it's too late. Rutan and its moon Senali, for instance, were politically divided by the Peace Brigade well over a year ago. A few months afterward, the Senali were wiped out by a Yuuzhan Vong force that subsequently turned its guns on the Rutanians and enslaved half the population."

 

"Rutan was on our list," Leia said to Han.

 

"Is Belderone?" the pilot asked.

 

"Yes, actually, it is," she answered.

 

"Well, thanks to the Yuuzhan Vong, the Firrerreos are now a dead species," he said. "And the Belderonians won't be far behind."

 

"How could you possibly know all this?" Han asked. "If communications have been down in these places not to mention hereI don't see how you could have the faintest idea of what's going on."

 

"Don't you?" There was a distinct smile in the stranger's voice.

 

"You knew what our mission was without us telling you, "Tahiri said.

 

"And you were able to infiltrate the Falcon's computers on Mon Calamari," Leia added. "Who are you people?"

 

"If I tell you, you won't believe me. Not yet, anyway."

 

"Try us," Han said, his voice pitched low to indicate that refusal wasn't an option.

 

The pilot of the yacht chuckled. "Suffice it to say that I'm part of a network. We're not spies, but we do keep an eye on what goes on around us. We have a knack for getting into the places we need to be, and we tend not to be noticed. We don't work for anyone except ourselves, and we don't sell the information we collect; we don't, therefore, pose a threat to anyone except those who try to harm us. We simply gather knowledge."

 

"But what are you in it for?" Han asked. "What do you stand to gain from it all, if you don't sell the information?"

 

"I'd be lying if I said that we stood to gain nothing but the satisfaction of helping others." Again, the hint of a smile. "The truth is, we do it to look out for ourselves. We aren't highly trained soldiers or professional warriors. We're not spies, as I've already said. We are, in fact, the sort who get caught between opposing armies, and are squashed as a result. That's partly how we can do the things that spies and soldiers can't dolike get information into and out of regions like this one, where all but the least likely are closely inspected. Neither you nor the Yuuzhan Vong notices us. We are invisible and everywhere. Not much gets by us that we want to hear."

 

"So why are you helping MS?" Han asked.

 

"Because, at the moment, peace in the galaxy revolves around the health of your new Galactic Alliance. And because we're in a position now to actively help you. It's taken us some time to reach this point, but now that we have, you can feel free to assume that we are on your side."

 

"For the moment," Han added.

 

"Yes, Captain Solo for the moment. And as of this moment, I must make my way out of this system and file a report while you must choose your next destination."

 

"Wait," Leia said. "Before you go, I don't suppose you'd be able to help us with that decision? .. ."

 

Han shot Leia a sharp look. He hadn't been happy about having the first leg of their journey determined by an anonymous note, and he obviously wasn't enamored with the idea of taking further instructions from cryptic strangers.

 

"You and your people helped us once before," Leia went on, ignoring her husband. "You've exposed an enemy tactic we hadn't identified before. If you have any more advice for us, we'd be glad to hear it."

 

"Very well," said the pilot of the yacht. "Where were you thinking of going?"

 

"We hadn't discussed it," Leia said. "I was considering Belsavis. There have been communications problems there in recent months, and it has a history of conflict that the Yuuzhan Vong could take advantage of."

 

"The Senex and Juvex sectors would be prime targets, it's true, but it may already be too late there. There might be little else for you to do but clean up the mess. More good could be done by going somewhere in the early stages of corruption. That way, at least, you may be able to prevent the situation from developing into anything too serious."

 

"That's if you're right," Han said. "But how do we know you aren't just sending us on some wild gundark hunt? I mean, you could be a member of the Peace Brigade yourself you're a covert infiltrator; you're part of a galactic conspiracy. This could all just be some sort of elaborate scheme to put us off the scent. The next place you send us could be"

 

"A thousand times worse than here," the pilot finished for him. "Yes, Captain Solo, it could be. And in fact it probably will be, for the place I'm suggesting you travel to is Bakura."

 

"Bakura?" Han echoed. "Are you telling me?"

 

"I'm not telling you anything," the pilot cut in again. "In truth, I know little. The information we have gathered there is scant, and many of my normal channels of information have been cut, along with the routes your spies would normally use. This makes us concerned. If the Ssi-ruuvi Imperium is active again, using this time of distraction to make a move on the life forces of the galaxy as it did once before, then it could be serious. They've had a long time to amass a new battle droid army, and to perfect their entechment technology."

 

There was a moment's silence as those in the Falcon's crew contemplated the stranger's words. Tahiri was too young to remember the trouble with the Ssi-ruuk, but she'd certainly b een taught about it. As xenophobic as the Yevetha, having evolved under similar circumstances in the heart of an isolated star cluster, the reptilian aliens had only just been driven back by the New Republic with the unexpected assistance of the Chiss. Their techniques of mind control and entechment rivaled those of the Yuu-zhan Vong in terms of horror and agony. The peaceful world of Bakura stood between the rest of the galaxy and the Ssi-ruuvi Imperium and had fallen afoul of the aliens once before.

 

Tahiri didn't know if the Yuuzhan Vong could surprise the Ssi-ruuk in sufficient force to wipe them out, as they had the Yevetha. The Ssi-ruuk had indeed had longer to recover, and had been stronger to start with. If the Ssi-ruuk were able to use entechment to fuel their ships with Yuuzhan Vong life forceor if the Yuuzhan Vong found a way to exploit the same technology . . .

 

She shuddered. The question of whether the Yuuzhan Vong had a connection to the Force was still open, and she doubted that they would use any sort of machine in their quest for domination, but the idea of any sort of marriage between the two hate-filled species filled her with a terrible dread.

 

Keep it together, she reminded herself. Don't lose it now.

 

"Thank you," Leia said eventually. She had gone slightly pale. "We're grateful for your assistance."

 

"Yeah," Han added, his defensive skepticism firmly in place. "We'll take it under advisement."

 

"Will there be someone there like you?" Tahiri asked.

 

"Someone will contact you," came the reply.

 

"Who?"

 

"Someone. Like I said, we are everywhere."

 

Indices on the local space scopes began to flash; the yacht was warming up its ion drives, preparing to leave.

 

"Will you at least give us your name?" Tahiri asked.

 

"Be patient, young Jedi," the stranger said. "We will sing your song one day soon."

 

Before Tahiri could ask what he meant, the line went dead, and the yacht was heading out of the planet's gravity well.

 

Tahiri registered Han's snort of annoyance, but it was almost buried under a realization prompted by the stranger's farewell combined with the sound of his voice and the smell she had noted on the landing field. We will sing your song...

 

"He's a Ryn!" she exclaimed.

 

"A Ryn?" Han echoed incredulously. "He can't be."

 

"He is. I swear it."

 

"But what's one of them doing in the spy game? They'd stick out like sore thumbs!"

 

"I guess," said Leia, watching the retreating yacht as it accelerated and vanished into hyperspace, "we're just going to have to find out for ourselves...."

 

 

Part Four

 

Conscription

 

 

It was amazing, Jaina, thought, just how quickly governments could jump when they wanted to. Within five hours of the destruction of the two slave-ships, not only was the link to the nearest deep space transceiver open again, allowing information to once more flow freely into Galantos from the local subspace network, but Councilor Jobath had emerged from his pressing business on the far side of the planet, professing his deep and undying loyalty to the Galactic Alliance.

 

Jaina could imagine her father's reaction to that. Her mother would have no doubt shared his sentiments, too, but hid her feelings beneath a more gracious and temperate response. Her parents worked well that way, maintaining a pretense guaranteed on the one hand to intimidate the most ingratiating of local governors, but at the same time capable of wooing them without actually using force.

 

Jaina hadn't seen the exchange, though. After docking with Pride of Selonia and having a few minor bruises treated, she had retired to one of the frigate's berths and slept solidly for almost five hours. It had been cramped and uncomfortable, but it was better than trying to sleep upright in her X-wingeven though she'd had hundreds of hours practice doing just that over the years.

