PART TWO

DESTINATION

The moment Jade Shadow dropped out of hyperspace near Bastion, capital of the Imperial Remnant, Saba Sebatyne knew something was wrong. Her mind rang with the distinctive and unsettling harmonics of life extinguished in great amounts. But it was more than that—this was the absence of life itself, as though chunks of the vital universe had been hollowed out, deeper than vacuum.

She roared at the same time Mara announced: “Yuuzhan Vong!”

“Where?” Luke asked from the copilot’s seat.

“Everywhere!” Mara’s hands played across the controls. “Hold on, everybody. This could get rough!”

The ship lurched violently. Saba didn’t need viewscreens to tell her that they’d been seen by the enemy. The empty points that were the Yuuzhan Vong and their strange, living vessels spun around her like pollen in a miniature hurricane. Jade Shadow danced among them, weaving in and out of confrontations, desperately trying to shake off any enemy craft they picked up on their trail. The ship rang with the sound of weapons fire, both incoming and outgoing.

Saba’s blunted claws left great dents in the fabric of the navigator’s chair she occupied. She wasn’t aware of the low rumbling coming from her throat until Jacen Solo braved the shaking deck to come and crouch down next to her.

“Do you feel it, Saba?” he asked. “Can you tell through the Force what’s going on?”

“I feel …” Her teeth clenched tight as another wave of death rolled over her. Bastion was being pummeled by the Yuuzhan Vong; lives were being extinguished by the millions. She didn’t have words.

“I’m sensing life here,” Jacen said, “but in great disarray.”

Saba agreed. She could sense the life energies scattered around the system: some on the planet, panicked, trying to escape the invaders; some in orbit, pulling back before an overwhelming invasion; and several other clusters throughout the system where forces were attempting to regroup. They were outnumbered by the Yuuzhan Vong, but they were there.

“I can make out at least fifteen capital ships!” Mara shouted from her position at the controls. “Big ones, too!” She shook her head in frustration. “Bastion is going to take a pummeling, no matter what we do.”

“It looks to me like they’re pulling out,” Luke said.

“Falling back to regroup elsewhere. Look.” One figure stabbed at a screen. “They’re civilian ships. They’ve evacuated Bastion.”

There was a moment of tense silence as the significance of that statement sunk in. To evacuate Bastion, the Empire must have been hit hard. But it wasn’t finished. As galling as a retreat was, sometimes it made the best tactical sense. The ships flooding in waves from Bastion were getting out under cover of the planetary shields. It looked like they would hold long enough to save much of the population. If the population had stayed put, however, the concentrated fire of the Yuuzhan Vong would have eventually overwhelmed them.

That portion of the battle was already decided. Saba sent her mind out across the system, to where life-lights clustered in smaller groups. The largest, she guessed, contained the equivalent of two Star Destroyers as well as a number of support vessels. They were swinging around the back of a gas giant, caught in its gravity shadow and harried by a powerful enemy contingent.

Saba focused on the viewscreens before her, trying to match what she’d seen against the coordinates in the real world. Jade Shadow was too small to affect what happened on Bastion, but it might make a difference in a smaller arena.

“There,” she growled, pointing with a thick finger.

“That section there. But you must be quick. They’re in trouble.”

Jacen stood and stepped over to his aunt to relay the information. Saba shut her eyes as Jade Shadow leapt forward, ducking and weaving. Mara made a short hyperspace jump to take it closer to the gas giant, and for one brief and blessed moment there was nothing but silence.

Just another planet attacked by the Yuuzhan Vong, she told herself. Hunt the moment.

A small, furred hand grabbed Saba’s scaly wrist. Opening her eyes again, she saw that Tekli now occupied the space that Jacen had just vacated. The diminutive Chadra-Fan emitted a wave of pheromones that Saba found soothing. She knew that the healer’s apprentice had learned how to control her chemical scents to produce compounds with properties therapeutic to various species, but she hadn’t realized that the Barabels were included among those.

Although it might once have seemed strange to her to be comforted by a creature that looked more like a meal than an equal, she sighed gratefully, allowing herself to relax and be taken by the peaceful scent. A moment later, all too soon, it was back to the fighting.

The screen was filled with a bloated, orange-yellow gas giant. Numerous rings and moons crowded around it, as if for safety; many already showed signs of disruption as warring fleets plowed past or sometimes even directly into them. Far below, through the dense atmosphere, Saba felt alarm spreading through a colony of balloonlike life-forms; similar to the giant beldons of Bespin, they were too primitive to understand the meaning of the disturbances taking place in the sky.

Jade Shadow came around the planet as though intending to ram the remains of the Imperial fleet, trailing two determined coralskippers. As Mara neared the two Star Destroyers that Saba had sensed, she performed a deft gravitational whip around one of the gas giant’s larger moons. The coralskippers followed, tugging at Jade Shadow’s shields with their dovin basals. Plasma fire peppered at their rear until, when Jade Shadow’s vector had matched that of the Imperial fleet and it was in full view of the Star Destroyers, Mara stutterfired to distract them, then used the Force to drop two shadow bombs under their guard. The coralskippers blossomed into energy. Once the afterwash of the explosion had passed, Jade Shadow slowed and leveled out.

“This is Mara Jade Skywalker, captain of the Galactic Alliance transport Jade Shadow, hailing Imperial Star Destroyer Chimaera. Are you receiving me, Chimaera?”

The subspace receiver crackled before a reply came in:

“You’re a long way from home, Captain Skywalker.”

“Just thought we’d drop in to see how you guys were doing,” she said sardonically. “And from the looks of things, I’m guessing not so good.”

“Your timing could be better.” The comm operator sounded weary. “I don’t suppose you’ve brought a fleet with you.”

“I’m afraid not, Chimaera, but you could do worse than concentrating your fire on that cruiser lurking at the back. It’s holding a yammosk. Take it out, and you might find your luck changing.”

“A yammosk?… How could you possibly know that?”

“Ask questions later, when you know I’m right.”

“Understood, Captain Skywalker. Passing on the information now.”

“Before you do that, I need to speak to Grand Admiral Pellaeon.”

“Patching you through to the bridge now, Captain Skywalker.”

The line went dead and, barely seconds later, a squadron of TIE fighters left the launching bays of Chimaera, angling away from the gas giant below to target the yammosk-bearing cruiser. Although the Yuuzhan Vong had eased off their attack for the moment, it was obvious that prior to Jade Shadow’s arrival the fighting had been intense. Both Star Destroyers were scarred from weapons fire; black gashes had been torn through Chimaera’s underside, exposing a large number of decks to naked space. Saba could feel its crew fighting to stay alive, along with the fading traces of those who had failed. She couldn’t tell exactly how many were injured or dying, only that there were many.

“If you’ve come to say I told you so, Skywalker, then I’m not interested,” the Grand Admiral announced curtly.

“This isn’t the time for—”

“I’m not known for gloating, Gilad,” Luke said, leaning past Mara to speak into the comm. “No more than you are for giving up.”

“Both Skywalkers? To what do we owe this honor?”

“Call it destiny, or good luck. Either way, your forces are taking a pounding. Can you tell us what went wrong? Considering the size of your home fleet, I would have thought you’d be able to hold your own.”

“They took us by surprise,” the Grand Admiral said irritably. “We were holding our own to begin with. Then the Vong pulled back. We thought we had them on the run, but they were just getting out of the way.”

Mara nodded in understanding. “Grutchins?”

“Thousands of them,” the admiral said. “Once they’d punched a hole in our defenses, the Yuuzhan Vong came back into the fray. We’ve been on the back foot ever since.”

Saba hissed at the mention of the hideous, insectoid creatures. Swarms of grutchins had laid waste to too many defenses during the war with the Yuuzhan Vong for her to doubt that the same had happened here.

“Admiral,” Master Skywalker said, “the offer to join forces is still open.”

“Your sister was up here a while back, trying to sell us on that idea. I thought the Moffs made it quite clear then that your help wasn’t required.”

“And where are the Moffs now, Gilad?”

Saba noticed Pellaeon’s hesitation. He may have been a commander with pride, but he was also smart enough to acknowledge when he needed help, no matter how much it hurt to do so.

“Okay, Skywalker,” the Grand Admiral said after a moment. “We’ll discuss this later, if there is a later. I understand you’ve given us some telemetry that might shift the balance here. If that works, we’ll regroup with the rest of the fleet at Yaga Minor. Civilian refugees are heading for Muunilinst, but we suspect the Vong will follow our forces, to keep us off balance. If you beat us there, look for Captain Arien Yage of the frigate Widowmaker. She used to serve with me on the Chimaera; if she survived Bastion, she’ll listen to you.”

“Understood.” Mara and Luke exchanged glances. “Good luck.”

The Grand Admiral closed the line. For a moment, no one on Jade Shadow spoke. It was Jacen who finally stated the obvious.

“It had to happen,” he said. “We knew it was inevitable, even if they didn’t want to admit it.”

“That doesn’t make it any easier to watch.” Luke’s voice was slightly reproving. His eyes were haunted by the deaths everyone was feeling.

“I wish there was something we could do,” Tekli muttered.

“Unless it’s likely to create a fleet out of thin air, you’re better off not wishing,” Mara said, glancing back at her briefly. “They had their chance to join with us, and they didn’t take it. I’ll bet the Yuuzhan Vong left them alone, knowing the Imperials would never join in—not until provoked, anyway. When their spies said they’d had just enough time to get over Ithor, to relax the defenses, the Vong hit them with everything they could spare. It’s what I would have done in their shoes. Flatten the Empire with whatever resources they can get, this far out, and get rid of a niggling irritant. Then put those resources back into the real battle, elsewhere. Do it quickly enough and those forces won’t be missed.”

“If the Empire survives, it may prove to be more than just an irritant,” Luke said. He backed away to give his wife clear access to the controls. “What’s the name of that other Star Destroyer? Do you recognize it?”

“It’s pretty banged up, but I think it’s the Superior.”

“The Yuuzhan Vong aren’t going to let them wander around here forever.”

“Your guess at how much longer they can last is as good as mine, Luke. Pellaeon can probably handle this lot, if they take out the yammosk, but anything tougher will turn him into metal rain for that moon over there.”

“And us with him, if we stick around.” Master Skywalker was clearly unhappy about the decision he was being forced to make. On the one hand, Saba guessed, he wanted to stay and add the Jade Shadow to the Imperial forces withdrawing from Bastion. On the other, he had the mission itself to think of: the hunt for Zonama Sekot. Being destroyed wouldn’t solve anything.

Her claws itched at the thought of running from battle, at leaving another planet to the nonexistent mercy of the Yuuzhan Vong. But harsh though it sounded, it seemed that leaving Bastion in favor of the mission did make the most sense.

“We’ll meet them at Yaga Minor,” Master Luke said, sighing heavily.

“The old stomping ground.”

“Can you get us safely out of the giant’s gravity well?”

Mara responded unhesitatingly. “Of course. I can outfly the scarheads with my eyes closed.”

“Then do it,” her husband said.

“Better strap in. This isn’t going to be the gentle scenic stroll we were promised.”

Saba left them to handle Jade Shadow and strapped herself into a seat in the passenger bay. Danni Quee, who had sat pale-faced and silent through the entire encounter, remained in position to Saba’s right, next to Jacen Solo and Tekli. This was a familiar configuration. They had spent much of their voyage in readiness for mishap, despite Mara’s words. Every time they had come out of hyperspace—and even during longer jumps, for the Yuuzhan Vong interdictor ships were an ever-present concern—they had been safely strapped in, just in case.

Now that “in case” had happened, Saba found the familiarity soothing. The hunt had begun. All that remained was to see if the prey perished, or if the hunter went hungry. The matter of who out of the Yuuzhan Vong and the Empire was the hunter, and who was the prey, she hadn’t decided yet. But even from what little she had experienced of Grand Admiral Pellaeon, she already knew that he was not the sort to be readily preyed upon. He would have surprised many would-be hunters by turning on them at the last moment and showing unsuspected teeth. Perhaps this time would be another.

The niggling thought that even the sharpest teeth could be blunted with time followed her as Jade Shadow raced through hyperspace to the rendezvous point.

Jacen took the navigator’s seat in Jade Shadow’s cockpit when they emerged from hyperspace a discreet distance from Yaga Minor. The planet was known for shipyards that serviced the Imperial Remnant, and via the screens he looked on, impressed, at the vast orbital frameworks that dwarfed Yaga Minor’s single, small moon. Everything from microwelders to self-contained ore smelters was being used to create ships for the ever-growing fleet. Two half-completed Star Destroyers hung in the spindly embrace of one of the shipyards; the others were in the process of building various freighters, frigates, tugs, and TIE fighters. An engine-testing range near one of the yards flashed every color of the rainbow—and beyond—as vessels ran through their paces before being released into service.

When Jade Shadow arrived, the remains of the fleet stationed around the Imperial capital and its neighbor, Muunilinst, were slowly coming into orbit around Yaga Minor—disheartened by the retreat but determined to fight back. The first of the survivors docked their ships alongside the Golan III Defense Platforms orbiting the planet, while those needing repairs headed for the yards. It wasn’t long, though, before the available berths were full. Yaga Minor wasn’t designed to accommodate the entire fleet at once, not even one reduced by the surprise attack on Bastion.

Jade Shadow’s long-range sensors detected three Star Destroyers arriving from Bastion, neither of them Chimaera or Superior. Jacen waited anxiously for any sign of Gilad Pellaeon. If the Grand Admiral didn’t survive the battle of Bastion, Jacen didn’t fancy their chances of bringing around the Imperials. Pellaeon had so often been the voice of reason in the proud isolationist state. If anyone was going to convince the Moffs to join the Galactic Alliance, it was going to have to be him.

“How long do we wait for him to appear?” Danni asked Jacen quietly from behind, not wanting to startle him. She still looked nervous. Their escape from Bastion had been much narrower than Mara had let on, he knew, and Danni was Force-sensitive enough to have guessed it. Indeed, their trip thus far, from Mon Calamari across Yuuzhan Vong-occupied territory, had been enough to put anyone on edge. Once he would have felt safe upon reaching the Imperial Remnant, but the attack on Bastion had dispelled that comfort.

“To be honest,” he said, “I don’t know. What I do know, though, is that Gilad Pellaeon is a survivor. If he can get out of there, he will.”

