chapter two

Jaina Solo did not want to leave her dreambubble. She was with Jagged Fel deep in the heart-warmth of their nest, their heads still throbbing to the rhythm of the Little Dawn Rumble, their bodies filled with the sweet heat of Killik mating pheromones. All the galaxy’s troubles seemed far away, and their battle in the skies of Tenupe had never happened. For once, they were together and at peace, with nothing to do but listen to the sweet sound of … alarm bells?

The bell was chiming inside Jaina’s skull, shaking the dreambubble until it popped, calling her back from her Force-hibernation into the icy free fall of reality. She opened her eyes and found herself staring at the frostrimed interior of a StealthX canopy, her teeth chattering so hard she thought they might shatter. She felt queasy and sore and muddleheaded, and even in the frigid conditions, the cockpit smelled stale and sour.

“Okay, Sneaker, I’m awake,” Jaina said. “You can turn up the heater. And the air scrubbers.”

The astromech, a replacement for Sneaky—whom she had lost when Jag and his squadron shot her down on Tenupe—beeped an acknowledgment, and warm air began to pour into the StealthX’s cockpit. Jaina expanded her Force-awareness. As her mind cleared, she felt her wingmate, Zekk, also awakening. He had resigned his commission in Rogue Squadron a couple of weeks earlier, when Jacen had attempted to court-martial Jaina for refusing to fire on a helpless blockade-runner. Now he and Jaina were part of a Jedi reconnaissance team spying on the secret Corellian shipyards in the Kiris Asteroid Cluster.

Though Jaina could feel Zekk’s Force presence floating a dozen meters ahead and a little below her own position, it took several moments to locate the cross-shaped silhouette of his StealthX. Basically a configuration of the formidable XJ3 X-wing, the StealthX starfighter had a fiberplast body that was all irregular planes and angles, with a matte-black finish camouflaged with an eye-deceiving pattern of tiny blue points that rendered it almost invisible against a starry background. It also had a gravitic modulator, photon absorbers, thermal dissipators, and an entire suite of specialized signal negators that made it almost invisible to sensor sweeps. Even its fusial engines burned a special Tibanna isotope whose efflux turned dark a millisecond after fusion.

About a kilometer ahead of Zekk’s StealthX tumbled the inky darkness of Kiris 17, which marked the “upper” limit of the Kiris Asteroid Cluster. The Corellian sun was just visible beneath the asteroid’s belly, a yellow pinprick barely brighter than the surrounding stars. Next to the star was the slow-growing dash of an efflux trail.

“What do we have, Sneaker?” Jaina asked.

A message appeared on the now-defrosted display, informing Jaina that a light transport was departing the cluster.

Jaina frowned. “You pulled us out of hibernation for a single vessel?”

Sneaker displayed another message. Contact profile is unique. Vessel is overpowered CEC YT-1300, exhibiting sudden change to possible outbound trajectory. Efflux signature suggests military-grade exhaust nozzles.

“The Falcon?” Jaina was not all that surprised—of course Han and Leia Solo would be in the thick of things. She just hoped they did not return to the Kirises before Admiral Bwua’tu sprang his trap. So far, the Corellians did not seem to realize that the Galactic Alliance knew of their secret fleet, and when the Kiris fleet finally left base, the Corellians were going to be in for a nasty shock. “Are you sure?”

Affirmative. Trajectory is now confirmed outbound.

“I mean about the efflux signature,” Jaina growled. “Is that the Falcon or not?”

Uncertain. Current data yields an identity coefficient of only 94%.

Jaina sighed. For the R9 unit to be “sure,” he would have to be plugged into one of the Falcon’s data sockets, swapping data with the primary control brain.

“Keep watching and plot a list of likely …”

Zekk’s StealthX suddenly started after the Falcon, and Jaina let the sentence trail off.

A list of likely destinations? Sneaker inquired.

“Right.”

Jaina shoved her own throttles forward and shot after Zekk, at the same time reaching out to him in the Force. Though their telepathic Joiner bond had finally dissolved a couple of years before, she and Zekk remained so acutely attuned to each other that they could often communicate through the Jedi battle-meld more clearly than most people conversed, and she quickly understood his intentions.

Equal parts spy and assault craft, StealthX starfighters were equipped with eavesdropping equipment so sensitive it could intercept stray signals from a vessel’s internal computers. If Zekk could close the distance before the Falcon jumped to hyperspace, he might be able to capture enough data from the Solos’ nav computer to determine their destination.