 

In her deep sleep she had dreamed fitfully of Anakin's last mission to the worldship around Myrkr to destroy the voxyn queen, as well as the cold fury she had felt upon his death that had turned her, for a time, to the dark side. While her body rested, her mind relived the fear that Jacen, too, had died, and the aftertaste of that awful grief she would carry with her for the rest of her life, she was sure.

 

But even as she was dreaming, she found herself wondering Why now? Why here? What is the dream trying to tell?

 

She woke with a start, sucking air in sharply as a hand gripped her shoulder and shook.

 

"What?" She rolled over, eyes blinking open to peer up at the dark blur leaning over her.

 

"Relax, Jaina, it's just me." Through the haze of sleep she recognized Jag's solid, calming presence as he sat down on the edge of the narrow bunk beside her.

 

"Jag?" She sat up, brushing loose strands of hair back from her face. She yawned, knuckling her eyes. "You want to be careful, you know. People will talk."

 

"Let them," he said. "Besides, you do know where you are, don't you?"

 

It sank in then that she wasn't in her quarters on Mon Calamari, but instead tucked into a space in a communal bunkroom, with little more than a flimsy curtain separating her bunk from the fifteen other identical beds. She had a better chance of finding a Kowakian monkey-lizard at the helm of a starship than of getting any privacy here.

 

"Why are you waking me up?" she asked after orienting herself. "Has anything happened?"

 

"No," he said, laughing. "You requested a standard field nap, and I volunteered to do the dirty work when time came to wake you up. It was my opinion that the duty officer should be spared the grisly business." He smiled. "I don't see why he should get to have all the fun."

 

Her mouth half opened to snap a retort, but the unexpected compliment threw her for a second. Then she shook her head and smiled also. "What do you really want, Jag? If it's a rematch on the dueling mat, then you're going to have to at least give me a minute or two to wake up properly."

 

He laughed again. "Actually, I came to bring you some news," he said. "About Jacen."

 

"Jacen?" The last vestiges of sleep vanished; she sat up fully, alarm spiking at the back of her brain. Was this why those memories had surfaced? "Tell me," she grated.

 

Jag did tell her. She learned of Councilor Jobath's turnaround and the reopening of communications. Although she was relieved that the situation on Galantos had been so easily rectified, that was nothing compared to the news that had been relayed from Mon Calamari, once they had regained contact. The Yuuzhan Vong invasion of the Empire had been successfully resisted. After the destruction of Bastion, Imperial forces had successfully turned the invaders back at Borosk and were at the moment forcing them to fight a rearguard action as they retreated. Mara and Luke's mission had been instrumental in the victory, supplying tactics and pivotal aid where required. Rumor had it that they may even have saved Grand Admiral Pellaeon's life in the process.

 

And Jacen was fine. A moment's examination of the part of her that resonated with her twin would have told her that there was nothing wrong with him. No matter how far apart they wereand at that moment there was more than half a galaxy between themshe would always know if he was in trouble.

 

She nudged Jag off the bunk, and he turned his back to her as she slid out from under the covers. Jaina quickly slipped her flight uniform on over her underclothes, silently promising herself a serious shower at the earliest opportunity. "You can turn around now."

 

"Where are you planning to go?" he asked. "You're still off duty, remember? Your parents are asleep. Your fighter is being repaired."

 

She faced him, hands on hips. "Then why wake me in the first place? Couldn't that news have waited until I had woken up by myself?"

 

"Well, I just thought" He fell silent, clearly embarrassed.

 

"Maybe you really did want that rematch," she said lightly. Then she took his arm and led him out of the crew quarters. "For now, though, let's just walk, okay? Even if it's only as far as the mess. I've a feeling I'm going to be ravenous once all of me wakes up."

 

She was right; barely had they entered the cramped main access corridor running along the spine of the frigate when her stomach began to rumble and she had a terrible craving for one of the altha protein drinks Lando Calrissian had taught her to enjoy when she was younger. Pride of Selonia's cook droid had a limited repertoire, however, and she had to settle for a bowl of bland, glutinous nutrient soup and a glass of flavored water.

 

Jag, sipping from a steaming mug, filled in some of the blanks while she ate. She learned about the proposed next stop to Bakura, and the mysterious source of that information. The source was a completely unknown quantity, and it concerned her that her parents were taking such a decision on faith. Their experiences with the Ryn called Droma and his family weren't enough to ease her mind regarding the trustworthiness of the entire species. Given that the mysterious stranger wasn't Dromaand Tahiri assured them that he wasn'tthere was still a big question mark over his motivation. If it was a genuine lead, then acting on it quickly could save a great many lives. And if it was a trap, at least they wouldn't be going in blind. She couldn't really imagine the Bakurans allying themselves with the Yuuzhan Vong or the Peace Brigade, though; not given all they owed to the New Republic and the Jedi.

 

"What about Syrtik?" she asked when Jag had finished updating her. "What's happened to him?"

 

Jag's pale green eyes seemed to glint with amusement. "Would you believe he's been nominated for a military honor? Jobath has been really on the spot. Syrtik's a national hero, the people love him, but at the end of the day he did disobey orders not to get involved. Jobath has to go along with it to save face, but he certainly doesn't like it." He shrugged. "So everything turned out for the best in the end, eh?"

 

"Not for the Yevetha, it didn't," she said, distractedly scooping some of the soup onto her spoon. His expression sobered. "I know; I'm sorry. I read your report. It's brief but to the point." Jaina vividly remembered the last words of the Yevethan pilot before he blew up his ship, preferring deathnot only for himself, but for his speciesrather than be rescued by aliens and become contaminated.

 

Run from them if you like, he had said about the Yuuzhan Vong, the destroyers of his civilization, but it will do you no good. There is no safety anywhere.

 

Even though the tide had turned for the Galactic Alliance, the war had been so long and they had lost so much that she sometimes found it easy to believe that the galaxy would never know peace again. And even if it did, it was unlikely that life in it would ever be the same, no matter what the outcome.

 

"I'm sorry about Miza," she said, regretting her snap assessment of the Chiss pilot's shortcomings. What had she known about him, really? Nothing, except that he'd flown well and occasionally irritated her. She didn't know how old he was, if he had family back home, or whether he had someone special who would mourn him. She didn't even know if he and Jag had been friends, but she felt the urge to tell him she was sorry anyway, because she was sorry.

 

"It wasn't your fault, Jaina," Jag said. His hand came over the top of hers in a gesture of reassurance.

 

"Falling afoul of an ambush while simply trying to help someone," she said, shaking her head sadly. "It seems like such an inglorious way to die."

 

"I don't think there are necessarily any good ways to die, Jaina."

 

"He'll be missed, won't he?" she asked.

 

"Of course," he said. "For his good points as well as his bad."

 

Jaina nodded. "And now the squad is one short."

 

"After only our first mission, too," he said somberly. "Not a good start, is it?"

 

She turned her hand beneath his, locking their fingers together and squeezing. He squeezed back, but with obvious reservations. She sighed, feeling guilty for having ruined the good mood he'd been in.

 

"I'm sure everything will be okay, Jag," she said. "I know this is a strange way to run a squadron, but once we've ironed out the bugs"

 

"That's not what concerns me, Jaina," he said. "I actually think we work well together. But if what your mother says is true, if the Vong have been reopening old wounds in order to exploit the aftereffects ..." He trailed off uncomfortably.

 

"What, Jag?"

 

"Well ..." He shrugged and pulled his hand away from hers. There was something on his mind; she didn't need the Force to see that. "It may be nothing, but the New Republic and the Chiss haven't always been on the best of terms. After Thrawn"

 

"Thrawn was an Imperial. We know the difference."

 

"But to us he was a Chiss, Jaina. The Expansionary Defense Fleet has been struggling for decades to protect our borders. Using the Empire as a tool, Thrawn made more progress in a few years than all the others combined. Yes, he may have overreached at the end, but still, when the New Republic finally defeated him, there were many among us who mourned. That's partly why we tend to side with the Empire. It's not just because we're closer to them than we are to you along most of our borders. There's still resentment."