Proximity alarms bleeped and Jacen turned his attention to his aunt’s voice as she explained who they were to a squadron of TIE fighters that had noticed Jade Shadow lurking in the planet’s outer orbits. But there was none of the usual Imperial hostility in the squadron leader’s voice, as he was expecting. If anything, the pilot seemed relieved that Jade Shadow wasn’t an advance vessel from the Yuuzhan Vong, scoping out Yaga Minor for the next wave.

My enemy’s enemy is my friend, Jacen reminded himself. If Gilad Pellaeon didn’t make it, then at least they would have that going in their favor.

His relief was short-lived, however, when another call came over the subspace band.

“Unauthorized vehicle identifying itself as Jade Shadow,” said the deep, guttural voice through the comm unit. In his voice Jacen detected nothing but officiousness. “Please respond.”

“This is Jade Shadow,” Mara replied. “What is it now?”

“You are required to state your intentions and prepare to be boarded.”

“What? We’re on a peaceful mission.”

“That remains to be seen,” the voice continued. “Do as you’re told immediately or your engines will be disabled.”

“I’d like to see you try,” Mara snarled. “Who am I talking to? Which idiot sent you?”

“I am Commander Keten and I represent Moff Flennic of Yaga Minor. You are violating Imperial space and will be fired upon if you do not obey its regulations.”

Now this was more what Jacen had come to expect of the Imperials. He moved back through to the cockpit to find Luke and Mara conferring over how to respond to the commander’s demands. Through the massive transparisteel canopy, Jacen saw an armed Imperial transport moving to match orbits, accompanied by a dozen TIE fighters.

“What do you want to do?” Luke was saying.

Mara looked uncertain. “I don’t know. I need time to think.”

“Time we don’t have, my love,” Luke said.

“I don’t see what the problem is,” Jacen put in. “Why not just let them board? It’s not as though we have anything to hide.”

Luke nodded. “He’s right, Mara. And it will be a gesture of goodwill, besides.”

Jacen felt warmed by his uncle’s support. Mara, however, was not as convinced. She shook her head, rejecting the idea.

“I know Flennic’s type,” she said. “He’ll have a chip on his shoulder bigger than a Super Star Destroyer. Let him get ahold of us and we’ll end up in some shipyard sweatshop for the rest of our lives.”

“Which might not be that long if the Yuuzhan Vong keep coming this way,” Luke returned wryly.

“Please respond immediately,” the commander said shortly. “Or we will be forced to take action.”

A smile touched Mara’s lips as an idea sprang to mind. “With the Jedi we have on board, all we have to do is get Keten here and we can make the problem go away.”

Into the comm unit, she said: “We see your point, Commander. Our passenger space is limited, but we’d be pleased to welcome you aboard. When you see for your own eyes that—”

Keten cut her off with a chuckle. “You don’t honestly think that I’d be the one coming aboard, do you? I’d sooner stick my head in a drive tube than take my chances with your Jedi mind tricks. No, the boarding party will consist solely of Mark Five security droids.”

Mara cursed under her breath. “Well, there goes that idea.”

“You can hardly blame him for being suspicious,” Jacen said. “You were intending to use those Jedi mind tricks, after all.”

His uncle sighed. “Well, we can’t very well turn him down now,” he said. “Not after agreeing to be boarded.”

The communicator bleeped. Another transport was edging closer.

“This is Captain Yage of Widowmaker,” a woman’s voice said over the comm. “Commander Keten, you may stand down. I shall be boarding this vessel myself, seeing as you will not.”

“But Captain—” Keten started.

Yage cut him off sharply. “May I remind you, Commander, that right here and now I outrank you,” she said. “I am ordering you to stand down, and I expect you to comply without debate.”

There was a long pause before Keten finally came back with, “I shall submit to your authority, Captain, but I would like it to go on record that I do so under protest.”

“Duly noted, Commander,” Yage said. “Yage out.”

The armed transport and its contingent of fighters accelerated to a lower orbit, leaving Jade Shadow to face the new arrival.

“Requesting permission to dock, Jade Shadow,” Captain Yage said over the comm.

“The same Captain Yage Pellaeon told us to look out for,” Luke reminded Mara.

“That’s not the highest recommendation,” Mara said, “but it will have to do.” Speaking into the communicator, she said: “Feel free to match velocities and extend your umbilical, Captain. Welcome aboard.”

Jacen went back through the ship to ready the air lock. Jade Shadow was relatively cramped, given the extra equipment she had been fitted with along with the supplies required for their extended mission. There were five staterooms, a passenger bay, a galley, and a common area leading off a central, looping corridor. The bridge and common room were the diamonds in the corridor’s ring. The main air lock hatch with its dummy door was located on the port side.

As he passed through the passenger bay, he was met by Danni coming the other way.

“Is everything okay?” she asked quickly as he passed.

“Better than it could have been,” he said. “I’m just going to greet the locals now.”

He hesitated at the entrance to the main corridor, looking back at the scientist. So far throughout the trip, Danni hadn’t really had a chance to contribute in any way. He couldn’t blame her for looking and sounding so anxious.

“I don’t suppose you’d like to join me, would you?” he asked.

Her worried expression dissolved into a grateful smile as she followed him out of the passenger bay, obviously pleased to be finally doing something. When they reached the air lock, Jacen double-checked that his lightsaber was at his side, just in case this Captain Yage was not as reliable as Pellaeon had suggested she would be. From the corner of his eye he caught Danni watching him. He faced her fully when he saw the apprehension on her face.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She shook her head. “Why do I keep allowing myself to get talked into these things, Jacen?”

He frowned, confused. “I didn’t think I talked you into anything,” he said. “I just thought you might like to come along and greet—”

“No, not here!” she said. “Here—on this mission.”

Jacen nodded, understanding the core of her reservations. “The locals can’t be that bad, can they?” He tried to ease her concerns with a smile.

She shrugged. “I’ve never actually met Imperials before. But I do remember the stories my parents used to tell me.” She paused, her eyes flitting nervously from the air lock to Jacen. “They can’t all be monsters, can they?”

“No. They’re human, Danni, just like us.” He leaned against the bulkhead next to her, enjoying the momentary quiet the two of them had been granted. “You know, I wonder sometimes what it’ll be like when the war is over. What do you suppose we’ll do when we’re not being asked to do stuff like this?”

“We’ll go back to doing whatever it was we did before all of this started, I guess,” she said.

He laughed a little at this. “It’s been so long now that those days before the Yuuzhan Vong arrived are starting to blur. It gets harder and harder each day to recall just what it was like back then.”

“Maybe that’s a good thing,” she said. “A break with the past. If we can get the Empire to join up, that’ll make the Galactic Alliance something truly new. Who knows? We might just find galactic unity yet.”

“That’s all well and good,” he said, “but I wonder about the small things, too. What I’ll do, not just what happens to the galaxy.”

“You’ll do what Jedi Knights seem to do best,” she said. He studied her for a second. “Which is?”

“Get into trouble, of course,” she said. Despite her nervousness, she forced a smile.

He smiled in return, glad that her mood had lightened. “I’d just as happily settle for a quiet life somewhere. There’s a lot left to think about. A lifetime or two’s worth, in fact.”

“It could get lonely.”

“It could indeed.” He thought it nothing more than a flip comment until his gaze met hers. Suddenly he found it hard to look away.

“Jacen?” Mara’s voice from his comlink snapped him out of it.

“Yeah,” he said, straightening. “I’m here.”

“Ten seconds,” she said. “I’ll disarm the outer hatch when the umbilical is pressurized.”

A moment later a dull thud echoed through the hull as the Imperial transport sealed an umbilical to attach the two craft. Pressure readings on the far side of the air lock rose steadily once the noise died away. Less than a minute later, Jacen heard a gentle hiss as the air lock broke its seal and swung open.

He glanced at Danni. Her face was set in a determined mask, with no sign of the vulnerability he had sensed a moment before. But she tensed noticeably as three people in Imperial uniform stepped through the air lock. The one in the lead, a solidly built woman in her forties with black hair bound tightly into a bun, Jacen assumed to be Captain Yage, with the two male officers following close behind, their blaster rifles at the ready, her bodyguards.

“Welcome aboard Jade Shadow,” Jacen said pleasantly, stepping forward. He introduced himself and Danni, keeping his hands respectfully behind his back at all times. Yage bowed perfunctorily to each of them in turn, but made no effort to introduce her male companions. “We’d like to thank you for your assistance back there.”

“Not at all,” the captain said. “I have never been fond of time-wasting bureaucracy—particularly from the likes of officious idiots like Keten.” She smiled tightly. “That’s off the record, of course.”

“Of course.” Jacen waved the guests through to the common area, where Mara and Luke stood, ready to greet them. Off to one side stood Saba and Tekli. Jacen noted the way Yage’s bodyguards started in alarm at the sight of the enormous Barabel, their rifles rising slightly. Yage was startled also, he was sure, but she was professional enough to suppress any sign of her surprise. Saba rumbled slightly in her throat, and the troopers lowered their weapons.

Yage inclined her head politely to the two nonhumans when introduced, but quickly returned her attention to Luke and Mara.

“So at last I meet the legendary Skywalkers,” she said, stepping forward to shake their hands. “I’ve certainly heard a lot about you.”

“All untrue, I’m sure,” Mara said pleasantly.

“I hope not. Gilad speaks very highly of you both.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve heard if Grand Admiral Pellaeon has returned from Bastion,” Luke said.

A shadow seemed to pass across Captain Yage’s face. “I’m afraid that Fleet Intelligence is in disarray following the Yuuzhan Vong’s attack.”

“Have you learned anything more about how the enemy managed to do so much damage so quickly?”

“I already know why. We were taken disgracefully off guard by the attack. Our spies had reported that the fleet approaching us was headed for Nirauan, not here at all, but I guess our spies weren’t as reliable as we’d thought. Even so, we should have been ready. Anyone with half a brain should have seen the flaw in the reasoning that, if we hadn’t been attacked yet, we were unlikely to be attacked at all. Our refusal to join with the rest of the galaxy in resisting didn’t make us safe. That type of logic didn’t work for the Hutts, so why should it have worked for us?”

“It seems to me,” Mara said, “that you’re paying the price for the council’s lack of foresight.”

“Perhaps now the Moffs will see reason,” Jacen added.

Yage half turned to look at him. “You think so? You’ve already seen what Moff Flennic thinks of you. He might try to resist the Yuuzhan Vong, but he’ll never join the people who took the Empire away from him.” She looked at each of them in turn, her gaze finally coming to rest on Luke. “That’s why you’re here, isn’t it? To try again to get us to join you. We already have a treaty. What more do you want?”

“Ideally,” Luke said, “we’d like the Empire to become part of the Galactic Alliance—but that’s one for our respective legal representatives to argue out. For now we’d simply like us to agree to help each other before we continue on with—”

“We can fight well enough without your help,” Yage quickly pointed out. She may have been more courteous and diplomatic than Keten, but she still carried the Imperial pride. “We’re ready for them now.”

“You won’t get far using your existing techniques,” Mara said. “Our greatest minds have been working on a way to counterattack using the yammosks that make the Yuuzhan Vong so hard to beat. We can give you those techniques—”

“In exchange for what?” the captain interrupted, a slight suspicion gently curling the corners of her mouth.

“Absolutely nothing,” Luke said. “I’m not a diplomat, Captain. I’m a Jedi, I stand for life and peace, and I would never hold anything back for the sake of political point scoring. I’d rather get about the business of saving lives.”

A thrill went through Jacen at his uncle and former teacher’s words. They rang true to the new philosophy of the Force that he was trying to determine. Captain Yage, however, was not as easily impressed, and raised a skeptical eyebrow at the Jedi Master.

“Don’t Yuuzhan Vong lives count to you, Jedi?” she asked.

Luke didn’t recoil from her response. “The Yuuzhan Vong are the aggressors, and our help won’t guarantee their defeat. What you do with this information is up to you.”

“To be honest, Skywalker, if it was up to me, I’d use it quite happily,” she said. “But things will be grim without Gilad to champion your cause. The hard-liners will always believe that the Empire in its glory days could have withstood the invaders with ease, and that your weakening of our strength has led directly to our destruction. If destroyed we must be, then we will go down with pride.” Her voice was steeped in bitterness. “The last refugees from Bastion arrived some time ago. We’re not expecting any more. If Gilad had survived, I’m sure he would have been here by now. With that in mind, you might be better off assuming that he won’t be here to help you.”

The mood in Jade Shadow turned instantly grim. “Then we shall need to make alternative plans,” Luke said. “We’ll need to talk to Flennic, even if he’s not prepared to listen to us. Can you get us to him without turning us over to the likes of Keten?”

She pursed her lips thoughtfully. “I can try,” she said. “With Gilad out of the way, the anti-Galactic Alliance forces will be in ascendance. Add to that the fact that the Moff Council will be in tatters after the attacks on Bastion and Muunilinst, and you’ll see why I hesitate to guarantee you anything at the—” She stopped as her comlink buzzed. “Excuse me.”

Captain Yage turned away to take the call, exchanging a few simple words with the person on the other end. Before she had finished talking, before he had even seen her face, Jacen knew something was wrong. He could sense a powerful emotion radiating from her.

“What’s gone wrong?” he asked when she clipped the comlink back on her belt.

“That was my second in command on Widowmaker,” she said. “A shuttle just made it from Bastion containing injured ferried from Chimaera.” Her troubled eyes met Luke’s. “Gilad was on board.”

“That’s good news, isn’t it?” Jacen said.

She shook her head. “Not really,” she said. “He’s in a coma, and he’s not expected to live.”

Anakin’s mother came to see Tahiri the day before the Millennium Falcon was due to leave on its mission to patch up the communications gaps in Galactic Alliance space. Jacen and the others had left two days earlier, leaving a surprising hole in Tahiri’s life. Since she’d learned that she had been intended for that mission, she felt as though she had let everyone down. She wasn’t doing much to help the war effort by huddling in Master Cilghal’s infirmary, that was for sure. Jaina came when she could, but she was too busy organizing Twin Suns’ departure to be wasting time with the sick. Anakin’s sister had said it was not a problem, and that she didn’t mind taking time out to visit Tahiri, but Tahiri felt guilty nonetheless for inconveniencing her. She had caused Jaina enough trouble as it was.