What Zekk did not intend to do, he assured Jaina, was vape her parents. She answered with a cynical concern for him. If there was any shooting, he was the one who would need worrying about—not her parents. This elicited a warm feeling of satisfaction from Zekk—a sincere feeling of satisfaction.

The meld nearly shattered beneath the harshness of Jaina’s frustration. She wished Zekk would just give it up. He would never be more than her best friend. Why couldn’t he just accept that and go find a nice Falleen girl to fall for?

Even without mind sharing, the message was clear enough. Zekk withdrew into himself, maintaining barely enough contact to keep the meld open, and they closed the rest of the distance in cold isolation. Jaina hated hurting him like that. He was the best wingmate she’d ever had, but he just did not seem to get it. She didn’t want to be in love, not with him, not with Jagged Fel, not with anyone. She was the Sword of the Jedi, whatever that meant; she probably wasn’t even supposed to be in love.

Kiris 17 slid past above, drawing a momentary curtain of darkness over Jaina’s canopy; then there was nothing between the StealthXs and their target except a hundred kilometers of empty space. The Falcon was really moving. Jaina’s throttles were pushed to the overload stops, and still the old transport yielded her lead only grudgingly.

The inky mass of Kiris 3 tumbled past beneath the chase, its dark surface and frigid heat signature betraying no sign of the shipyard concealed within. The Falcon’s efflux trail slowly changed from a tail to a solid bar. Jaina activated her eavesdropping array, then instructed Sneaker to inform her when he began to pick up signals. But several more seconds passed, and Jaina began to think she and Zekk would not catch up before the Falcon escaped the Kiris Cluster’s weak gravity and entered hyperspace.

Finally, the outline of the Falcon’s sensor dish grew visible above the brilliant glow of her ion drives, and Sneaker reported that the eavesdropping array was picking up stray signals. Jaina and Zekk strengthened their contact and swung out to opposite sides of the target—then felt a wave of astonishment roll through the meld as Leia discerned its presence.

Jaina pulled out immediately and, astonished by her mother’s Force sensitivity, tried to make her presence very small. Her eavesdropping array lit up as it began to capture and record electronic pulses from inside the Falcon. An instant later she sensed Leia searching for her and tried to draw in on herself even further, but there was no hiding from one’s own mother—not when that mother was Leia Solo, anyway. Jaina felt a brief moment of warmth, followed by an overwhelming sense of relief and—oddly—reassurance.

Then the battered old transport shot away, her ion tail thinning into nothingness as she vanished into hyperspace.

The meld filled with a sense of puzzlement as Zekk reached out for an explanation, but Jaina understood no better than he did. Her mother had obviously sensed their presence, which meant she now knew the Jedi were keeping a watch on the Kirises—and that they had probably captured the Falcon’s destination.

Zekk wondered if Leia had been relieved because she thought he and Jaina would not report the contact. The Solos were, after all, high-value targets, and what kind of daughter would sic a hunter-killer squadron on her own parents?

Sneaker beeped for Jaina’s attention, then scrolled a message across the display announcing that he had analyzed the intercepted data and used his superior computing power to develop a list of the Falcon’s most likely destinations.

“So stop bragging and show me,” Jaina ordered.

Droids don’t brag, Sneaker replied. They inform.

A list of planet names began to scroll down the display: Arabanth, Charubah, Dreena, Gallinore—

“Those are all in the Hapes Consortium!” Jaina cried.

Sneaker confirmed that they were, then apologized for not pinpointing the destination more exactly. The Transitory Mists that enveloped the Consortium made hyperspace lanes such a tangle that once a vessel entered Hapan territory, evaluating what course it would follow was statistically impossible.

“That’s okay,” Jaina replied. “You’re close enough.”

Zekk’s surprise flooded the meld, and Jaina knew that his R9 had just reported the same thing to him. His surprise changed to urgency. Whatever the Falcon’s reasons for traveling to the Hapes Consortium, it could not mean anything good for the Alliance. Someone had to leave the observation post to report the intercept—and the possibility that the Corellians might soon know that the Galactic Alliance was watching their secret shipyards.

And Jaina knew who that had to be. Expecting Zekk to omit the Falcon’s name from his report was out of the question. Sometimes he was just too much of a steady blade for his own good—or, in this case, for her parents’ good.