 

"You're telling me the Chiss might work with the Yuu-zhan Vong against us?"

 

Jag shrugged. "No, I'm not saying that. There will always be some who would rather hear a convincing lie than an uncomfortable truth. The right words in the wrong ears might have repercussions for the Galactic Alliance."

 

"Great." She pushed her bowl of soup aside, her appetite suddenly spoiled. "And that's Uncle Luke's next stop, after the Empire."

 

"I'm sorry," he said, looking down awkwardly at his hands. "It's probably nothing. I didn't really want to worry you about it."

 

There was something in the way he said this that made her study him more closely. "But there's something I should be worried about, isn't there?"

 

He glanced up, and she could see the uncertainty in his eyes. Without saying a word, he removed something from his pocket and placed it on the table between them. Jaina felt her stomach frost the moment she looked down and saw it. The last time she had seen anything like this had been on the worldship around Myrkr, before Anakin had died. There had been Yuuzhan Vong temples there, some larger than most cities; each had featured gruesome effigies to their cruel and insatiable gods. One in particular stood out. In her worst nightmares, like the one she'd recently awakened from, she saw a particular face looming at her out of the dark, graven from coral slabs that rose scores of meters high into the air.

 

The fact that this particular image was made from a silvery bonelike substance and was barely larger than her thumb didn't matter. The face was the same it was Yun-Yammka, the Slayer.

 

Jaina looked up at Jag; he was watching her closely. "Where did you get this?" she asked, unable to keep the anger and disgust from her voice. It took all of her effort to resist snatching the thing from the table and throwing it down a garbage chute. It was an abomination, an incitement to horror. As far as she was concerned, no sane individual would ever want to own such a thing. "Where did it come from?" There was no escaping the accusation in her tone. "It came from Tahiri," he said with some apology. "She dropped it when she collapsed on Galantos."

 

The frost quickly spread to Jaina's heart, and for the longest time she didn't know what to say. The coufee came up so quickly that Shoon-mi didn't even have a chance to see it. With the blade across his throat, he was dragged back into the crack leading from the anonymous sub-basement to the access tunnel that led deeper into the underground.

 

"Who has betrayed us?" hissed a voice in his ear. "Who sent the warriors to kill I'pan and Niiriit?"

 

Shoon-mi flailed wildly but was unable to break free. The blade of the coufee was so sharp he didn't even realize it had cut him until he felt the blood trickling down his chest. He stopped wriggling, then, panting heavily and fearfully.

 

"Kunra!" he called out, but the word came out as barely more than a gasp.

 

The shamed warrior stood nearby in the center of the basement, unmoved by Shoon-mi's plea for assistance. Instead of coming to his help, Kunra merely folded his arms across his chest to watch coldly.

 

"Who has betrayed us?" Shoon-mi's attacker repeated, allowing the coufee to bite a little deeper into the flesh.

 

"It wasn't me!" Shoon-mi cried desperately, realizing that no one would be coming to his aid. "I swear it wasn't!"

 

In an instant the coufee was gone, and a knee in his back pushed him sprawling to the ground. He pressed at the cut on his throat with his hand, fearful that his lifeblood was flowing away.

 

"You'll live," growled the one who had cut him. The figure stepped from the shadows to loom over him. The coufee was held menacingly by his side, its blade darkened with Shoon-mi's blood. "And you will tell me what you know."

 

Shoon-mi stared up into the horrible, one-eyed visage. "Amorrn?" His voice trembled.

 

Nom Anor nodded slowly, pinching the coufee blade between two fingers and wiping the blood from it. "But this is no time for reacquainting ourselves," he said. "You have ten seconds to tell me what I want to hear, or this blade will open your veins and drink from your filthy'

 

"It wasn't me, I swear!" the Shamed One repeated frantically. "It wasn't any of us! The warriors weren't looking for Niiriit or the others. They were looking for thieves! Supplies had gone missing and they guessed that one of the underground groups was responsible. Yours was the third they hit that night. They wiped all of them out. Not just you; not just Niiriit. We didn't know in advance so we couldn't warn you. It happened too quickly." Shoon-mi scrabbled desperately backward in the dirt as Nom Anor loomed over him. "I'm telling you the truth! Please . . ."

 

"We're making too much noise," said Kunra, who still hadn't moved.

 

Nom Anor ignored him. "Just thieves?" he hissed. "Nothing to do with the heresy? Nothing to do with me?"

 

"No, just thieves." Shoon-mi continued to back away from Nom Anor. "I wouldn't lie to you, Amorrn. I'm telling the truth!"

 

The coufee disappeared as Nom Anor fixed the whimpering Shamed One with a look of distaste. "Do not ever call me that again," he said. "It is a name that belongs to someone else."

 

Weak with relief, Shoon-mi slumped against a wall while his attacker moved away to think.

 

Not the heresy. Not me . . . Nom Anor's mind spun. All through their long ascent to the basement levels, he had felt safe assuming that the attack had been politically motivatedif not against him then certainly against the ideas I'pan was propagating. Kunra had set up the meeting with Shoon-mi as a first attempt to find out who had betrayed them. And when they knew who it was, Nom Anor would have killed without hesitation.

 

But if he hadn't been betrayed, if the attack had simply been a case of bad luck, then that changed everything. Neither the heresy nor he was being actively hunted. He could breathe easier for a while, could stop imagining regiments of warriors at every turn, waiting to ambush him. He could pause long enough to think and decide what needed to be done next.

 

He almost chuckled aloud at the irony. The warriors might not have been hunting him specifically, but it was still he who had brought death to Niiriit and the others. He and I'pan had been stealing with some regularity from the upper levels, using access codes he remembered from his years as an executor. The thefts, clearly, had not gone unnoticed, and the killing party had been sent in to the underground to mop up anyone likely to be responsible. He had brought death down upon those who had saved his life just as surely as the warriors who had actually wielded the amphistaffs.

 

He looked at Kunra. Through the gloom he could see the ex-warrior's stoic expression, and wondered if behind that impassive stare he wasn't coming to the same conclusions.

 

Nom Anor stepped forward and extended a hand to Shoon-mi, who eyed it uncertainly for a moment before nervously taking it and allowing himself to be helped to his feet. Resisting the powerful urge to stab Shoon-mi through the heart, then dispatch Kunra just as quickly, Nom Anor manufactured an expression of relief and let it wash over him.

 

"We are safe, then," he said, speaking as much to Kunra as to Shoon-mi. "If what you say is true, then the warriors won't be hunting us. As long as the thefts cease, we should be able to live unharmed. Yes?"

 

"There have been no more thefts," said Shoon-mi, nodding. "The way of the Jeedai is safe. No one has betrayed usand no one will! You have seen yourself the

 

way we spread the message. You know that we are careful who we choose to hear it. The word is safe."

 

The Message. Nom Anor paced across the room, conscious of Kunra's eyes tracking him every step of the way. He had heard the Jedi heresy referred to as the message on occasions before and thought it a suitable euphemism. Whichever word was being obscured-Jedi, insurrection, hopethe nature of it was the same. The message was anathema to Shimrra, and that was all that mattered to Nom Anor.

 

But it was becoming increasingly clear to him that at this rate the message would never reach Shimrra directly. It had been irrelevant to the warriors who had attacked the communities in the underworld of Yuuzhan'tar; heretics, if the warriors even knew they existed, ranked lower than thieves in terms of priorities. For the messageas well as Nom Anorto reach Shimrra, it would have to break out of the underground, and it would have to do it soon.

 

"Perhaps we are too careful," he said, thinking aloud and testing their responses as he spoke. "We hold our revelations close to our chests, much like the priests guard their secrets. We hide the light under cloaks of fear and timidity so that no one else may see it. As long as we continue preaching to the converted, we will never grow, never be strong like the Jedi are strong. The millions like us who deserve to know that there is a better way to live, a freedom that counters everything we have ever been taughtthey will remain forever in the darkness. Perhaps the time has come, my friends, to shine our light into the darkness."

 

Shoon-mi looked even more nervous than before. "But if we speak openly about the Jeedai, we will be killed!"