So when the Mon Calamari nurse announced that Princess Leia herself had dropped by to visit, Tahiri was more than a little surprised—as well as embarrassed.

“How are you feeling?” Anakin’s mother pulled up a seat and sat close to the edge of Tahiri’s bed. Mon Cal’s sun was setting, sending brilliant colors through the window and across the middle-aged stateswoman. There were many lines on her face, but they came from laughter and kindness and compassion. It was easy to see why Han Solo loved her. She was still very much a beautiful woman, with her eyes being her most outstanding feature. And whenever Tahiri looked into those eyes, she felt she could see Anakin staring back at her.

“I’m fine, thank you,” Tahiri lied, blinking back the tears that were welling up.

Leia narrowed her eyes in friendly accusation.

Tahiri relented with a smile. “Okay,” she said. “It’s true that I have seen better days. I’ll admit that much. But I’m just more tired than anything else. Even the small trip to see Jade Shadow off kind of took it out of me.” She shrugged. “Other than that, I think I’m doing all right.”

“There’s no rush,” Leia said. “The important thing is that you get well. Cilghal tells me that you’ve put on weight, which is good news. She believes that your weight loss constitutes the total of your physical symptoms. Once you think you’re ready, you’re free to leave.” She paused, allowing space for Tahiri to speak. When nothing was said after a few seconds, Leia asked, “Do you think you’re ready?”

Tahiri didn’t know how to answer. She knew that she could get up and walk out of the door anytime she wanted, but she didn’t know what would happen after. The dreams hadn’t stopped; if anything they’d become worse. If she left now, they would gnaw at her as they had before, and before she knew it she would be back in the infirmary again, still unable to explain to everyone just what was happening to her.

She didn’t want to leave; she felt safe here. But she also couldn’t stay forever. The infirmary was for sick people, and she was—

What? What was she, exactly? She didn’t know, and that was the problem.

Leia placed a hand on her arm, and Tahiri realized that she still hadn’t replied to the question.

“I want you with us when we leave,” Leia said softly.

Tahiri felt herself recoil in surprise. “You can’t be serious.”

Leia frowned. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Tahiri struggled for the words that would help make sense of everything that was happening in her head, but none were forthcoming. So she made excuses instead. “I’m not a very good pilot,” she said. “Or a politician!”

“But you are a Jedi Knight, Tahiri,” said Leia. “And that is something else entirely.”

“You have Jaina,” Tahiri pointed out.

“Who is also a colonel, and has other responsibilities.”

Tahiri didn’t know what to say. You’re a Jedi Knight. The words didn’t sound right, didn’t feel right, and that only renewed her guilt and reinforced her belief that she had betrayed her friends. Worse, she had betrayed the memory of Anakin.

Had he ever felt such self-doubts? she wondered.

It was unlikely. None of the Solos seemed to be burdened with such a weakness. They always knew exactly who they were and what they were doing. They were the most focused people she had ever met. The most sure of themselves.

Except for Jacen. He had doubts. She knew that he was still wrestling with his relationship with the Force and the council that Luke Skywalker had formed. Perhaps she should have spoken to him while she’d had the chance. But it was too late now. He was in a completely different part of the galaxy, and who knew when he was coming back?

“We all have doubts about ourselves, sometimes,” Leia said, and Tahiri was appalled to realize that she had fallen silent again. “It’s part of what makes us sentient beings, Tahiri. Doubt makes us examine ourselves and all that we do. And without the ability to do that, we become nothing short of monsters. I had doubts when I joined the Rebellion, all those years ago, and I had doubts when I married Han. But it’s unlikely that Grand Moff Tarkin had doubts about destroying Alderaan.” She paused for a moment, reflectively. “Don’t be ashamed of doubt, Tahiri; it’s a perfectly acceptable feeling.”

Tahiri was surprised to see tears sparkling in Leia’s brown eyes, although whether they were for her destroyed home, she couldn’t be sure. Then Leia reached out a hand and placed it over Tahiri’s.

“I think,” Leia said, “that you need the chance to find out who you are, Tahiri Veila, and I’d like to give that chance to you. What do you say?”

A chance to find out who she was … For a moment, Tahiri froze, wondering what Jacen had told his mother. Was this some kind of game? But when she looked into Leia’s eyes, all she saw was softness and sympathy. There were no games. This was real.

You will always be family to us, Jacen had written. The notion of family tugged strongly at her. Her parents had been killed in a raid by Sand People on Tatooine when she was a toddler. She was taken in by Tusken Raiders and raised by Sliven, who had died not long after she had been taken to the Jedi academy. She had no one else in the universe, except—

No, she told herself, forcing down the darkness that rose like a tide inside her. I will not think these thoughts!

So she nodded. “Thank you,” she said, forcing a smile.

“And I’ll try not to be too much of a burden on you all.”

Leia smiled back and squeezed her hand. “You will be an asset, Tahiri. More than you realize.”

Some of Leia’s warmth stayed with Tahiri after she had gone, but not for long. Night had fallen, and there was a slight chill to the air stealing through the open viewport. Tahiri closed it and curled under the covers, shivering. The scars on her forehead were aching, as though a vise was tightening around her skull. She sensed someone else in the room with her, but was too afraid to lift her head and look.

If I ignore her, she told herself, maybe she’ll just go away.

“Tell me more,” Nom Anor said. He stared across at I’pan sitting opposite him, the light from the fire flickering on his haggard features.

I’pan nodded eagerly and did as he was told. “As they near the end of their quest, the Shamed One Vua Rapuung and the Jeedai Anakin Solo are stopped by another group of warriors—this one even larger than the one before. This group once served under Rapuung himself, before he was Shamed. They challenge Rapuung and question why he is consorting with an infidel.

“ ‘I have nothing to be redeemed for,’ Rapuung tells them proudly.

“ ‘We know your claims,’ the warriors respond.

“ ‘You believe me cursed by the gods?’

“ ‘Whatever you are, whether cursed or not, you have clearly gone mad. You fight with an infidel against your own kind!’

“Now, Rapuung can understand why these warriors would think him gone mad—he would have surely felt the same had he seen another warrior fighting against him with an infidel at their side! But his circumstances allow him no choice; this is his only way to fight for the truth.

“So, Rapuung challenges the warriors to defeat him alone, without the Jeedai at his side, so that he may prove his worthiness.”

Nom Anor narrowed his eyes. “But did you not say before that he had no amphistaff?”

I’pan nodded, standing to give his retelling more impact, his arms gesturing with theatrical flair. “ ‘Take up a weapon, Rapuung,’ the warriors insist. ‘Do not make us kill an unarmed man.’

“But Rapuung is determined. ‘I have triumphed thus far without weapons,’ he says. ‘If the gods hated me so, would they have allowed this?’

“The warriors have no good answer to this, nor to his skill in battle, and, with the Jeedai’s blessing, Vua Rapuung defeats them single-handedly.”

Nom Anor listened with the same rapt attentiveness as the others in the small fugitive group, huddling around the heat radiating from the fire. In the story, which took place on the captured world Yavin 4, Vua Rapuung was supposedly Shamed by the gods and therefore his implants wouldn’t take. Believing that he had in fact been betrayed by his former lover, the shaper Mezhan Kwaad, he sought revenge on her. Along the way, he came across the Jedi Anakin Solo who assisted him in his quest, teaching Rapuung the Jedi heresy as he went. Initially reluctant, the Shamed One had been converted, much to the horror of those who had once known him. Even the Shamed Ones didn’t defy the gods.

What happened next was quite unknown to Nom Anor, even though he had studied the events that had taken place on Yavin 4 in some detail, analyzing the details of a quite different heresy: that of the shaper Nen Yim, who had also been stationed there. She, along with Mezhan Kwaad, the same woman in I’pan’s story, had been trying to bend the mind of a young Jedi girl over to the ways of the Yuuzhan Vong. Ultimately, the experiment had failed, and both Mezhan Kwaad and Commander Tsaak Vootuh had been killed in the girl’s escape. Nom Anor knew all this; he had seen recordings of some of the events I’pan was relating; he had even met the Jedi Anakin Solo briefly while in the Yag’Dhul system. His spies had brought word of various versions of this story circulating through the lower castes. But he had never heard anything like the rest of the story that I’pan was relating to the attentive group.

“Go on,” said Niiriit Esh, the former warrior who governed the small band of underground dwellers that Nom Anor had come to call his companions.

I’pan crouched down again to take up his tale, every eye present fixed unflinchingly upon him as they waited for him to continue. He was a good storyteller, and was clearly in his element relating the adventures of Vua Rapuung and the Jedi.

“On the landing ramp of the ship that would take them to safety, Commander Vootuh and shaper Mezhan Kwaad are forced to confront Vua Rapuung and the Jeedai,” he went on. “Out of respect for what he once was, Rapuung demands that he be allowed to question his former lover in order to clear his name.

“ ‘I see no ‘Vua Rapuung,’ Commander Vootuh says. ‘Only a Shamed One who does not know his place.’

“ ‘It is not I who is Shamed,’ Rapuung replies. ‘Do as the Jeedai says, and know the truth.’

“But shaper Mezhan Kwaad only sneers at this, saying that there is no sense in listening to the demented lies of Rapuung. ‘He fights by the side of an infidel,’ she says. ‘What more do you need to hear?’

“Then from the crowd that has gathered by the ramp steps Hul Rapuung, Vua’s brother. He is a proud warrior with no stain upon his honor. ‘Do you fear the truth, Mezhan Kwaad?’ he asks. ‘If he is mad, then what harm will speaking to him do?’

“Mezhan Kwaad has no good reply to this, and Commander Vootuh, having already exposed the shaper in treachery, allows Rapuung one question of his former lover. But he informs her that she must answer truthfully, for the truth hearer will surely detect any lies uttered.

“Vua Rapuung stands tall among those who revile him and asks his question.”

The chamber in which they sat was silent as they waited for I’pan to reveal Rapuung’s question. He paused deliberately, dramatically, his gaze flitting briefly to each one sitting there before speaking again.

“ ‘Mezhan Kwaad,’ Rapuung says, ‘did you intentionally rob me of my implants, ruin my scars, and give me the appearance of being Shamed? Did you do these things to me, Mezhan Kwaad, or did the gods?’

“The shaper is silent for a moment, the look on her face too horrible to behold. She has been trapped, and all present know it.

“ ‘There are no gods!’ she cries.” I’pan stood tall, his hands reaching for the ceiling, as if this in some way would make the shaper’s exclamation more powerful than it already was. “ ‘This wretched thing that stands before me is my doing!’ ”

Everyone gasped at this—all except Nom Anor who, while intrigued by the story, was not as easily impressed by I’pan’s histrionics.

“Then,” I’pan said, lowering his arms to his side, “with a base treachery that overshadows any she has shown before, she strikes Commander Vootuh and Rapuung, killing them both.”

A sigh of remorse and disappointment went up from the group listening to the story. Nom Anor could empathize. The Shamed One Vua Rapuung had been vindicated at last, only to die an animal’s death moments later, unable to defend himself against the biological trickery of the shaper.

“There the matter might have rested,” I’pan said, “but for the Jeedai. Before the treacherous Mezhan Kwaad can escape, she is slain by the infidels. They defend Vua Rapuung’s honor at great risk to their own lives. They are alone on this world, surrounded by an army of mighty Yuuzhan Vong warriors who even now move in around them. Not even their superior powers—their Force—can possibly save them.

“As a group of warriors loyal to the old gods move forward to do battle with the brave but doomed Jeedai, another group confronts them, led by Hul Rapuung, the redeemed Shamed One’s brother. Out of respect for Vua’s memory, he says, the Jeedai should be allowed to go free. They saved one of the warriors’ own number from shame and dishonor; do they not, then, deserve to live?

“No, say the ones who cling to the old ways. The Jeedai are infidels. They defy the gods.

“Pointing at his brother’s cooling body, Hul Rapuung responds: ‘How many of you fought with him? Who ever questioned the courage of Vua Rapuung? Who ever doubted the gods loved him?’

“A muttering rises from the ranks of warriors gathered around him, and the two factions grip their amphistaffs tightly.

“ ‘You will die,’ say those who stand before Hul Rapuung. ‘What is the point of that?’

“ ‘A salute to the Jeedai!’ cries Hul Rapuung in defiance, striking at the air with his spitting amphistaff. ‘A salute of blood!’

“The two parties clash, Yuuzhan Vong fighting Yuuzhan Vong, old teachings versus the new. Amphistaffs rise and fall, whipping and snapping at vonduun crab armor. Warriors die at the hands of those they once called allies—and it is those touched by the Jeedai heresy who fall. Outnumbered by the followers of the old way, of Yun-Yuuzhan and his servant, Supreme Overlord Shimrra, those who stood for the honor of Vua Rapuung fall to the last warrior.

“But their sacrifice has not been in vain. When the victors turn from battling their fellows to destroy the infidels, they find that both the Jeedai Anakin Solo and his companion have escaped.”

I’pan paused to sip from a cup of water. His audience sat in silence, caught in the events of that distant day on Yavin 4.

“Then the Jedi heresy should have ended there,” Nom Anor said. He scanned the faces of those around him. “But you are all the spawn of that heresy, are you not?”

I’pan nodded, taking his place in the circle around the fire. “It would have ended,” he said, “had it not been witnessed by the Shamed Ones watching from the edge of the battle, by the shapers’ damutek. They spread the word, and that word continues to spread—from mouth to ear among those like us. There is another way for us Shamed Ones, a way that leads to redemption. We have found a new hope, and the word for that new hope is Jeedai.”

I’pan bowed slightly to indicate the completion of the tale. Although those gathered had probably heard the story many times over, they had sat entranced throughout the telling as though listening to the words for the first time. There was a smattering of shoulder slapping from around the group, while a couple of others stood and moved away to perform other duties.

Those remaining turned their attention to Nom Anor. This was the first time he had heard the story in its entirety, and they were curious to see what his reaction would be. If he was as moved by the story as they obviously were, then he was clearly one of them. Even though he had been with them a couple of weeks now, helping them establish their new home and working around the camp as needed, he had still not been fully embraced into the fold. He had learned very quickly that trust among the Shamed Ones was more important than virtually anything else, and their sharing of the tale with him was the first indication of that trust being extended to him.