 

"You're right, Shoon-mi," Nom Anor said, turning to face him in the shadows. "We would be killed. Therefore we must find new ways to spread the message, to recruit new followers. But we must expand only through the ranks of the Shamed Ones before we dare take our message higher up. As we stand now, we are weak and poorly organized; we will never make a difference like this. We must find strength and take our fate into our own handsand when we are strong, then we may break free." He came to stand in front of Shoon-mi and placed his hands on his shoulders. The Shamed One continued to tremble beneath his grip. "To gain everything, my friend, we must risk everything." His one eye bored deep into Shoon-mi's own eyes until the Shamed One had to turn away in discomfort. "Are you with me?" Nom Anor whispered close to Shoon-mi's ear.

 

The Shamed One nodded uneasily. "I-I shall do what I can, of course," he said. "I don't know how to fight, but I do know lots of people."

 

"Good," Nom Anor said, nodding and smiling his pleasure at the Shamed One's response. "That is indeed good. Word of mouth is our greatest weapon right now." He turned to face Kunra. "And what of yourself? Are you with us, too?"

 

The ex-warrior's eyes glistened in the gloom. This was the crucial moment, Nom Anor knew. If Kunra defied him, he would have to kill both of them and start again from scratch, finding and infiltrating another cell of heretics to turn to his vengeful cause. He might never find one so perfectly primed for the task.

 

The ex-warrior hesitated, shuffling uncertainly from foot to foot.

 

"Decide," Nom Anor prompted as he placed a hand inside his robes. Almost eagerly, the pommel of the coufee found his fingers.

 

Kunra's gaze fell to the robe as he nodded slowly. "I am with you," he said. "For Niiriit and I'pan, and for all of those who have died, I am with you."

 

But not for me, Nom Anor thought. It didn't matter, though. The ex-warrior's compliance would be enough for now. The task ahead of him would be difficult, and he needed all the help he could get, in whatever spirit it was offered. The heresy as it presently existed was disorganized and internally inconsistent, and would never get any farther than the Shamed Ones. He would need to give it momentum if it was to serve his purposes. Several circular references had developed through numerous retellings; some stories took place on different planets, with different names, at different times. He would need to refine the tale so it suited his needs best, and spread it efficiently enough so it would eradicate the other versions, if only by sheer volume.

 

It was a long shot, he knew, but it was the only one he had. Nom Anor had dealt with religious fervor before, on Rhommamool, and he knew how to turn a smoldering thought into flames of resistance. But did he dare do it among the Yuuzhan Vong, his own species? This was rank heresy, after all. The Jedi, no matter what good they might do for the Shamed Ones, were still machine users. His conscienceatrophied though it had been by years of treacherycontinued to nag at him.

 

But not for long. He had tried unsuccessfully to climb the social ladder imposed by Shimrra, despite being resourceful and intelligent. If he was ever to succeed, he would have to find another way to climb that same ladder that had refused to let him ascend.

 

Shoon-mi began to say something, snapping him out of his thoughts. "Amorrn"

 

"I told you not to call me that!" he snapped. He had told Kunra that a time would come when he would need to choose a new name; perhaps that time had come now. He needed one to carry him in this new direction.

 

Shoon-mi took an anxious step back. "Thenthen what should we call you?"

 

Nom Anor thought about this for a moment. What name should he choose? Certainly one that would symbolize the work he needed to do in order to ensure his survival, and one that Shimrra would recognize also.

 

He smiled, then, at a thought. There was a word from an ancient tongue, rarely spoken except in the older worldships. It had connotations for all castes, no matter which god they worshiped. Its meaning was an unmistakable stab at Shimrra, and would be recognized as such by the Shamed Ones he would have to rely on to make the dream possible.

 

"From now on," he said to his first two disciples, "you shall call me Yu'Shaa."

 

There was a moment's silence; then Shoon-mi stepped forward a pace, his face creased in consternation.

 

"Yu'Shaa?" he echoed. "The prophet?"

 

Nom Anor smiled, nodding. "The Prophet."

 

When Grand Admiral Pellaeon convened a brief meeting on the bridge of the Imperial Star Destroyer Right to Rule, twenty-four standard hours after the battle of Borosk, all the surviving Moffs attended, along with those navy admirals and senior officers not committed to the defense of the Empire from the retreating Yuuzhan Vong. Jacen agreed with Pellaeon that there would be a brief period after Vorrik's defeat during which it would be safe to tie up so many leaders from across the Imperial Remnant; not until the Yuuzhan Vong had regrouped and obtained new orders from Shimrra would there be any serious counterattack from the enemy. The strafing of Yaga Minor on their way out had been little more than an afterthought, easily repelled.

 

For those Moffs who disagreed, who thought that now was the perfect time to consolidate their strongholds against both the Yuuzhan Vong and a Grand Admiral who would dare defy them, Pellaeon circulated a rumor that anyone not in attendance would forgo the right to navy defense. The Yuuzhan Vong was a problem the Empire had to confront as a whole, and the composition of that whole had to be determined as quickly as possible. No one was compelled to attend, but everyone knew the consequences if they didn't.

 

That there would be retaliation, Jacen didn't doubt. B'shith Vorrik had been humiliated in front of both his army and that of his enemy. Somehow, the Yuuzhan Vong commander would return. It was just a matter of how soon that would be, and how much of a force he would bring with him.

 

Jacen stood to one side with Luke, Mara, Saba, and Tekli, making their presence known but not contributing to the discussion. It was another calculated provocation engineered by Pellaeon. Luke had expressed reservations about flaunting the old enemy before so many Moffs, but through the Force Jacen could tell that the Jedi Master was secretly enjoying the situation.

 

When everyone was seated, Pellaeon rose from his chair and stood before those assembled.

 

"The reason I have brought you all here is quite simple," he said, forgoing the formalities of introduction. "I wish to share with you a realization I have come to, and to tell you what I intend to do about it."

 

Pellaeon walked around the table with hands clasped behind his back. It was a simple psychological ploy, intended to intimidate those seated by forcing them to either crane their heads around to see him or stare dumbly forward at nothing as he talked. It was a cheap trick, but Jacen understood that the Grand Admiral needed every advantage he could get.

 

Gilad Pellaeon had donned his full battle uniform, and his general appearance had been cleaned up prior to the meeting, but there was no hiding either his age or the fact that he had recently been on the verge of death. He would carry a slight limp for as long he lived.

 

"In the last forty-eight standard hours, the Imperial Navy has fended off the greatest threat it has ever faced." He studied the Moffs before him with penetrating eyes. "You've seen the reports and studied the breakdowns, so I'm sure you can understand the significance of what happened at Bastion and, hopefully, will have some appreciation of the seriousness of the decisions we must now make." He paused further for effect. "Until we rebuild bastion, the Empire is temporarily without a capital; the Moff Council has lost several of its most important members and, with them, I suspect, its short-term cohesion. Many of our citizens have been enslaved by the Yuuzhan Vong, and our borders are no longer safe.

 

"But the threat we have repelled is not the Yuuzhan Vong. It is something far more insidious. Indeed, we didn't know we were facing it until the very last, when it was almost too late to fend it off. That threat can be summed up in one word. It is a word that has more fear for me than extinction. It is irrelevance."

 

Jacen caught a flicker of annoyance as it passed across the jowled face of Moff Flennic. For a moment he thought Flennic might interrupt, but the Moff remained silent, brooding.

 

Pellaeon had completed a circuit of the table and returned to where he started. He put his palms down on the table and leaned forward. "When we first heard about the Yuuzhan Vong," he said, "we blithely observed their passage through the galaxy and assumed that when they didn't attack us, they did so out of caution. We were too strong, too determined, too superior for them to risk a confrontation. We believed ourselves to be too formidable an opponent. But when we sent support to the Battle of Ithor, we saw just how strong the enemy's fleets really were. Afraid that we would be unable to defend ourselves, we pulled in our heads and dug in, waiting for an attack that never came."

 

He straightened now, his expression briefly betraying his weariness. "And it never came," he said slowly, "because we simply didn't matter to the Yuuzhan Vong. We weren't considered a threat. We had demonstrated an unwillingness to become involved in someone else's fight, and a propensity for sitting back and watching our neighbors being destroyed. Why should they attack us? We weren't hurting them; if anything, we were making their job easier. In effect, we made ourselves irrelevant, and for that I feel the greatest shame of all."

 

Pellaeon looked up and caught Jacen's eyes. An understanding passed between the two men that sent a shiver down Jacen's spine. Pellaeon was talking about war, but the same principle could be applied to all aspects of life. The greatest crime a being could commit, against itself and those around it, was to withdraw from the living. Jacen had seen this when his father had withdrawn from his mother after the death of Chewbacca; he had felt it in himself when he had retreated from battle to find an answer to his doubts; and he was seeing it now, on a much larger scale, in the actions of the Imperial Remnant. Life was involvement; being part of the Force meant participating in the evolution of the galaxy. It was not just sitting back and observing. The only question of importance that anyone truly intending to live needed to ask themselves was, how did one become a part of that process?

 

Unfortunately, the answer to that question still eluded him.

 

"Well," Pellaeon went on, "we've been attacked now. No one could've missed that. But does that mean we're relevant?" He shook his head. "No. It means that Supreme Overlord Shimrra took a moment to stamp out a potential threat lingering around his rear lines. A p6ten-tial threat, mind you, not an actual threat. The force he sent wasn't sufficient to disable us, even with surprise on its side, but it was nothing compared to the resources he committed to Coruscant. B'shith Vorrik, furthermore, is no Tsavong Lah or Nas Choka. Had we really mattered to the overall war, Shimrra would have wiped us out years ago, not tried now as an afterthought.

 

"But we refused to roll over and be destroyed, even when we were grievously injured. We insulted the enemy as he retreated, and we liberated some of those taken captive. We showed them that we are not easy prey, and that we will not be so easily dismissed.

 

"If Shimrra didn't consider the Empire a threat before, he will now. How long he considers us a threat, however, is entirely up to us."

 

"And why is that?" Moff Flennic asked, obviously unable to contain his disapproval of being lectured at any longer. Jacen could feel the resentment radiating from the man.

 

"Isn't that obvious, Kurlen?" Ephin Sarreti said from across the table. The Moff, recently released from a medical barge evacuated from Bastion, sported one arm in a sling and a dour expression. "If we sit here expecting to defend our territories indefinitely, we'll all be dead within months."

 

Pellaeon nodded. "And giving Vorrik time to petition another strike force from Shimrrafresher, larger, and certainly more eager for our bloodwould be suicide. We remain a threat only so long as we remain alive."

 

Flennic inclined his head slightly. "I can't help but feel apprehensive about the alternative you're about to propose."

 

"It's the only alternative that I can see," Pellaeon said softly, regarding each of the Moffs around the table before continuing. "We must take the fight to the Yuuzhan Vong."

 

A murmur of unrest immediately rippled around the room, but it was Moff Flennic again whose voice was heard. "You would have us leave our worlds behind?" he asked disbelievingly. "Undefended?"

 

"Not entirely," the Grand Admiral said. "Every planet would retain a token defense forceat least enough to repel the sort of attack Yaga Minor suffered."

 

"But not enough to repel a serious invasion," came a woman's voice from the far end of the table.

 

Jacen recognized the woman as Moff Crowal from Valc VII, a system on the very edge of the Unknown Regions.

 

"If the Yuuzhan Vong are kept busy elsewhere, there won't be one," Sarreti pointed out.

 

"Can we be absolutely certain of that, though?" Flennic countered hotly. He faced Pellaeon. "Admiral, you are gambling with our very lives here!"

 

"Isn't that what all leaders must do in times of war?" he returned. "I'm offering you a chance of victory as opposed to the certainty of our destruction. Mark my words if we do nothing, we will be destroyed."

 

"If, as you say, we can't beat the Yuuzhan Vong here," Moff Crowal said, "then how do you propose we beat them on their own territory?"

 

Pellaeon nodded. "A fair question," he said. "And one that has occupied my mind these last couple of days."

 

"Go on then," Flennic said. "Give us your answer."

 

"There is only one possible answer." The ageing Grand Admiral took a moment to look around hima staged moment of reflection, Jacen knew, but effective. The man was clearly a veteran of these types of meetings, and could employ all manner of body language to strengthen his argument. "In order to survive intact, the Empire needs to see itself objectively; it needs to cultivate a certain distance from its immediate past and see itself in the context of the wider galaxy and its history. We are not alone here, as much as we might sometimes like to pretend we are. We cannot avoid what is happening outside, as the Yuuzhan Vong have so convincingly demonstrated. For too long have we kept to ourselves; for too long have we ignored what is going on out there in the wider galaxy. We have remained content to direct our attention inward, at our own navels.

 

"I do not exclude myself from this criticism, either," he went on. "There have been times I could have fought harder to do what my gut told me was right. That I didn't will be my undying shame, because it was almost our undoing. But I will not let it happen again."

 

"You will not?" Moff Flennic mocked. "Grand Admiral, I trust we are coming to some sort of point here. If you have gathered us together to dictate your terms, then please get on with it so that we can vote on your dismissal and put this behind us forever."

 

Pellaeon smiled, and held the smile a moment longer than was comfortable. There was something in the silence around the table and the way the Moffs glanced at one another that told Jacen that Pellaeon had taken the gloves off. Now was the moment to deliver the message

 

he'd gathered them all to hear. Mara must have felt it too, for he heard her take in a deep breath in anticipation and hold it.

 

"As Grand Admiral of the Imperial Navy," Pellaeon said, "I am formally advising the Moff Council that at our earliest possible convenience we must strike a formal agreement with the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances to share military resources in order to repel the threat of the Yuuzhan Vong from the galaxy." He had to raise his voice to be heard above the hubbub that immediately filled the room. "Furthermore, I advise that this agreement be ongoing after the immediate threat has passed. The only way to survive in the future is to turn our back on the past. As much as some of you may dislike to hear it, it is time for us to make peace with one another."

 

Flennic was the first to his feet. "Join the Galactic Alliance? Have you gone mad? You can't believe that any of us would ever agree to this!"

 

"I don't need your agreement, Kurlen." Pellaeon spoke softly, but his voice carried over the howls of dissent. "When I say that I am advising the council, I am only following a formality. This is the way it will be, because this is the way it has to be. I am simply saving you the need to think it through for yourselves." "This is treason!" another Moff gasped. "It's common sense," Ephin Sarreti countered. The Grand Admiral nodded his thanks to Sarreti for the support the Moff was giving him. "My loyalty to the Empire is as strong as it has ever been," he said. "I will do what I must to ensure its survival."

 

"By forcing us to submit to them?" A fin ger stabbed at where the robed Jedi stood off to one side. "We have spent our lives fighting this scum, and now you wish us to"

 

"Be mindful of your words, Moff Freyborn," Pellaeon interjected firmly. "These 'scum,' as you call them, saved my life back at Bastionas well as saving the Empire from an early grave."

 

"A grave they dug for us in the first place," Flennic snarled. "At our peak we would never have fallen to the Yuuzhan Vong as they have. We would have sent them back from whence they cameimpaled upon their own amphistaffs!"

 

"Do you really believe that, Kurlen? We weren't able to resist a handful of Rebels, so how would we have resisted the massed might of the Yuuzhan Vong?" Pel-laeon's stare was cold and hard. Clearly visible behind the Grand Admiral's bluff, mustachioed appearance was the man who had faced down far worse threats than a hostile Moff Council. "Your reasoning is both faulty and circularand it is precisely the kind of reasoning that has brought us to these straits. The Empire is foundering not from forces exterior to it, but as a result of its own internal weaknesses. Our current circumstances are our own fault; it is foolish to lay blame elsewhere for our own failings."

 

"The Empire will never surrender to the Galactic Alliance, Admiral," Flennic said firmly. "And I cannot believe you would ever consider this after all your years resisting their insidious advance!"