The former warrior Niiriit Esh was watching for his response more than anyone else, studying him closely through the thin flames from the fire that licked at the darkness. He stared back at her, unsure of how the tale had made him feel. The story was without doubt different from the one he had taken from his research on the Yavin 4 shaper heresy. The order of events was wrong in places, and some words had been said by others than those they were attributed to. Even the very essence of the story had changed. This story had resonance, clearly—a resonance that even he was not immune to. And perhaps that might explain how it had spread, despite the odds. Hearing that a pro-Jedi sentiment was spreading through the ranks of the Shamed Ones on Yavin 4, Warmaster Tsavong Lah had ordered all the Shamed Ones sacrificed in order to cleanse the world of heresy. And yet, somehow, the story had still managed to get out.

The thing that struck Nom Anor most about the story was that he himself, who had studied the incident in some detail, and who had access to the recordings of the original events, had not remembered the disgraced warrior at the center of it. Rapuung was just a Shamed One who’d been betrayed by his ex-lover, the shaper who had feared he might expose her heresy to her superiors. But now she was dead, while his name continued to live in the whispers of all Shamed Ones across the galaxy. His deeds had given hope to all those like him. Vua Rapuung was a legend.

As were the Jedi. Somehow their passive role in Rapuung’s death had been transformed into a myth of hope for the Shamed Ones. If they ever knew …

“I can tell that you are moved,” Niiriit said to him. “Do you see now why we live as we do?”

He nodded, understanding for the first time that it was more than simply preferring squalor to indignity. “It is a powerful message.” He looked over to I’pan. “How did you come to hear it?”

“It was first told to me by one in my work detail on Duro,” he answered, picking at the stringy meat of a partially cooked hawk-bat. “Varesh had heard it from his crèche-mate who in turn had heard it from one of her friends shipped here from Sriluur. Since then I have heard it many times from many people—each time slightly different from the last.” Without the animation of his storytelling to hide behind, I’pan appeared once again awkward and self-conscious. “The version I have told is but one of many.”

“Then how can you be sure it is the truth?” Nom Anor asked.

“I cannot,” I’pan admitted. “I have no way of knowing whether the version I first heard, the one I have related to you, is more true than any of the others.” He paused to spit a bit of gristle into the fire, glancing up to Nom Anor as it sizzled in the flames. “But it is the one that feels right to me.”

There was a murmur of assent from those remaining. By the reddish light of the fire, Nom Anor could see their unblinking eyes still filled with the scenes that I’pan had related. The misshapen, dirty, rejected band clearly wanted the story to be true. If there was hope for Vua Rapuung, then there might be hope for them, too. Exactly what the hope was for, Nom Anor couldn’t tell. He didn’t know if the Shamed Ones expected the Jedi to swoop in and rescue them from their pitiful lives; perhaps they believed that by consciously mimicking the characteristics of the abominable enemy they might somehow become worthy of their farcical Force—whatever that was.

“Well?” Kunra asked in a challenging voice, from the far side of the circle. The disgraced warrior still didn’t fully trust the group’s latest addition, even though Nom Anor had gone out of his way to demonstrate nothing but worthiness in the time he’d spent with them. “What do you say, Executor?”

Nom Anor’s eye found Niiriit’s; they were shining almost supernaturally bright. There was an expression of such intensity on her face that he found it almost impossible to resist. “I say thank you, I’pan, for sharing your words with me. I am honored that you think me worthy of it. I would like very much to hear more about Vua Rapuung and the Jedi, when we have the opportunity.”

Niiriit smiled, her gaze still locked on his. He offered a smile in return, and realized only as he did that it was genuine. Of all the small band living in this underground camp, Niiriit was the only one with a mind keen enough to interest him. In the weeks since his arrival, he had enjoyed his talks with this ex-warrior the most.

Kunra, on the other hand, offered nothing more than a contemptuous grunt as he stood to leave the fireside group. As he watched him move away to the shadows, Nom Anor understood that Kunra might very well be jealous of the fact that a higher-ranking male was entering the group, thus usurping his own position. If this was true then it was stupid, although not unexpected.

And perhaps, Nom Anor thought, with so many gathered, now might be the best time to address the matter …

“You do not want me here, do you, Kunra?” he called after the ex-warrior. “You do not believe I am worthy of having Vua Rapuung’s tale entrusted to me.”

Kunra stopped and faced him, his body language defensive. “I merely reserve my judgment, Executor,” he said. “As is my right.”

“Your judgment of me?”

“Of you,” Kunra confirmed, nodding. “I argued against you hearing the story of Vua Rapuung. It is the one thing in our lives that gives us hope. Our faith that the way of the Jeedai is a better one—a fairer one for all, not just those enslaved by the old gods—sustains us when all reason tells us that we should have given up long ago. Perhaps one day, by virtue of that faith, we will have the chance to regain our self-respect and emerge from the holes in which we cower. But you—given half a chance, I am sure you would defile it in a second if you thought it would help restore you to power.”

“Are you suggesting that I would betray you?” Nom Anor asked. “You and all of those here who have taken me in and helped me?”

The ex-warrior’s muscles sensed, his scars glistening in the light. “That is exactly what I am saying, Nom Anor.”

Nom Anor stood now, also, and the Shamed Ones closest to him took an unsteady step back. Although much older and smaller than Kunra, he couldn’t back down now. To do so would be to admit that he was lying. Unfortunately, he had few other options. If he couldn’t talk the ex-warrior out of a fight—and he wouldn’t have lasted as long as he had in Shimrra’s court without being able to do that—there was always the plaeryin bol. Or if he hadn’t misjudged the leader of the Shamed Ones …

She rose to her feet and stepped between the two. “I will not allow this,” she said, her voice firm and deadly as an amphistaff.

“It’s my right to challenge him,” Kunra hissed through his teeth.

“I thought we had abandoned the old ways, Kunra,” Niiriit said. “Now you wish to embrace them again? You cannot have it both ways.”

“I understand that, but—”

“No buts, Kunra. Which is it to be? You are either with us or against us. And the same goes for you, Nom Anor,” she said, suddenly turning on him. “We are too few to fight among ourselves.”

Nom Anor bowed his head to her, partly to hide a smile of triumph. No, he hadn’t misjudged Niiriit at all. “I apologize,” he said to her. He then turned to his challenger and did the same. Playing the part of peacemaker was a new experience for him, but it was no different from any other role he had played in the past. He was a good actor. “It appears to be your right to mistrust me, Kunra. Instead of fighting you, I shall do all in my power to convince you that you are mistaken in your mistrust. Is that enough to at least allow peace between us?”

“For now,” the warrior growled.

Niiriit nodded. “Good enough,” she said. “Now sit, both of you. You’re making me weary just looking at you.”

“I think,” Nom Anor said, “that I might use this excuse to retire for the night. I have heard much that requires consideration, and I am not as young as our friend here.”

“Of course. Sleep well, Nom Anor. We shall discuss the Jeedai on another occasion.”

“I hope so.” He glanced quickly at Kunra as he spoke; the ex-warrior was grumpily thoughtful, but his anger had been successfully defused by Niiriit. That was good; Nom Anor didn’t want to be stabbed in his sleep. Nodding good night to those still around the fire, he picked his way to the top of the ventilation shaft and descended the spiraling ramp they had built within it. The gradient wasn’t steep, and the curvature was such that he completed a circle once every thirty meters or so. Within the circle of the walkway, rooms had been fashioned, two per level, that served as either crude quarters for the Shamed Ones or storerooms for the goods they had pilfered from the surface. The way was lit by the occasional lambent nest anchored to the shiny, layered surface that had been laid down by the chuk’a waste processor. It felt as if he were walking down the inside of an enormous shell.

He descended until he reached his room. Being the latest addition to the group, he lived in the quarters that had been most recently completed. There was still a tang in the air of the organic processes that had created the structure, and inside he had only the most rudimentary furniture: a rounded chest he had carved from a chuk’a egg and a dirt mattress. Nevertheless, it was still more comfortable than anything else he’d had since entering Yuuzhan’tar’s underworld.

Nom Anor waved the lights out and lay on the bed, still clothed in the ragged remains of the cloak and uniform he’d been wearing when he had arrived. He hadn’t been lying when he’d said that he had much to think about. The story of Vua Rapuung and the Jedi was an opportunity he had never dreamed of finding in the depths of Yuuzhan’tar. The strange, forbidden notions passing from mouth to ear offered him hope in the most unlikely of places. The whispers circulating through the Yuuzhan Vong underground did so like an asteroid orbiting a black hole, gaining momentum with each revolution, propelled by nothing more than the need to have something to believe in. The Shamed Ones might have brought this whisper into existence spontaneously, with nothing to back it up, simply to satisfy their terrible need for direction. But he knew the events of the Vua Rapuung story were based broadly in truth, and that made them so much stronger.

The Jedi aren’t necessarily abominations. They can redeem as easily as they could kill.

He would never have heard such whispers from his usual vantage point, far above the forlorn creatures he currently associated with. Shimrra had no idea just how close to his heart the heresy was stabbing. If Nom Anor could follow the whispers to their source, if he could expose the heresy and bring to justice the person or persons responsible for spreading the word about Yavin 4, maybe then he could regain his previous standing—and perhaps be stronger than ever.

Thank you, Vua Rapuung, forgiving me hope.

Nom Anor smiled into the darkness as he thought about Kunra’s accusation that he would sell out his fellow Shamed Ones and all they stood for in a second if he thought it would help him achieve his goals. The ex-warrior was right, of course—except, perhaps, that he wouldn’t need an entire second to do it.

*  *  *

“You can’t be serious, Leia!”

Jaina rolled her eyes as she walked in on yet another of her parents’ arguments—this one, it seemed, about the mission’s itinerary. They were in the Millennium Falcon’s main hold, poring over charts.

“We have to start somewhere,” her mother responded. “And this seems as good a place as any.”

“But couldn’t the decision have been made based on the toss of a credit or something, rather than some obscure and anonymous message?”

“What’s going on?” Jaina asked, her curiosity piqued.

“Someone managed to get into the Falcon’s computers and leave us instructions on where to go if we want to walk into a trap,” her father said hotly. “Your mother has taken it as some kind of portent and has decided to make it our first port of call.”

“Well, I’m glad to see you’re not lowering the discussion by resorting to sarcasm,” Leia shot back with some of her own. “And I admit that it’s all very suspicious, but that just makes me all the more curious to follow it up.”

“But there’s no sense to it!” Han went on. “I mean, are you trying to get us all killed?”

Leia scowled at her husband, but she ignored the remark. “Of course it makes sense, Han. The Galactic Alliance has lost contact with the Koornacht Cluster, and someone needs to check it out. That’s exactly our brief, isn’t it? So where’s the problem?”

“Where’s the problem?” Jaina’s father leaned heavily over the map displays, his jaw tightening. “We’ve lost contact with Galantos and Whettam because the Yevetha have taken advantage of our little distraction and are on the move again. And you want us to go barging in there with a handful of X-wings and a rusty old frigate? There’s the problem, Leia.”

Jaina bristled at Twin Suns Squadron being described as a “handful of X-wings,” but she didn’t say anything. Her parents needed to fight this one out, and it was better if she stayed out of the line of fire.

Leia straightened, folding her arms in front of her. It was a clear message: she had no intentions of backing down.

“They’re fine words coming from Han Solo,” she said. “And do you have any better suggestions to go with your derision, Han?”

“Sure I have,” he said, but with less self-assuredness than a moment earlier. “What’s happening in Corellia is still anyone’s guess—and then there’s the Corporate Sector. That’s practically next door to Mon Cal, and—”

“So the Senate hardly needs to send us, then, do they?”

“Maybe, Leia, but …” Han raised his hands in frustration and turned away. “Anywhere but N’zoth!”

Facing her husband’s back, Leia’s stony determination faltered. Jaina was surprised to see it, but she could understand why. The intensely xenophobic Yevetha had kidnapped and tortured her father for weeks, some years back, and would have killed him had he not been rescued by Chewbacca and Chewie’s son Lumpawarrump.

“The last we heard, their shipyard was fully functional,” Leia said, adopting a more diplomatic tone. “They’re extremely capable engineers. They’ll fight the Yuuzhan Vong, if they’re not fighting them already.”

“And then they’ll turn on us,” Han said, facing her again. “And the Fia, if they haven’t already been exterminated. Why not send someone from the Smugglers’ Alliance?”

“We need someone we can trust to do the Galactic Alliance’s work, Han, not someone who will be looking for a quick profit.”

Han looked as though he wanted to protest this, but he knew he didn’t have much of an argument on this score.

Leia put her hands on her hips and sighed. “Look, Han, I’ve discussed the security aspects with Captain Mayn and—”

“You asked Todra before you brought it up with me?”

“And,” Leia continued without answering the question, “it’s not like last time. We’re not going to pick a fight with them, and if they try it with us, then we’ll just leave.”

Han sighed now. “All right, Leia. I can see how it makes sense from your point of view. It’s a flashpoint, and we need to be there to make sure it doesn’t spread. Perfectly understandable. But what if it’s Jaina they capture, this time? Or you?”

“It won’t be me, Dad,” Jaina said softly, confidently. “I’m quite capable of looking after myself.”

Han stared at his wife and daughter, wanting to argue but realizing he couldn’t win this one. “All right,” he said after a few seconds, his eyes narrowing sternly as he pointed his finger to each of them, “but you just remember that this wasn’t my idea.”

“I’m sure you’ll be quick to remind us, should something go wrong.” Leia smiled, kissing her husband’s cheek briefly before getting back to work. There were many details to finalize before their departure.

Barely had she taken half a dozen steps from Han when the sound of boots could be heard clomping up the landing ramp and into the Falcon.

“Anyone home?” a male voice called.

“In here, Kenth,” Leia said, recognizing the Jedi’s voice.

Kenth Hamner stooped slightly as he came into the room. “I thought I’d find you here.”

Seeing his somber expression, Leia stepped over to him and placed a hand on his shoulder. “What’s wrong, Kenth? What’s happened?”

“Not Kashyyyk,” Han said, going pale. The Wookiee homeworld had recently been under threat by the Yuuzhan Vong.