 

Instead of responding angrily, Pellaeon just chuckled. "Like it or not, they have ruled the galaxy for almost as many decades as we didand with less bloodshed and military expenditure, I might add. Right now, they are the one thing that stands between us and enslavement and death at the hands of the Yuuzhan Vong, and it is time we acknowledged that. And we need to do it now before we bury ourselves beneath old grudges and an inability to accept reality."

 

"I refuse to accept defeat," Flennic said, still on his feet and regarding Pellaeon with undisguised contempt. "And I don't regard that inability as a disability, either. The Empire is strong; we proved thatyou proved thatby repelling the invasion. Why, on a day when we should be celebrating our victory, are we contemplating the end of the Empire?"

 

"First," Pellaeon said, "allying ourselves with the Galactic Alliance isn't the same thing as dissolving the Empire. That should be obvious even to a child, Kurlen. They're not asking us to surrender our sovereignty; nor will we. We will simply combine forces to our mutual benefit. Second, as I said earlier, the Empire exists today only because of luck luck that the Yuuzhan Vong didn't attack sooner, and luck that the emissaries from the Galactic Alliance came along when they did to show us how to fight effectively. Third, if we don't fight back now, the Yuuzhan Vong will return and strike us down without any mercy whatsoever. If we don't drive them back and join with our neighbors to keep them back, then no one will ever be safe again. And this Empire we hold so precious will completely cease to be. If you can't accept that argument, Kurlen, then you'll have to learn to accept your irrelevance to the council instead." Flennic's eyes narrowed. "Are you threatening me?" Pellaeon's response was almost shocking in its blunt-ness. "Yes, Kurlen, I am," he said. Then, eyeing each of the Moffs present, he added, "The council will unanimously accept my proposal, or I will take the entire fleet with me when I leave."

 

The shock of his pronouncement provoked gasps of astonishment and dismay among those who had, perhaps, thought that Pellaeon could be talked around, or at least placated with a slightly softer alternative. No one had seriously considered that their Grand Admiral might gamble the Empire itself over something so outrageous as allying themselves with their old enemies.

 

Jacen felt a spike of animosity from Moff Flennic in the Force at the same time he saw the blaster come out of the fat man's robes. In an instant, everyone's attention in the room had gone from Pellaeon to the weapon aimed at him.

 

"This is treason of the worst kind, Admiral," Flennic said steadily.

 

Jacen was about to use the Force to whisk the blaster from Flennic's hand, when he felt Luke's hand touch his arm.

 

Pellaeon faced the blaster as calmly as he had faced Flennic's criticism. A dozen stormtroopers stationed at the exits rushed forward with their blasters raised to shoot Flennic down, but Pellaeon waved them back.

 

"How strong are your convictions, Kurlen?" he asked. "Are you prepared to die for them?"

 

"You can't threaten us, Admiral!" The Moffs voice was even and calm, but Jacen noted that the blaster in his hand had begun to waver. "We are the Council of Moffs; we appointed you. We can always appoint another Grand Admiral to take your placeone who won't lead us down such a treacherous path!"

 

"Another warlord choking on remembered glories, you mean? There aren't many left, Kurlen. Our numbers have dwindled in futile attempts to reclaim something that was taken from us long ago. The galaxy isn't ours by right; we have lost it. The sooner we accept that, the sooner we can begin to understand what role exists for us now. And if that new role is to be part of the Galactic Alliance, then so be it. It has to be better than extinction. I for one am sick of fighting a war we can never win and against the wrong enemy, what's more."

 

For the first time, Pellaeon's reserve slipped. Jacen saw real passion warring below the surface, like the molten core spinning under the crust of a civilized planet. And it wasn't lost on Flennic, either.

 

"This is madness," the Moff said, appealing now to the rest of the council. "Are you all just going to stand by and let him destroy everything we've managed to salvage?" "It's better than being dead, Kurlen," Sarreti said. 'Or enslaved," Moff Crowal added. Flennic winced as though he'd been mortally wounded. "You, Crowal?" he said. "You believe this nonsense?"

 

"It's not nonsense, Kurlen," she said. "I argued against joining the Galactic Alliance when the enemy wasn't on our doorstep, thinking that if we didn't provoke the Yuuzhan Vong, they would leave us alone. But that proved to be a mistake."

 

"No." Flennic's gaze swept the faces before him, assessing the expressions and weighing up what support remained with him. Pellaeon watched patiently as he came to the only possible conclusion. "No ..."

 

The Moff's certainty faltered, and the blaster dropped. He seemed on the verge of capitulating when a dangerous look came to his eyes and his fingers around the blaster's grip tightened. "No!" he cried. "I will not submit!" The blaster came back up.

 

He's going to do it, Jacen realized. He's going to shoot Pellaeon!

 

Ignoring the pressure of Luke's hand on his arm, he gathered the Force around him in order to actbut he was too late. The blaster cracked at the same time as he felt the flex of someone else's invisible will, and he saw the gun fly out of Flennic's hand and clatter across the floor. The blaster's bolt discharged harmlessly over Pellaeon's shoulder. The Grand Admiral hadn't even flinched.

 

Two stormtroopers were at Flennic's side in an instant, each taking an arm as they arrested him. He struggled in vain against them, staring wildly at the Jedi standing beside Pellaeon.

 

"You!" he yelled. "You and your vile mind tricks have poisoned us!"

 

"Nonsense," Mara said, stepping forward. "We use our powers to save lives, not waste themunlike you, Moff Flennic."

 

The dark tone to her voice made it clear who had saved Pellaeon.

 

"You are not the only one here who served under Pal-patine," she continued. "I have changed, and so has the Grand Admiral. And I suspect that you must have, too, for our former master would never have tolerated such idiocy in one of his servants. What were you thinking? That Yaga Minor would become capital now that Bastion has fallen? That you would lead the council? Don't be a fool, Flennic."

 

Flennic's glare at Mara was cold and piercing, but Jacen could tell by the way he relaxed in the grip of the guards that her words were getting through.

 

"Stand down, Kurlen," Pellaeon said quietly. "Stand down now and abide by the will of the council, and I swear that no action will be taken for what has happened here today."

 

Flennic's face twisted as he gathered his injured pride and anger and swallowed them both. Jacen suspected that it wouldn't have tasted good at all, and would have burned going down.

 

The Moff looked from Pellaeon to Mara, then back again. "Very well," he said quietly. "I give my support to your proposal of allying ourselves with the Galactic Alliance. But I stand by my opinion, Admiral."

 

"As it is yours to stand by," Pellaeon said, nodding sagely. Then he took a few steps toward Flennic, fixing the corpulent Moff of Yaga Minor with a steely gaze. "But hear this, Kurlen you have pulled a weapon on me this day, an act of treason that under normal circumstances would be punishable by death. But these are not normal circumstances, and so I am prepared to overlook your insurrection. However, from this moment on you would be wise to be mindful of your actions. Because if you so much as breathe in a manner that I think is treacherous, then I will have your head. Is that understood?"

 

Moff Flennic swallowed thickly, but didn't speak. He could only nod mutely.

 

With a glance from the Grand Admiral, the storm-troopers released their grip on the Moff. Then Pellaeon returned to his place at the head of the table without another word.

 

Mara crossed the room and collected the discarded blaster, then stepped over to Moff Flennic and handed him the weapon. He accepted it with some surprise, his brow creased in puzzlement.

 

"Personally, Kurlen," she said, "I prefer my allies to be armed."

 

With that she faced the Grand Admiral.

 

"If it's all the same to you, Admiral, I think we should take our leave now," she said. "I imagine there is still much that needs t o be discussed here, and given the general feeling toward us in this room, it might be easier for you to do this without us here."

 

The Grand Admiral acknowledged Mara with a curt bow. "Thank you," he said. Then, with a glance to the other Jedi standing there, added, "for everything."

 

One by one the Jedi filed from the roomLuke, Mara Saba, Tekli, and Jacenleaving the Grand Admiral alone with the Moffs to go over the details of his plans. As the rest of the party continued to move down the corridor, Jacen paused outside to look back briefly into the room. Already the discussion was becoming heated again, with those gathered around the table gesticulating wildly as they raised their voices to make their opinions heard on the matter of the Empire's new allies.

 

The door hissed shut, muting the ongoing debate. Jacen turned to catch up with the others, only to find Mara still standing there waiting for him.

 

"You look worried," she said.

 

He swallowed a sound that might have been a laugh, but could just as easily have been an exclamation of annoyance. "Try as Ior Giladmight," he said, "I find it hard to believe that anyone in that room will ever really regard us as allies. Despite everything we did for them, they still hold us in such mistrust."

 

"Not all of them." She shrugged. "We've made a lot of progress today"

 

"I know, I know, and we'll probably end up with some kind of shallow alliance in place before long. But ..." He gesticulated vaguely in lieu of actually finding words for what he wanted to say. "Is that enough?"

 

"Maybe," Mara said. "And maybe you're right. Maybe it won't come to anything more than pretty words from an ugly mouth. But when it comes to the fight against the Yuuzhan Vong, I'll happily take a shallow alliance over none at all."

 

"True." He offered a half smile in the face of his aunt's optimism.

 

Mara chuckled at the effort. "That's just the way things are, Jacen," she said, putting an arm around his shoulder and guiding him with her to join the others. He didn't resist her. "Sometimes it's harder to make a friend than it is to fight an enemy."

 

 

EPILOGUE

 

 

Two days later, Luke watched from Jade Shadow's cockpit as the Imperial Navy reassembled for its mission Coreward. Advance scouts had found the location of B'shith Vorrik's rear guard, and Pellaeon was keen to press home their advantage and push the Yuuzhan Vong back even farther.

 

"You'll require an escort on your mission into the Unknown Regions," Pellaeon said from the bridge of Right to Rule, his image displayed in miniature by the holo-projector between Luke and Mara.

 

"We're quite capable of handling ourselves, Admiral," Mara said.

 

"Think of it as a gesture," Pellaeon replied. "A political act rather than a military one."

 

"A gesture of unity?"

 

Pellaeon nodded. "Something like that."

 

Mara grunted unhappily. "What exactly did you have in mind?"

 

"Captain Yage has volunteered the services of Widow-maker, and I have given approval. She's one of the best officers I have. She'll give you support if you need it, but she won't get in your way, I assure you. You can count on her to be discreet."

 

Luke knew that Yage was a good choice; she had proved herself to be very pragmatic and open-minded.

 

"We don't really know what we're heading into," he said, "so we won't make a point of refusing the offer."

 

"You never know," Pellaeon said, smiling. "You might even be glad you accepted it, one day."

 

Luke smiled in return, then asked, "You have the information from Moff Crowal?"

 

"I have. We'll download it to your navicomputers in a second. She's supervised numerous scouting missions into the Unknown Regions, some of which made contact with civilizations there. One of her ethnologists has an interest in comparative religions and has recorded a number of myths and legends prevalent among most cultures. One of the more interesting legends is that of a wandering planet, known to appear in systems briefly and then flee when approached. Does this sound something like what you might be looking for?"

 

Descriptions of Zonama Sekot were nonexistent beyond what Vergere had told Jacen, but they knew without a doubt that it could move of its own volition, employing massive hyperspace engines mounted deep in its crust and powered by the planet's core. Luke doubted that there would be two such planets in the galaxy.

 

"Can you tell us where it was last seen?" he asked.

 

Pellaeon shook his head. "All we have are the stories, I'm afraid. But I can tell you where these stories hail from. Since it's not a universal fable, you might at least be able to trace some sort of path."

 

"That might work," Mara said, glancing over the hologram to Luke. "If we could get enough information like that, then we should be able to work out where it's been."

 

"But what happens when you find it?" the Grand Admiral asked. "If the legends are right, it's only going to run away again."

 

"That's something we're just going to have to deal with when the time comes," Luke said. "If the time comes, that is."

 

"Either way," Pellaeon said, "it looks like you're going to have your hands full."

 

"No more than you'll have, convincing Vorrik to stay away from your home," Luke said.

 

"That should be easy compared to getting up in front of a certain Princess to tell her that the Empire has changed its mind."

 

"You won't be talking to Leia," Luke said. "She's dealing with other things at the moment." They had received a brief update of his sister's activities on Galantos when communications had been normalized after the attack. It concerned him, the way the Yuuzhan Vong were beginning to mop up lesser threats around the edges of their territory, regardless of the strength of their grip on the center. Even if the center fell, the peripheries could still suffer major damage before the threat was eradicated.

 

"One of your Jedi friends, then," Pellaeon said. "I'm sure they have things nicely in order on Mon Calamari."

 

"Not the Jedi, either," Luke corrected him again. "We're staying well out of politics this time. I have come to the opinion that the Force is best at guiding an individual, not a nation of any size. The forces that direct a cell to grow aren't appropriate for the plant as a whole and are maybe even destructive. The last thing we want is another Palpatine."

 

"A wise move, I think," Pellaeon said. "But whom should I talk to, then?"

 

"Head of State Cal Omas," Luke said. "Or Supreme Commander Sien Sow."

 

"The same Sow who cost you Coruscant?"

 

"His reputation is undeserved, as he has recently proven," Luke defended. "And even if it was, we need someone like him to lead us to the right kind of victory only someone who has faced losing everything can sympathize with a defeated enemy."

 

Pellaeon chuckled this time. "Skywalker, you're getting more dangerous the older you get. I hope I'm not around to see what you're going to be like when you get to be my age."

 

When Jade Shadow had recharged its weapons banks and Captain Yage had moved alongside to coordinate their departure, Luke took a walk to stretch his legs, and to find Jacen. Passing through the passenger bay, he found Tekli and Saba playing a dice game. To human eyes, the faces of the dice looked black-on-black, but they were readable in infrared, and both aliens saw well into that spectrum. There was a heady odor to the bay, reflecting the fact that it had been home to too many people for too many days. With Widowmaker along for the ride, Luke hoped there might be more opportunities to stretch their legs in the long journey ahead.

 

He smiled down at them on his way through, and was about to leave when he was stopped by Saba. "Master Skywalker?" she said, standing. "Yes, Saba?"

 

"This one ..." she started, with something approximating embarrassment in the way her spiked heels scratched at Jade Shadow's metallic floor. The vertical slits of her eyes blinked before she spoke again. Then, with quiet sincerity, she said, "This one iz glad that she came on the mission."

 

He smiled gently. "This one is glad you came, too, Saba," he said. "Your stunt with the slaveship has done more for our reputation among the Imperials than anything I ever did."

 

"'Crazy,' Grand Admiral Pellaeon said."

 

"That we are." He touched Saba's shoulder and felt her thickly corded muscles tense beneath her scales. "Consider them remembered," he said softly.

 

She nodded. "And the hunt continues."

 

Tekli indicated for Saba to continue with the game. The Barabel crouched down again, her large clawed hand collecting the black dice and rolling them across the deck. Luke left them to it, glad that the unlikely pair had found friendship with each other.

 

Once the door had closed on the passenger bay, Luke searched the immediate vicinity of the Force for some indication of where Jacen might be. He sensed his nephew deeper in the shipin fact, he was about as far away as someone could get from the rest of the crew without actually leaving Jade Shadow. Luke imagined that Jacen probably just wanted some privacy, which he would happily give to him once he'd made sure everything was all right with the young man. It was only as he rounded the corner to where the power couplings interfaced with the reactor outlets that he heard voices, and realized that Jacen was not alone. Three paces later he was confronted with a sight that brought him to a haltmore from embarrassment than anything else.

 

Jacen and Danni Quee were standing close together by an open hatchway. Danni's hand was lightly touching Jacen's cheek, and she was saying something to him in a low and intimate voice. Luke couldn't hear what was being said, thankfully, but just seeing them would have been bad enough as far as Jacen and Danni would have been concerned.

 

He quickly tried to duck back around the corner before he was noticed, but it was too late.