“No, not Kashyyyk, I’m pleased to say.” Hamner’s expression didn’t look particularly pleased. “We’ve just heard that the Imperial Remnant is under attack. Bastion and Muunilinst have been devastated. The offensive is expected to continue toward Yaga Minor as soon as the captured territories have been secured. Subspace and HoloNet networks are down.” He turned to Leia when she opened her mouth to interrupt, as if knowing what she was about to ask. “We have no news of survivors, I’m afraid.”

Leia’s mouth closed in a thin line as she looked at her husband. “Jade Shadow jumped right into a war zone.”

“They had no way of knowing,” Han said. “It was just dumb luck.”

“All we can do,” Hamner said soberly, “is hope they weren’t caught in the battle. If they managed to retreat to a safe distance, then there’s no reason why their mission should be endangered.”

Jaina closed her eyes, her mind reaching out through the Force, seeking her twin brother. The distance between them was almost incomprehensible, but they’d felt each other before across far greater gulfs. When she called his name, she didn’t receive a reply, but she did feel an echo. He was there.

She opened her eyes and faced her mother. “Jacen’s alive,” she said.

Leia nodded. “Yes. And I would’ve felt it if anything had happened to Luke. But what about the others? And the Empire itself? If the Yuuzhan Vong have finally made a move on it, then that entire area is now unsafe. With the fleet at Bastion out of the way, they can push on into the Unknown Regions unchecked. From now on, no-place will be safe.”

“Not even the Chiss,” Jaina said. “We know the Vong have been harrying them from the outer edges of the galaxy. Now they’ll be caught in a pincer grip.”

“Only if the Empire falls,” Hamner said. “It’s too soon to say for sure one way or the other. This might only be a preemptive strike, simply warning us against using the Imperial Remnant in some sort of rearguard action against them.”

“Which is precisely what we were thinking of doing,” Han said with a grimace.

“Preemptive doesn’t necessarily mean decisive,” Hamner responded. “We know the Vong are stretched thin. To mount a major attack like this must have cost them dearly elsewhere.”

“Perhaps we should step up our strike-and-run tactics in other areas,” Leia said. “It might encourage them to withdraw the offensive.”

Hamner nodded. “I know Cal and Sien are doing just that. It will also help take the hysterical edge off some of the calls to step up the attack, too.”

“As long as we don’t play into their hands.” Leia nodded unhappily. “I just hate not knowing what’s happened to Jade Shadow. We could help them if we knew they were in trouble.”

“That in part is why I’m here,” Hamner said. “Cal sent me to make sure you wouldn’t go rushing after your brother on some foolish rescue attempt. We need you where you can do the most good.”

“He’s right, Leia,” Han said, coming up behind her and taking her shoulders in both of his large hands. “Luke and Mara can look after themselves.”

“And Jacen’s no slouch, either, Mom,” Jaina reassured her with a broad smile. “In fact, the three of them will probably send the Yuuzhan Vong packing in a day or two!”

The attempt at levity seemed to work. Jaina’s mother took a deep breath and let it out in a gust. “You’re right, of course,” she said, patting her husband’s hand as he squeezed her shoulders. “There’s a bigger picture we need to consider. Until we know for certain that there’s something wrong, we keep going as planned. To the Koornacht Cluster.”

“What was I thinking?” Han exclaimed. “If it’s not too late to change my mind, I’d like to put in a vote for Bastion. The middle of a Yuuzhan Vong war fleet has to be better than a Yevethan cell.”

“The only cell there’s likely to be,” Leia said, with a faint smile returning to her attractive features, “is the one we put you in—for disobeying orders.”

“Whose orders exactly?” Han said with mock indignation. “I’m the captain of this ship, remember?”

“You just keep telling yourself that, dear,” Leia said.

“What does that mean?” Han returned.

Jaina left them to it, confident that the argument had moved from something serious to just play-fighting. She envied them the ease with which they talked to each other now. Chewbacca and Anakin’s deaths seemed to have cemented their relationship stronger than ever. For all their sharp-sounding words, she knew they were really on the same side.

Not paying attention to where she was going, she didn’t see C-3PO coming around the Falcon’s corridor until it was too late. With a cry, the golden droid staggered backward, tripping over a carton of rations on the floor and dropping the stack of Yuuzhan Vong-detecting mouse droids he’d been balancing, scattering them over the deck. Startled by the impact, many of them bleeped in distress, scurrying off in all directions. C-3PO flailed helplessly in an attempt to right himself, but the droids kept getting under his feet and hands, keeping him off balance.

“Oh, thank you, Mistress Jaina,” he said as she grabbed him under the arms and helped him to his feet. “Beastly things! I don’t understand why Captain Solo would need so many of them.”

Jaina snatched at one of the agitated droids as it went past, but it managed to evade her grasp. Catching these things was harder than getting drewood mites from a womp rat!

“Because, Threepio,” she said, grabbing for another droid and failing again as it darted between her legs, “they’re programmed to look out for Yuuzhan Vong. Wherever we go, we can seed these droids to make sure there are no—spies.”

This last part was called out as she lunged again, this time managing to scoop one of the mouse droids off its runners. She pressed the shutdown switch on its belly, then pushed the inanimate droid into C-3PO’s arms.

“Here you go.”

“Thank you again, Mistress Jaina. But you really shouldn’t trouble yourself with this. I’m sure you must have much more important tasks to do.”

“No, not really,” she said, sticking out a foot to head off another one. “Besides, it was my fault that you dropped them in the first place.”

The job was made easier when Kenth Hamner pitched in to help, stopping on his way back from his meeting with her parents. His age made him less nimble than Jaina, but his longer reach easily compensated. Within minutes, they handed the last of the droids to C-3PO, whose thanks as he ambled off were muffled by the stack of droids once again in his arms.

“Thanks,” Jaina said to Hamner as Threepio disappeared around a corner.

“My pleasure,” he replied, dusting himself off. Then, just as she was about to continue on her way, he said, “You know, just between you and me, Cal’s more worried about the Empire than he’s letting on.” He glanced at her wryly. “You’ll let us know if you hear anything more definite from Jacen, won’t you?”

Jaina frowned, confused by Hamner’s conspiratorial tone. “Of course.”

Hamner hesitated for a moment, then nodded his thanks and continued on his way to the ramp and out of the ship.

Jaina was about to go and do a double check on the welds of a bank stabilizer her father had installed for the trip when she heard footsteps coming from the common area. She paused, waiting to see if it was her parents coming to find her. Two seconds later, though, there was the sound of her father crying out followed by a loud metallic crash.

“Oh, my,” she heard C-3PO say from down the corridor.

“Threepio!” her father yelled, as a handful of mouse droids scooted across the deck from around the corner.

Gilad Pellaeon had seen too many people die young to feel that he was, or ever would be, too old to live.

His memories came and went in flashes, as though a searchlight had briefly found them in a thick fog. His life had become a series of fragments, and he could no longer recall how the pieces fit together. There were images of his birthplace, Corellia, and Coruscant, his home during his youth, but these were swamped beneath hundreds of other memories of other worlds he had visited throughout the years; these in turn were buried beneath thousands of memories of the empty gulfs that separated these planets. He had spent almost a century in space, rarely setting foot on solid ground unless circumstances absolutely demanded it. Deep inside, his heart recognized no world as his home—not even Coruscant, which at best he had endured while there, always glad to leave. No, the closest thing to home he’d ever had was the bridge of a starship—and he’d been on too many of those to feel affection for any particular vessel. Even Chimaera, the Star Destroyer that had served him so faithfully for so long, was, in the end, just another ship.

He frowned, puzzled. The Battle of Bastion, like the rest of his life, lay in pieces in his mind. The sharpest of these pieces, the most painful, was the image of the destruction of the Star Destroyer Superior—riddled with fires and craters, tumbling to its inexorable and terrible fate in the gas giant below. Chimaera had been in almost as bad shape. His last intact memory was of a coral-skipper coming in low and fast to ram the bridge. He recalled nothing after that. How had he survived? No matter how hard he tried, he could find no memory to quell the confusion that throbbed at his temples. There was just blackness and pain.

Pellaeon’s childhood memories were lost in that same blackness. He had been born before the Empire, before the anti-alien propaganda, before the fall of the Jedi—even before the birth of the child who would grow to become Darth Vader. His first military role had been with the Judicial Forces, which he had joined at the age of fifteen, having lied about his age. From the vantage point of a ship’s deck, he had watched the tide rise and fall on so many politicians, and he had learned to be cynical about all of them—just as he had learned over the years to trust only in himself and his own judgments. That was how he had survived so many dramatic reversals. He was rarely the one at the front of the army, waving the sword and leading the charge. Gilad Pellaeon was the one more often than not standing back, ensuring his soldiers were well fed, well trained, and, above all, content. He had respect for everyone under his command—and for his enemy, too. That, above all, he thought, was why he was still alive today when so many others around him had fallen. You never knew when your enemy would become your new boss.

And that, ultimately, was the trouble with the Yuuzhan Vong. They didn’t fit into this picture at all. He’d seen what they could do firsthand at Ithor, the forest world that had been utterly destroyed by the invader. He had argued with the Moffs that they should lend all support possible to the defense of the galaxy. They, however, had resisted the idea of fighting alongside the New Republic and had proposed instead to huddle in their own corner of the galaxy and watch as those worlds around them crumbled and fell to the alien intruders, all the while remaining blithely confident that they were somehow immune.

But that confidence, that arrogance, had been effectively shaken with Bastion. Ah, yes. Bastion …

Other details emerged from the fog as the searchlight of his memory flashed across them: the first alarms as the coralskippers and strange, alien capital vessels had appeared in the system, tearing through planetary defenses as though they were made of paper. The surprise couldn’t have been more total. The disorganized way the Imperial Navy had responded to the grutchins had appalled him. After Ithor, he had done his best to ready the Empire for a Yuuzhan Vong attack, but only his Star Destroyer, Chimaera, had responded efficiently and effectively at short notice. His crew had done everything he could have asked of them.

Pain stabbed through him, as though someone had rammed a force pike into his side. The memories fled as his insides exploded with fire. His back arched, his mouth opened wide to scream out his protest at the terrible agony flaring through him. He bucked and writhed to try to reposition himself in such a manner that the pain might stop, but nothing seemed to help. Nothing, that is, except for the voice calling out to him. It wasn’t necessarily what the voice said, either, just the distraction it offered.

But then the pain closed in again, accompanied now by images of the Yuuzhan Vong’s weapons flashing murderously around his ship, and the brilliant, almost blinding explosion of TIE fighters against the night sky.

Eventually these horrific images dissolved back into the blackness, leaving just the scattered pinpoint lights of the galaxy shining against the infinite darkness of space. The sight was one he had seen many times before, and one he’d thought he could never get tired of. He had always believed the idea of a galactic empire to be slightly ludicrous, since so much of it was empty space. The planets, moons, and asteroids comprising such an empire were just handfuls of sand thrown into a vast ocean of nothingness. No emperor could rule such an ocean, no matter how many of those grains of sand he might call his own. Such vastness defied capture by any means.

And yet this time, he sensed a difference. The gulfs didn’t seem so empty anymore. There was something—something he couldn’t find words to describe. A web, perhaps, stretching from system to system. A halo. A current running deeper than what lay visible on the surface. A truth, maybe?

Whatever it was, it made it seem as if the galaxy itself was alive.

Then even that began to fade as darkness crept in at the edges of his vision, taking the pain away along with everything else that had ever been him. Part of him fought it, as was his nature, but another part was happy to let it go. He had fought so hard and for so long against death that he had, perhaps, not spent enough time really living. He had no family apart from the navy; he had no home beyond the bridge of Chimaera. What was the point of living when he had nothing to live for?

The darkness opened up beneath him and he fell into it like a stone sinking into the depths of an impossibly deep sea. He could feel fluid all around him, and in his lungs; and yet, strangely, he wasn’t drowning.

Bacta, he managed to think. They’ve got me in a bacta tank.

Then that voice again, calling to him.

Gilad Pellaeon, it said. Admiral, can you hear me?

He struggled to reply, fighting the darkness that pulled him down like thick tangles of seaweed. All he could manage was a single, choked syllable:

“I—”

Is that you, Admiral? Can you talk to me?

“I-I’m here.”

With every word, the darkness receded just a little bit more. And as it ebbed, the pain returned.

“It … hurts.”

I know, said the voice.

“Where—?” He wanted to ask where he was, but it didn’t seem as appropriate as, “—are you?”

I have installed a neural shunt into your inner ear, the voice explained. My voice is coming to you directly through your auditory nerve. Please forgive the intrusion, but we had to take drastic steps to keep you alive.

“Who—are you?”

My name is Tekli, Admiral. I am a healer.

Agony ripped through him like a solar flare, burning every nerve fiber to cinders. Or so it felt.

“Are you healing me,” he gasped, “or killing me?”

The pain is unavoidable. The only way to avoid it now would be for you to die. But you must stay with your body, no matter what it’s telling you.

“I—can’t—”

Yes you can, Admiral. We need you. If you die now, many others will follow. I’m not about to let that happen.

He wasn’t used to being spoken to that way, as though by an insistent schoolteacher. “You’re not—?”

I’m sorry. There are times when we all must endure the hurt in order to survive. Yours is now. The Force requires it.

Realization came to him then. The Force. This Tekli was a Jedi! But what was a Jedi doing in the Empire? And where—?

Another memory came to him. He had spoken to the Skywalkers in Bastion shortly before trying to break out of the gas giant’s mass shadow. He remembered they had shown him some new tactics they believed would help in his fight against the Yuuzhan Vong. This Tekli, she must have come with them.

But what was he doing here with her? Superior was destroyed. He recalled ordering the evacuation of the dying hulk as it plunged into the gas giant. How had Chimaera avoided the same fate? If he had been injured and his crew had evacuated him to safety while they died, he couldn’t live with himself. A good captain went down with the ship. He should be dead.

You’re not dead, Admiral. Tekli’s voice was compassionate but firm. Like I said, I’m not going to let that happen. You and Chimaera are both banged around a little, but recoverable. Just hang in there a little longer, okay?

He gritted his teeth and resigned himself to living a little longer yet. After all, what choice did he have?

When Jacen felt some of the tension ease in the tiny Chadra-Fan healer, he leaned forward expectantly.