 

Jacen looked up, and Danni turned to follow his gaze. She hastily pulled her hand away as they stepped apart. Fo r a few uncomfortable seconds, nobody spoke, and no one's eyes met.

 

"I'm sure Mara would have something appropriate to say at a moment like this," Luke ventured into the awkward silence.

 

Jacen nodded. "Probably something about not being able to expect privacy on a starship," he said.

 

"I'll leave you"

 

"No," Danni said quickly. "Really. It's all right." She brushed back her hair and, indicating the open hatch, smiled. "We can check out that dodgy surge arrestor another time, if you like."

 

Jacen nodded once, then Danni stepped past Luke without another word, leaving the two men to talk.

 

"I'm so sorry," Luke said when she had gone. "I had no idea that"

 

"No, it's okay," Jacen cut in. Clearly feeling awkward with the situation, he turned away from Luke, shutting the hatch with a gentle push and then affixing the bolts to hold it closed. For a moment his face stayed averted, but when he did finally turn around, Luke could see that he was smiling. "Actually, you probably did me a favor. I'm not very good at this sort of thing."

 

"Really?" Luke said. "You surprise me."

 

"In fact, I'm pretty dreadful."

 

"Well, I'm afraid you've probably inherited that from your mother's side of the family," Luke said. "That includes me."

 

"You seem to have done all right for yourself, Uncle."

 

"Oh, better than all right," he said. "But it took a lot of trial and error along the way. Getting a relationship to work is almost impossibleeven without people like me getting in the way. There's no right or wrong way to tread; the rules are made up as you go along and can change without warning." He smiled. "Trust me when I say that it makes being a Jedi look easy."

 

"Maybe that's why the Jedi of old never married and had children," Jacen said.

 

"Maybe." Luke thought of his son, far away and, hopefully, safe. "I hope Ben turns out to be smarter than his father. Or at least more perceptive."

 

Hatch sealed, Jacen said, "I'm not sure that would be possible."

 

Glad that his nephew held no ill feelings for the intrusion, Luke clapped the young man on the back and led the way back to the cockpit. Danni made a good show of looking nonchalant as they passed, and Jacen managed to only slightly flush.

 

Mara looked up as they entered. "What kept you?"

 

"We just got talking, that's all," Luke said.

 

His wife frowned at him, but then her eyes widened in realization.

 

Mara studied Jacen carefully as the young Jedi dropped into the navigator's seat behind her. If he noticed her scrutiny, he didn't acknowledge it. Instead he kept his eyes on the view from the forward sensors, studying the ships arrayed around them.

 

"An Imperial escort," he said with a chuckle. "Who would have ever thought it possible?"

 

"These are indeed strange days," Luke said, slipping into the copilot's seat beside him.

 

Widowmaker was visible as a solid icon accompanied by several smaller shapes, gradually docking. Pellaeon had been true to his wordand then some. They were getting not only the frigate, but a squadron of TIE fighters as well. He'd heard a rumor that the droid brains of Braxant Bonecrusher had also volunteered to serve with Jacen again, but they had been turned down. The battered Dreadnaught needed some time in dry dock before its long-term flight worthiness was assured.

 

Mara seemed about to say something when a sub-space message came through, flickering to life on the holoprojector.

 

A staticky image of Han appeared before them, with Leia at his shoulder.

 

"Hey, kid," Han said pleasantly, his mouth lifted at one corner in the smile that Luke had come to know all too well over the years.

 

"Is everything all right?" Mara asked. "Fine," Han returned. There was some distortion to the voice, and the image kept losing cohesiveness, but considering how far it had come the quality was excellent. "Just thought we'd drop a line before we head off. After this, who knows when we'll get the chance to speak again?"

 

Luke forced a reassuring smile, fighting back a sudden apprehension about his journey. The Unknown Regions were large and contained hundreds of millions of stars. How long it would take to find Zonama Sekot was impossible to tell, but he knew it was going to take a lot of luck and a strong faith in the Force to find one planet out of so many.

 

"Soon," he said, "I hope."

 

"Where are you headed?" Mara asked of the fuzzy holograms.

 

"Bakura," Leia said.

 

"Bakura?" Luke's apprehension shifted and intensified immediately.

 

"Hey, relax," Han said. "It's not like we're going in alone. We've got Pride of Selonia to watch our backs. We're going to be just fine, kid."

 

Luke smiled again, and this time it came easiereven though the thought of trouble at Bakura made his skin crawl. The right people were going there to fix it, if there was trouble to be found.

 

"I hope you have better luck than you did with the Yevetha," he said. "How's Tahiri?"

 

"She says she's feeling fine," Leia said. "There was an episode on Galantos, but she seems to have bounced back. She might need a little bit more rest, I think, before she puts the pieces together."

 

Leia turned away, then, as if her attention was attracted by something off to one side. She turned back again a couple of seconds later.

 

"We've just had word that Selonia is ready to leave," she said, "so we're going to have to say our good-byes."

 

"That's okay," Mara said. "We're just about to leave, also."

 

"You take care, Luke," Han said, with his cocky half smile.

 

"You, too, my friend," Luke said. "Good-bye, Leia."

 

"Good-bye, Luke," his sister said. "And may the Force be with you all."

 

Mara waved. The image crackled and died, and silence once again filled the cabin. Luke sat back in his seat with a weary sigh.

 

"Luke?" Mara said. "What's wrong?"

 

"I'm not sure," he said. "These good-byes just feel.. . different, somehow."

 

His wife's hand came over to rest on top of his. "We'll see them again soon enough," she said. "You'll be fine once we get going."

 

Her hand left his and joined the other flickering over the controls, completing her preflight checks. Luke smiled at her reassuring words, but they didn't convince him. Something was still troubling him and he couldn't quite put a finger on it. Was it just the mention of Bakura? Or had it been the look on Leia's face when he'd asked about Tahiri?

 

She might need a little bit more rest, Leia had said, before she puts the pieces together.

 

Together, not back together. Yet he hadn't spoken to Leia about Tahiri before they'd left. His gut feeling was that there was nothing to worry about, in the long run, but Leia had looked concerned.

 

He wasn't sure what to make of that. Most probably, he decided, his unease came from seeing Ben by hologram earlierthe harsh reminder that his son was growing up fast thousands of light-years away while he was off on some crazy mission to find something that might not even exist. He could only hold tight to the faith that Vergere had known what she was talking about. Because if she did, the fate of more than just Ben could be at stake.

 

Word came over the comm unit that the last of the TIE fighters had just docked in Widowmaker's flight deck.

 

"We're ready when you are," Mara said, then turned to him. "Artoo has laid in a course for a planet called Yashuvhu." Luke's much-traveled R2 unit whistled confirmation from the droid station behind them. "Imperial first-contact specialists list it as nonhostile, and our specialist in comparative religions has listed it as one of the places that's heard of Zonama Sekot." "Our specialist?" Luke echoed. Mara looked up at him. "Dr. Soron Hegerty," she said. "You did know she was coming along, didn't you?" Luke shrugged. "Never heard of her, actually." "She was flown in from Valc Seven especially to advise us on local folklore that might help us trace Zonama Sekot," Mara said. "Captain Yage assured me that you knew about this."

 

They exchanged a long glance before Luke finally laughed. "Sounds to me as though someone might be trying to play both ends against the middle," he said.

 

"Still, it should stop the trip from becoming boring, don't you think?"

 

Mara didn't smile, but he could see amusement in his wife's deep green eyes.

 

"Widowmaker is at your command," Captain Yage said when the frigate's hyperdrive engines had cycled through a routine warm-up sequence. "Course laid in; all systems green. Just say the word, Mara."

 

Mara glanced at Luke, who nodded. She relayed the command, and Luke settled back into the copilot's seat, not needing to do anything with her and R2-D2 at the controls. The stars ahead were bright and too numerous to count. Somewhere within their far-flung tangle was a single world that might be the key to ending the war with the Yuuzhan Vong.

 

We're going to find you, Zonama Sekot, he thought to himself. Wherever you are, we're going to find you. ..

 

Engines surged and the stars stretched into lines as hyperspace enfolded them. They were on their way again.