“He fights with us now,” she said, her soft voice barely audible over the mechanical buzzing of the droids assisting her. “He no longer works against us.”

“You’re sure he will live?” he asked, needing something more definite before he would allow himself to feel relief.

She craned her neck to look up at Jacen, something approximating annoyance in her dark eyes.

“Yes,” she said simply. “But not if I continue to be interrupted. I need to concentrate to help him.”

Her head dropped, and she fell silent again to devote her attention fully to healing the Grand Admiral of the Imperial Navy. Jacen felt subtle movements in the Force around her. He backed away in order to avoid disrupting her concentration further. The Chadra-Fan were renowned for their short attention spans as it was, without his interference making matters worse.

He stayed close enough to lend her a hand if needed—shoring up her relatively weak Force sensitivity with his own—but he did keep to the rear of the small medical bay, just to stay out of Tekli’s fur.

Pellaeon had been removed from the bacta tank and now lay on his back on the room’s operating table, attended by the frigate’s 2-1B medical droid as well as Tekli. His numerous wounds stood out starkly in the harsh white light. Jacen could see far more than he actually needed to know that the man before him had come extremely close to death. His hips and abdomen had been half impaled, half crushed upon a control console when Chimaera’s bridge had been rammed by an enemy fighter. One of his junior officers had pulled him from the wreckage and into a medical frigate with survivors of Superior. Under cover of wreckage from the dying Star Destroyer, the frigate had managed to slip away relatively unharmed—although not before a dozen TIE fighters had sacrificed themselves to ensure the Grand Admiral’s escape. The commander of the shuttle who had brought him to Yaga Minor didn’t doubt that it was worth it.

For a while, though, it had seemed a meaningless sacrifice, for Pellaeon had very nearly died anyway. Sizing up the situation in Yaga Minor with admirable speed, the shuttle’s commander had contacted Captain Yage rather than his direct superior in the navy. Yage had ordered the shuttle to dock with Widowmaker immediately to transfer the patient. Tekli and Jacen, weighed down by the healer’s equipment, had stayed with the Imperial commander while Jade Shadow withdrew to a discreet distance. As soon as Pellaeon had arrived, wrapped tightly in a life-preserving cocoon, the Chadra-Fan had gone to work.

Jacen marveled how close it had been. First, the shock of removing the ageing admiral from the cocoon had stopped his heart. Then his body had failed to respond to bacta when they had finally gotten him into the tank. Tekli had ordered him to be removed so they could go to work directly on his more serious injuries, such as the ragged gashes and splintered bones of his abdomen and upper legs. Dripping blood and fluid, the old man on the operating table had seemed to deflate under the bright lights, losing substance with every second, until, finally, he began to respond to Tekli’s treatment.

The pilot of the shuttle who had brought the admiral from Bastion had stayed with him throughout. A lean young man by the name of Vitor Reige, he looked exhausted and drawn. His left arm was clearly injured, but he refused to have any treatment until Pellaeon was stable, insisting that all attention be focused upon the admiral.

After a few minutes, when it was clear that Pellaeon’s condition was going to continue to improve, the pilot exhaled heavily, gratefully, as if he had been holding his breath the entire time he’d been standing there.

He looked over to Jacen. “He told me to find you,” he said. “Before he passed out the last time, he insisted I should find you Jedi, if you had come here.”

Jacen frowned. “Because he thought we could save him?”

The man’s expression became instantly pinched, as if he was offended by the very notion. “He wanted you to know that we were grateful,” he said stiffly. “If anyone should bear a grudge against the Empire, it would be you. But you helped us, and he appreciated that. We all did. I wouldn’t be here now if you hadn’t risked your own lives to show us how to fight those …”

He fell quiet, biting down on the words. The memories of the recent battle were obviously still vivid in his mind.

Sensing the man’s embarrassment, Jacen quietly changed the subject by pointing to the arm that Reige was cradling. “You really should get that looked at,” he said. Before the pilot could voice the same objections that he had earlier, Jacen quickly added, “He’s going to be okay. Really. Tekli will take care of him.”

Vitor Reige nodded his appreciation. “You saved my life, as well as the life of the admiral. I shall forever be in your debt for that.”

Jacen wanted to say that he didn’t believe in debt, that people should just do what they thought was right regardless of obligation, but at that moment Tekli stepped back from the table and approached the two of them.

“I have done all that needs to be done,” she said, her thin shoulders shrugging. “The rest is up to him, now, and how he responds to the bacta.”

Jacen watched as the medical droids maneuvered Pellaeon back into the tank. The Grand Admiral twitched as if in a dream as the powerful healing fluids went to work, then settled down into the tank’s warm embrace. Convinced there was nothing more that could be done at the moment, Tekli gathered her equipment to leave. Helping her carry her tools, Jacen led her from the infirmary, leaving the droid to tend to Reige. Immediately outside the medical bay they found Captain Yage pacing back and forth in front of the doors. She came to a halt the moment the door slid open and Jacen and Tekli stepped out.

Her anxious gaze fell upon Jacen, who nodded in response to her unvoiced question.

“He’ll live,” he said.

Like a balloon releasing its air, the tension seemed to evaporate from the captain, dissolving her concerned expression. “I didn’t think it could be done,” she said, dropping her stare to the Chadra-Fan standing silently and respectfully beside Jacen. “I’m sorry for doubting you. I offer the appreciation of all my people for saving the admiral’s life.”

The Chadra-Fan bowed her head. “I did not do it alone,” she said. “Your admiral’s determination to stay alive had a lot to do with it. With the will to live, anything is possible.”

“And Gilad Pellaeon certainly has that,” Yage said.

The fur around Tekli’s mouth parted as she smiled at the captain. “He still has some recuperating to do,” she said, “but he should be out of the bacta tank in about six standard days.”

Yage’s expression turned from relief to concern again. “Six days? That’s too long!”

“Why?” Jacen asked.

“As far as the Moffs know,” she explained, “Gilad died in Bastion. Flennic has had time to put himself in power, assuming control of Stalwart and the rest of the fleet. I wouldn’t put it beyond him to do anything to avoid having to relinquish that power, now he’s got it. While Gilad is weak, he is vulnerable, and we can’t keep the secret of his survival to ourselves forever. Word is already spreading that one more shuttle made it out of Bastion before the battle’s end. It won’t be much longer before people know who was on that shuttle and where it docked.”

“What will happen when they find out?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. That’ll be up to Moff Flennic and his underlings.” Her comlink bleeped. Listening to the short message, she nodded and answered that she would be there immediately. “I guess we won’t have to wait long to find out. We’ve just received a recall order.”

“Can’t you disobey it?” asked Jacen.

“If we do, then we’re going to have to have a very good reason.”

“Perhaps you should let me talk to them,” he said. “Maybe we can work something out.”

The captain stared at him for a moment in obvious discomfort and embarrassment. Jacen understood exactly what she was thinking. Here was Yage, a captain of many years’ experience from a diametrically opposed military force, and he was expecting her to hand over to him the explanation of why she intended to defy a direct order. But he could see how tempted she was. A Jedi Knight had saved the admiral; perhaps another would take this difficult choice away from her. At the very least, it might absolve her of a wrong decision.

Jacen carefully neglected to mention that his experience with Imperials was virtually nonexistent.

After a few moments’ consideration she raised her voice to address the empty corridor: “I don’t suppose anyone has any better ideas?”

She waited a moment until the silence was as deep as it was ever going to get on an Imperial war vessel.

“Well, I asked,” she said, waving Jacen to follow her as she moved off. “Now let’s see if you can make this situation any worse for us than it already is.”

“Twin Suns Squadron, stand down,” came the voice of Captain Mayn over Jag Fel’s helmet comlink. “We have attained our orbital insertion and are go for satellite deployment. You may revert to internal command.”

“Copy that,” he replied briskly before switching to the squadron’s internal subspace frequency. To the rest of the squadron he said, “You heard the captain: we made it safe and sound. Let’s check out the neighborhood before getting too comfy.”

Twin Suns Squadron peeled apart into quarters, each accelerating to cover different segments of the world below. From orbit, Galantos possessed an uninviting boggy brown-green color, and at first glance showed little signs of advanced civilization. It didn’t take long, however, before the inhabitants of Galantos, the Fia, became aware of the ships in orbit about their planet.

“Unidentified vehicles,” came a voice over subspace, “this is Al’solib’minet’ri City Control. Please identify yourselves and state your intentions.”

“This is Captain Todra Mayn of the Galactic Federation of Free Alliances’ navy frigate Pride of Selonia. Our mission is a peaceful and diplomatic one. We’re here to talk to Councilor Jobath.”

“Not so fast, Captain Mayn.” The voice of the Fia was patient and steady. “You’ve only identified one ship. I count fourteen.”

“That’s correct, Control. There’s Pride of Selonia, Millennium Falcon, and Twin Suns Squadron.”

“And you command this mission, Captain?”

“Only when it comes to logistical issues such as these. Otherwise, I am under the orders of Leia Organa Solo.”

“Beneath the Multitude! Leia Organa Solo?”

“That’s correct, Control.”

“Then we extend our warmest welcome to you, Captain,” the Fia said effusively. “And, indeed, to all of her companions! And I am sure that Councilor Jobath would be delighted to speak with her once these formalities are out of the way.”

“What formalities, Control? We’ve identified ourselves and stated our intentions. What more—?”

“Captain, we on Galantos believe in doing things the proper way.” The voice of Al’solib’minet’ri City Control was polite but firm. “We still don’t know how long you intend to stay, how many people intend descending to the surface, what the precise purpose of their visit is, where they intend to travel, and so on.”

There was a slight pause from Selonia. “Very well, Control,” Captain Mayn said wearily. It had been a long journey, literally from one side of the galaxy to the other. “We’ll fill you in. Where do you want us to start?”

“Thank you, Captain.” Jag could almost hear the prim and smug little smile in the Fia’s voice over the comm unit. “First of all, can I have your exact mission designation for our records, please?”

Jag mentally switched off the conversation, leaving those in charge to work out the details. He had enough to think about as it was. As that day’s Twin Suns Leader, he was responsible for the smooth running of the squadron on its arrival at a new system. Although he considered that he and Jaina had done a good job on short notice, small wrinkles in their procedures were still being ironed out. His clawcraft had an X-wing on each side, while two claws tailed Jaina’s fighter; the same pattern was repeated by the remaining half of the squadron to ensure the components were mixed. This, they knew, would result in some initial awkwardness, but in the long run would ensure that the squadron knit together as a whole.

He banked in a smooth arc, powering for the southern pole over the planet’s gelatinous green pond-seas. There was the occasional town and scientific outpost on some of the more firm, rockier areas, but nothing out of the ordinary that he could see.

“All clear at our end, Twin Leader,” came Jaina’s voice over his comlink.

“Thanks, Two. How about you, Three and Four?”

“Clear skies, Twin Leader.”

“Easy picking,” added Twin Suns Four, originally from Jag’s Chiss Squadron.

“We’re not here to stir up any trouble,” he reminded his pilots. “So no showing off for the locals.”

“From the looks of things, they could use some livening up,” Seven commented dryly.

Al’solib’minet’ri City Control was still requesting information from Captain Mayn.

“Do you really need to know the precise location where the Millennium Falcon intends to land?”

“I’m afraid so, Captain Mayn. It’ll save trouble in the long run, trust me. And you might also like to tell me who exactly will be comprising the landing party.”

The captain sighed; Jag smiled. He was normally something of a stickler for procedures, but the Fia had a tendency to take protocol to ridiculous extremes. If he’d been in Mayn’s position right now, he would have just gone ahead and landed anyway, regardless of what Al’solib’minet’ri City Control said. He doubted the consequences would have been too severe. The Fia had no planetary defenses to speak of, so what were they going to do if Captain Mayn decided to disregard their precious procedures?

But then, diplomacy wasn’t his strong point. He was quite happy to leave that side of politics to people like Jaina’s parents—although he got the distinct feeling that Han Solo would have agreed with him, if pushed.

Captain Mayn’s bored reply filled the airwaves: “… Cybot Galactica protocol droid See-Threepio, Jedi Knight Tahiri Veila …”

Tahiri’s name caught his ear. He switched to another channel so he could talk to Jaina without being overheard.

“Did you know Tahiri was going with your parents?”

“No,” Jaina replied. “But it’s not a problem, is it?”

Jag didn’t answer immediately. He knew that Tahiri was a friend of Jaina’s and had been close to her brother, Anakin, but that wouldn’t have stopped him from expressing a suspicion had he something definite to back him up. But he didn’t. There was just her breakdown at Mon Calamari, and something about her behavior. He couldn’t put a finger on it, but he felt that something was just not quite right about her.

“I guess not,” he said eventually.

He hadn’t even been aware that he regarded her any differently than the other members of the mission until the day they left Mon Cal. The departure of the mission had been decidedly more low-key than that of Jade Shadow, even though Leia and Han did have official recognition as envoys of the Galactic Alliance. Chief of State Cal Omas, Supreme Commander Sien Sovv, and Kenth Hamner had all put in an appearance to bid them farewell, thankfully without fanfare or speeches. With the Galactic Alliance in good hands, the Millennium Falcon had ferried the pilots of Twin Suns Squadron who weren’t already in orbit up to Pride of Selonia, and a brief shaking of hands was held there. Jaina embraced her parents; Jag awkwardly accepted a pat on the shoulder from Han; Captain Todra Mayn, a tall, thin woman with a slight limp, had saluted the assembly with due respect. And that was it, except for a glimpse of Tahiri that Jag had stolen as everyone moved off to their ships. She had been standing at the back of the gathering, carefully removed from the activity. She was still thin, and very pale; the scars from her torture at the hands of the Yuuzhan Vong stood out vividly on her forehead. And her eyes …

Jag Fel wasn’t one for flights of fancy, but he also wasn’t one for ignoring what his senses told him, either—so when he saw the look of disgust on Tahiri’s face and the intense hatred in her eyes, his hand had reached automatically for the blaster at his side. If she was to make any move whatsoever for Jaina or her family, he wanted to be ready. Had she shown any indication of attacking, he would have shot her down without hesitation.

She didn’t, though, and the moment had passed uneventfully—but he had still been reluctant to remove his hand from the weapon at his side. It almost seemed to Jag that she had sensed him looking at her, and her gaze had swung over to him. When their stares locked, she was suddenly herself again, and he was left feeling slightly foolish. Whatever it was he had seen in her eyes had gone, replaced with a soft and subtle uncertainty.

Shoot Tahiri? What had he been thinking? She was just a sick teenager in desperate need of some rest, tagging along on the mission with lots of other tired warriors. Leia and Jaina thought she was having trouble getting over Anakin’s death, that she had bottled up her grief so long and so hard that it was bursting out of her now in twisted, dark forms. When he had raised his concerns about her being on the mission, Leia had said firmly that it was just what Tahiri needed: a clear sense of direction provided by people she could trust. If something else went wrong, they would be there for her without hesitation. End of story.

Jag had no reason to doubt that it was the story’s end. Nevertheless, that look he had thought he’d seen on Tahiri’s face stuck with him, and he found himself repeatedly thinking about it throughout the long jump to Galantos. He didn’t know exactly what the Yuuzhan Vong had done to her on Yavin 4, but he did know the enemy employed biological technologies far in advance of anything the Galactic Alliance had. Was it possible that the malevolent flash he’d glimpsed in her was in some way connected to this? It was impossible to say for sure. But whatever was going on behind Tahiri’s fragile facade, he was going to need more information before he could take any action. And to do that, he was going to have to keep a very close eye on her at all times …

“I’m thinking of volunteering for ground duty,” he told Jaina over the private line. “I haven’t seen much of the Galactic Alliance, except from orbit.”

“You couldn’t have picked a worse place to start taking an interest, Jag,” she said. “It looks like someone dumped an ore hauler full of sludge from orbit!”

He laughed. “Yeah, well, it makes a change, anyway. Care to join me?”

“Tempting, but no thanks. If it’s all the same to you, I’d rather follow procedures from up here. Someone has to mind the baby, just in case the Yevetha come calling.”

He thought he detected a mild rebuke in her voice. “I’m not off to a good start, am I?” he said, unwilling to give the real reason for going down to the surface. “Only a few days into our arrangement and I’m already trying to shuffle the roster around.”

“No, that’s okay, Jag. You should feel free to volunteer for these things, if that’s what you really want to do. I was hoping we could jiggle the roster a little myself, to make sure we got a chance to be off duty and on Selonia at the same time.” A note of teasing replaced the rebuke. “But if wading around in sludge is more your idea of a good time than hanging out with me …”

He smiled to himself. “You know that isn’t the case,” he said. “I was just hoping we could combine the two.”

Her laugh was part shocked, part delighted. “You’ve been too long in that crash couch, spaceboy. I’ll be sure to report you to your superior officer, next time I’m Twin Leader.”

The line clicked off. Satisfied that he would be able to put his name down for the landing party without arousing her suspicion—or her ire—he turned his thoughts to regrouping with the rest of the squadron. Jaina was absolutely right in that respect: whatever his suspicions were regarding Tahiri, his job, first and foremost, was to look after the squadron and ensure the external security of the mission. The well-being of Tahiri was ultimately the responsibility of the person who had invited her aboard—and if he couldn’t trust Leia Organa Solo, then whom could he trust?

Nonetheless, he decided to volunteer. Just to be sure.

“You’re what?” The red face of General Berrida glowered at Jacen from the Widowmaker’s hologram.

“A Jedi Knight, sir,” Jacen repeated steadily. “I’ve come to help you.”

“Help us—?” The overweight general spluttered for a second. “And what exactly makes you think we need your help, Jedi Knight? All I see is an overgrown boy in robes.”

“Appearances can be deceptive,” Jacen said, refusing to wilt beneath the general’s blustering and outrage.

Berrida laughed derisively. “So where is this help you offer us, Jedi? Where’s your support vessel?”

“Jade Shadow has retreated to a safe distance.” Jacen had spoken to Uncle Luke and ensured that the rest of the mission stayed well out of sight until his gambit had paid off—or not, as the case might be. “You don’t have to worry about it.”

“Don’t tell me what I do or do not need to worry about, boy,” Berrida growled. His holographic image flickered momentarily. “I don’t like having unknown vessels lurking around my system.”

“A sentiment I understand completely, General. Which is why I’ve come to offer my help.”

“We don’t need your help,” Berrida said obstinately.

“I think you do.” Jacen paced around Widowmaker’s cramped bridge, trying his best to radiate a sense of calm control. Inside, though, he was thinking faster than he had during any lightsaber battle. “Tell me, why do you think the Yuuzhan Vong attacked Bastion?”

“They have issued no explanation.”

“Nor will they, probably,” Jacen said. “Nonetheless, they must have one. No one risks resources in war without a reason. Now, I know you’re not a fool, General, so I’m pretty sure you would have some idea as to their reasons. Why don’t you share it with us?”

Berrida straightened, the corner of his mouth twitching irritably. “The Yuuzhan Vong attacked us in retaliation.”

“For?” Jacen pressed.

“For Garqi, Ithor, Exodo Two—”

“And for supplying information to the New Republic—specifically, information on hyperspace routes to the Galactic Alliance, which enabled it to turn the tide of the battle and, for the first time, hurt the Yuuzhan Vong.” Jacen enjoyed the surprised look on Berrida’s face. On Widowmaker’s bridge, Captain Yage raised her eyebrows. “My mother negotiated that deal with the Empire, General. That’s how I know about it. And I can assure you that not many other people do. There are people on our side as reluctant to deal with you as you are to deal with us.”

“So?” Berrida snapped. The general made no attempt to hide his growing irritation with Jacen. “What are you driving at, boy? Speak plainly before I have you arrested for obstructing the Imperial war effort.”

“It’s really quite simple, General.” Jacen smiled as sweetly as he could. “If the deal between the Empire and the Galactic Alliance was such a secret, then how do you think the Yuuzhan Vong ever learned about it? I mean, only your highest-ranking officers and my mother knew about it at the time. She passed it on to our military leaders, who employed it in our war effort. We know there’s no leak at our end, because the new routes worked. If the Yuuzhan Vong had infiltrated our chain of command, the information you gave us would have done us no good whatsoever. The only way, therefore, that the Yuuzhan Vong could have known that the Empire had given the Galactic Alliance information that hurt them is if the leak was at your end.” Jacen paused before pronouncing his conclusion. “You have a spy, General.”

“Nonsense!” Berrida’s denial was mixed with just enough shock for Jacen to realize that his reasoning had hit home. “That’s impossible!”

“It’s not impossible at all.” Jacen changed his tone to one of sympathy. He’d attacked enough; the general’s defenses had been breached. It was Jacen’s task now to turn Berrida into an ally, not to keep attacking and make him even more of an enemy. “The fact is, we’ve had problems with infiltration ourselves. First with the Yuuzhan Vong, and then with the Peace Brigade. Your staff could be riddled with alien impersonators and sympathizers, and you would never know. They have living disguises called ooglith masquers that allow them to impersonate anyone.”

“We’ll conduct security sweeps, random checks,” Berrida said, but Jacen could tell that the man’s self-assurance was flagging.

“All useless, I’m afraid, unless you know what it is you’re looking for.”

Berrida glared balefully at him. “And you do know what to look for, I suppose?”

Jacen nodded. “My companions and I have had a great deal of experience with the Yuuzhan Vong. We don’t profess to understand them, but I do feel that we are slowly coming to. And that, I believe, is the most important thing at the moment.”

More important than destroying them, he thought to himself. But he doubted that the general was ready for such philosophy. Be patient, he told himself. One step at a time.

“Let’s assume I believe you,” Berrida said, “and that I take you on your word that—”

“You don’t have to take my word, General,” Jacen interrupted. “The evidence speaks for itself.”

“Assuming I accept the argument, then,” Berrida pressed on. “What next? Are you asking me to open my staff to your influence? How will I know then that I’m not trading one form of infiltration for another? I don’t have to trust you, Jedi, just because you appear to be beating my enemy.”

“I’m not asking you to do that, General. All I am doing is offering you and the Empire advice. You can take it or leave it. Just give me the opportunity to present it properly, and then you can decide what to do about it.”

“Precisely what sort of advice are we talking about here?”

Jacen ticked several items off on his fingers: “First, we can advise you on how to detect and eliminate Yuuzhan Vong spies within your ranks. Second, we can teach your pilots new tactics that will help you fight more effectively on the front. And third, I can offer you my opinion of what you should do next.”

The general grumbled disdainfully. “Which is?”

“That we should leave Yaga Minor as soon as possible,” Jacen said. “Any spies you have will already have reported to their superiors that this is where the fleet has regrouped. If your destruction is their aim, then it would be reasonable to assume that they’ll attack here soon, before you have a chance to get your act together.”

The general grunted. “Anything else?”

“Only one other thing: we cordially invite you to join the Galactic Alliance to enable a continuation of this dialogue. We could have used your help many times over the course of the war, and I know that you can use ours now. We’re not supplying anything with strings attached, General, but we do offer the hand of peace. All we ask is that you at least think about taking it in return.”

Jacen brought his own hands behind his back as he waited for the general’s reply.

The holographic image of the general was motionless for a long time—long enough for Jacen to wonder if the image hadn’t frozen. Then Berrida moved, tilting his head to one side with a grimace.

“I’ll get back to you,” he said, before his image abruptly dissolved.

Jacen let out his breath in a trembling rush, for the first time realizing how damp with perspiration his palms were. “I’m not sure if that went better than expected or worse than I could have imagined.”

“Better,” Yage said, stepping up beside him. “It’s not in that fat fool’s nature to negotiate, or to entertain an original thought, so to get him halfway there is something of a major coup. If I know him, he’ll already be on the line to Moff Flennic—who’ll tell him to stop listening to such nonsense and impound us before we waste any more time. But by the time he acts on it, the situation might have changed.” She looked around her bridge, her expression concerned. “It really depends on what’s happened to the chain of command.”

“Who’s filled the power vacuum, you mean?” Jacen asked.

Yage nodded. “Exactly. With Chimaera still missing, the Moffs will assume that Gilad Pellaeon is dead, but until they know for sure either way, they won’t stick their necks out. And Flennic might not make any bold moves until he’s certain of how the council will fall out. If he’s got the support, he may even take the opportunity to make a move for leadership.”

“That wouldn’t be good.”

“Not for you, no,” Yage said. “And probably not for our chances of survival.”

Jacen didn’t say anything; it wasn’t her he needed to convince.

Later, when Tekli and her gear were settled in one of the frigate’s empty berths and the subspace channels were free, Jacen commandeered a line to talk to Jade Shadow.

“Do you want to come back?” Mara asked, her voice conveying the worry she felt for him and the diminutive Chadra-Fan. “We can slip back insystem and—”

“I’d advise against that,” he said. “They’re going to be looking for you, so I think you’d be better off staying where you are. And wherever it is you’re hidden, don’t tell me. It’s probably best I don’t know.”

“That’s not your only concern, is it?” Luke said.

“Well, no,” he admitted with some embarrassment. “The thing is, Uncle Luke, I don’t know much about Imperials, but I do know that they know you. I think they’d feel a lot more relaxed about negotiating with some young upstart than the man who brought down their Emperor.”

“I totally agree with you, Jacen,” Luke said. “And I know that you’ll do the job right. You seem to have a natural strength when it comes to negotiating. Your mother will be proud. Not even she was able to talk the Imperials around, and she’s one of the best diplomats the New Republic has ever seen.”

Jacen smiled at his uncle’s praise. “That’s kind of you,” he said. “Although to be fair to my mother, the last time she was here the Imperials didn’t have the Yuuzhan Vong snapping at their heels. Things like that tend to make people easier to persuade.”

“That’s nothing but false modesty, Jacen, and you know it,” Mara said. “Be sure to keep us updated on how negotiations proceed, as well as Gilad’s condition. And don’t forget that you can call on us for anything, anytime. We’ll be flight- and fight-ready around the chrono if you need us.”

“I hope it won’t come to that. It could be hours before we hear back from Berrida or Flennic. And you’ll know if they decide not to talk at all and make a move on us instead.”

“Or if the Yuuzhan Vong come.”

There was a small silence after Mara’s words. Jacen had proposed the possibility of another advance by the Yuuzhan Vong fleet simply as a bargaining chip, but the more he thought about it, the more likely it seemed. He was less worried now about the Imperials than he was about being caught in an old frigate on the front line.

Still, the kind of work he was doing certainly felt a lot more faithful to his path than wielding a lightsaber or flying an X-wing in battle. He’d originally thought the stopover in the Imperial Remnant little more than a distraction on the way to finding Zonama Sekot, but perhaps it would prove to be something much more than that. Perhaps he had found another calling where he had least expected it.

But not even he thought that he could bring the Imperials around without Gilad Pellaeon behind him. Whoever filled the admiral’s place while he was unconscious would be too busy watching their back to listen to Jacen—and the longer they were in that position of power, the less likely they would be to give it up.

Get well soon, old man, Jacen thought as he wrapped up the conversation with Jade Shadow and went off to find somewhere he could wait in peace. Enjoy the quiet while you can. It may just be the calm before a terrible storm.

“It’s changed.”

The voice of Anakin’s mother snapped Tahiri out of her daydream. She’d been staring out at the gelatinous oceans of Galantos as the Millennium Falcon descended rapidly through the planet’s atmosphere. She dragged her eyes from the view through the cockpit viewport to where Leia sat in the Falcon’s copilot seat next to Han’s.

“I’m sorry?”

“Galantos,” she said. “It’s changed since I last saw it.” Tahiri glanced again at the view. “I didn’t know you’d been here.”

“I haven’t. Borsk Fey’lya toured here briefly a while ago. He sent back some reports while I was still on the council. He didn’t like it much, if I recall. Didn’t get on with the locals.”

“I can’t understand why,” Han grumbled sarcastically, flicking switches with exaggerated impatience. “These people could out-talk a Toydarian trader.”

“It’s just their way of going about things,” Leia placated him. “I’m sure they’d find your ways equally as odd.”

“Yeah, well, at least I get things done. I’m amazed anything’s changed around here—ever! They’d discuss any proposals to death before they ever started building.”

“Well, somehow they’re getting things done,” Leia said, pointing at the screens before her. “That city there isn’t on any of the maps we have. Or that one.”

Tahiri had boned up on Galantos’s geography while in transit from Mon Calamari. She knew that the landscape below was inherently unstable, so the Fian cities were built to ride out seismic vibrations. Shaped like flattened spheres with stabilizing spikes beneath, they floated heavily on the many organic seas dotting the surface. Tahiri wondered if people would feel the movement of the cities as they wobbled beneath them. The very idea made her feel motion-sick. Hopefully, she thought, they had dampeners like the cities on Mon Calamari.

“So they’ve been building,” Han said. “Joining the New Republic worked for them, obviously, even if it didn’t teach them how to talk properly.”

The Falcon swooped out of the sky, guided by navigational beacons to a circular landing field at the summit of Al’solib’minet’ri City. There was no evidence of any other starships, but there were a number of aircraft. Ground transport had been made difficult by the instability of the planet’s crust; this had held back the development of the Fia until they had stumbled on balloons almost two centuries earlier. Now enormous vert’bo airships regularly carried livestock and other material goods across the shattered wastelands between the oases floating on the seas, while the Fia themselves took to speeders and suborbital shuttles. The sky was a maze of contrails near a busy town, punctuated by the enormous blimps, lazy dots drifting across a vibrant blue.

A celebration had gathered to greet the Falcon when it touched down. A band struck up when the engine noise died away and the landing ramp was extended. The music was strange to Tahiri’s ears—a mixture of high-pitched whistles and hollow drones—but it gave the scene a festive air as she followed Anakin’s parents down the ramp. Leia’s Noghri bodyguards followed at a discreet distance, carefully eyeing the gathering for any activity that might be considered a danger to the Princess.

Not far away, Jag Fel’s clawcraft had also touched down. Al’solib’minet’ri City Control had accepted his addition to the landing party, but only after confirming the details at length with Captain Mayn, for whom Tahiri couldn’t help but feel sorry. Watched curiously by the crowd, the Chiss-trained pilot strode confidently to join the other humans at the center of the crowd of short, long-featured, web-footed Fia.

“Welcome to Galantos!” one of the Fia cried, moving forward and waving its long arms in apparent agitation. Although not much larger than an Ewok, the alien’s gesticulating startled Tahiri, making her take a cautious step back. Then she realized that the gestures were only meant to convey excitement and delight.

“I am Primate Persha.” The Fia’s voice was high-pitched, but musical rather than irritating. She spoke loudly to be heard over the muted squeaks of the other Fia around them. “On behalf of Councilor Jobath, I’d like to welcome you to Galantos, Leia Organa Solo, Han Solo, Tahiri Veila, Jagged Fel, and protocol droid See-Threepio. It is an unexpected honor and a privilege for us all!”

Leia smiled and bowed courteously. “Councilor Jobath could not attend?”

“Unfortunately, no,” the Fia said, her eyes looking somehow even more melancholy than they already were. “He had a pressing engagement in Gal’fian’deprisi City. But he promises to be here as soon as physically possible, and wishes me to convey his warmest and most respectful greetings and hopes that your stay will be an enjoyable and fruitful one. We have made our finest diplomatic facilities available to you and will strive to fulfill your every request. Please don’t hesitate to ask for anything you require or desire at any point in your stay, day or night. Either myself or my assistant, Thrum, will be only too happy to accommodate you.”

With one of her small, web-fingered hands, the Fia waved them to follow her as she led them from their ships, waddling away on her wide, bell-shaped legs. A path opened up for them through a disconcertingly ecstatic crowd. The Fia were a small, inoffensive people whose wild arm gesticulations belied their otherwise placid nature. As Primate Persha kept up a steady stream of detailed instructions on how she or her assistant could be contacted over the next two days, Tahiri felt herself begin to lose track of the words. All meaning seemed to fade from them as the rising and falling of Persha’s voice became notes of a complicated melody. Tahiri doubted that she was missing much by hearing only one word in three.

Persha led them into an ornate turbolift. C-3PO bumped into Tahiri’s back as the doors slid shut.

“Forgive me, Mistress Tahiri,” the golden droid said. “This sort of fuss is all a bit overwhelming for the likes of a protocol droid like myself.”

“That’s okay, Threepio,” she whispered back so as not to interrupt the steady flow of Primate Persha’s ongoing speech, which had now moved on to express the Fia’s joy at having such visitors on their usually unnoticed world—especially in such times of trouble and hardship that the galaxy was seeing. “I never thought I’d meet someone who talked as much as you, either.”

She knew the components of C-3PO’s face never changed, but by the way he tilted his head at this comment Tahiri could tell that he hadn’t really understood her little joke.

The diplomatic quarters in Al’solib’minet’ri City were expansive and well appointed. For all their isolation and other drawbacks, the Fia didn’t skimp when it came to fittings and hospitality. Tahiri’s room was decorated with white, bonelike panels ornately carved in the likeness of local life-forms; the images were peculiar looking, as befitted their environment, but stunningly crafted. The furniture was fashioned from a local, broad-grained wood, with some of the items so seamless that they looked as if they’d been grown that way rather than artfully cobbled together from various pieces. All in all, the room was both comfortable and luxurious—even if the bed was a little too short for her legs.

After checking out their quarters, the visitors reconvened in the anteroom at the heart of the diplomatic residence. Primate Persha had left them alone for the time being, graciously accepting their pleas to relax and unwind for a while—although not before reiterating her instructions, again in meticulous detail, on how to ask for anything at all they might require.

“I’ll just be glad when we’re off this rock,” Anakin’s father was saying when Tahiri walked in. He looked more flustered than Tahiri had ever seen him. She wasn’t sure if it was because of the Fia or their proximity to the Koornacht Cluster—or perhaps it was a little of both.

“Don’t tell me,” Leia said with a half smile. “You’re getting a bad feeling about this place, right?”

He shot her a dirty look before turning beseechingly to Jag Fel. “Please tell me there’s a reason we shouldn’t stay, Jag. Please. Anything.”

“Sorry,” said the tall, handsome pilot. “Can’t help you, I’m afraid.” Shrugging off his backpack containing equipment he’d brought with him and placing it on the table in the middle of the room, Jag turned to Leia and said, “I’ve patched us into the planetary comm network and have opened a link to Selonia. I think we’re safe in assuming that our encryption is light-years ahead of what these guys have here.”

“And the rooms?” Leia asked.

“Bugged, of course,” he said. “But it’s okay; I’ve jammed them. We’re clean.” Jag glanced at Tahiri when he said that, then quickly looked away. “We should be safe here now.”

“You wouldn’t think these people would have a need for listening devices,” Han said. “They’re so busy talking all the time.”

Leia ignored his griping. “The Fia are all right,” she said. “Actually, it makes a nice change from people who don’t talk enough. But then, that’s not to say that I’m entirely happy with what I see here, either.” She fixed her husband with a sober stare. “I’m getting a bad feeling about all of this, although I hate to say it.”

“About what?” Tahiri asked.

Leia paused as if reaching out into the Force for an answer. “I’m not sure,” she said shortly, shaking her head. “Everyone seems happy enough to see us, and Galantos is obviously a fairly peaceful place, but—”

“But it’s almost too peaceful, right?” Han offered.

“Maybe,” Leia said. “And there’s still the question of the communications blackout. Jag, will you contact Captain Mayn and ask her try to patch into the planetary transceiver? Galantos had one when it joined the New Republic; if it doesn’t anymore, I want to know what happened to it. Failing that, have her attempt to contact the nearest intersector network and see if she can get a message to Mon Calamari directly. We might be able to fix the problem locally, if it’s just a technical hitch, and move on elsewhere without wasting too much time.”

“I’ll second that,” Han muttered.

“In the meantime, Tahiri and I are going for a walk.”

C-3PO instantly shuffled forward, only to be stopped by Leia putting a hand to his metal chest.

“Alone, Threepio,” she said.

“I do not think that this is advisable, Mistress Leia,” Threepio squawked in protest. “For just the two of you to be out there alone—”

“Someone has to talk to our hosts,” she cut in gently but firmly. “Otherwise we shall appear rude.” When he started to voice his objections again, Leia said, “I appreciate your concerns, Threepio, but they’re not necessary. We’ll be fine. And besides, Han and Jag will need you to talk to the planetary transceiver—that’s if they can get it on-line.”

“But Mistress, I really must—”

“The Princess will be safe,” rumbled Cakhmaim, one of the Noghri bodyguards who escorted Leia everywhere she went.

“See?” Leia said, not just to C-3PO but also to Han, who was looking as dubious about his wife’s plan as the droid sounded. “And anyway, I’ll have Tahiri with me to keep an eye out for anything out of the ordinary.” The Princess winked at her. “That’s if the conversation doesn’t put her to sleep, of course.”

Warmed by Leia’s trust in her, Tahiri smiled. “I’ll try extra hard to stay awake.”

“Just be careful,” Jag said. “And call us if you need any assistance, okay?”

“Stop worrying,” Tahiri insisted, thinking: Why does he keep looking at me like that? It was difficult, she found, to regain self-confidence when those around seemed to have their own doubts about her. “You just concentrate on the housekeeping while we get on with the serious work.”

She and Leia left the anteroom with the Noghri in tow, startling the small contingent of Fia who were huddled together outside in the hallway, whispering animatedly among one another.

“Oh, Princess Leia,” exclaimed a relatively broad-faced Fia with orange robes and pointy elbows. They all took a step back as Leia stepped out into the hall. “You surprised us! I am Assistant Primate Thrum. I was discussing a matter of some minor importance with the diplomatic staff here. I apologize if we disturbed you in any way.”

“Not at all,” Leia said, stopping directly in front of Thrum. “May I ask the nature of the matter you were—discussing?”

“It is nothing,” Thrum said, glancing awkwardly to the other Fia around him. “It is just that there appears to be an electrical fault in the quarters we have given you and we must ask—”

“Regretfully ask,” put in one of the others leaning in close to Thrum.

“Regretfully ask,” Thrum corrected himself, “that you consider moving—”

“We have noticed no such faults,” Leia said imperiously. “My husband is sleeping. When he wakes, though, I shall have him look more closely. Until then, I’d appreciate if he were left in peace. He is extremely tired after our long journey.”

“Ah, yes, of course, Princess, of course.” Thrum bowed low, sweeping his spindly arms in undulating movements that Tahiri suspected were meant to indicate abasement. “We would never dream of disturbing the great Han Solo during a rare moment of rest.”

Tahiri hid a smile. She had no doubt that the “minor electrical fault” they were talking about lay in the listening bugs that Jag had jammed. It must have frustrated the Fia no end that the only way they would find out what Leia and her entourage wanted was by good old-fashioned questions and answers.

“Thank you,” Leia said, casting a brief and conspiratorial smile in Tahiri’s direction. “I know he will appreciate that. For now, though, I was hoping that if it wasn’t inconvenient, perhaps my friend and I could have a tour of your city.”

Thrum straightened almost with a snap, his face beaming with pride. “Of course, Princess! We would like nothing more than to show off our magnificent home.” He snapped his fingers twice and his fellow conspirators quickly scattered. “I shall arrange immediately for some-one to notify Councilor—”

“That will take time,” Leia said, sweeping forward and forcing the fussing Fia to half run just to keep up. “And I’m really not in the mood for waiting. Like I said, it’s been a long journey, and I need to stretch my legs. Why don’t you just take me around, Assistant Primate Thrum? It will make things so much easier.”

He nervously followed along, clearly agitated. “But what of Councilor Jobath and Primate Persha?” he babbled. “I shall need to inform them—”

“I’m sure they can catch up in their own time,” Leia went on, not even slowing her pace. “You know, they say that travel broadens the mind, and after a few days cooped up in an old freighter, I can assure you that mine is in some serious need of broadening. Now,” she said, turning a corner at random, “what do we have down here? I don’t think we came this way before. I must say, I like the architecture. Simple yet elegant. Are these corridors deliberately reminiscent of the Old Republic style, or did that come about purely …”

And so it went on, with Leia rarely giving the Fia a chance to speak—or, indeed, to protest that he simply didn’t have time to escort them at the moment.

Tahiri let herself fall behind, enjoying the sight of Assistant Primate Thrum trying to get a word in edgewise. Glancing over the Fia’s flat head, the Princess caught her eye and indicated for Tahiri to take another corridor. Tahiri hesitated, then inconspicuously slipped away, her bare feet padding silently along the stone floor.

She felt slightly guilty going off on her own in this manner. And nervous. As Leia’s voice slowly faded, Tahiri put her hand on the lightsaber at her hip and attuned her senses to the world around her. The diplomatic quarter of the city was extremely quiet, and for the most part deserted. This didn’t overly surprise her, though. Galantos wouldn’t receive many visitors, despite the mineral wealth of its soils, so she imagined that this section of the city was probably empty most of the time. Borsk Fey’lya’s dismissal of Galantos many years ago had led to an avoidance of the place by New Republic officialdom. No other councilors had visited the planet and, following the Yevethan crisis, it seemed that Galantos had, for all intents and purposes, fallen off the map.

It was odd, then, Tahiri thought, that the Fia had invested so much money in opulent quarters for guests who never came. And it wasn’t just that the buildings and rooms were well maintained; it was more that they were actually brand new. Why would they build them now? Tahiri wondered. In the middle of a war?

Assuming she was being watched, Tahiri resisted her urge to break into some of the other guest rooms. She suspected that someone, recently, had stayed in the newly built quarters, and she would have loved for the chance to find out exactly who that had been. It was only a gut instinct, but she had learned to pay attention to her gut feelings—especially those originating in the Force, as this one seemed to. Someone had been here; she was sure of it. If not within the last few days, then certainly within the last month or two. Perhaps on her way back, she decided, when she had scoped out the rest of the place and getting caught wouldn’t be so much of a problem, she would chance taking a closer look.

Following her instincts, she wove her way through numerous corridors until she reached a guard station separating the rest of the city from the diplomats’ quarters. Two guards were busy discussing the details of a recent regulation change. They didn’t seem to have been alerted to her presence. She gently reached out with the Force and encouraged them to leave their post for a moment, chasing a suspicion that they had perhaps seen someone lurking around a corner. While they were gone, she walked through their post as nonchalantly as she could.

The city outside the security perimeter was noisier than the guests’ section. The corridors were plainer here, but had numerous skylights or light-tubes allowing natural daylight to filter throughout. She noticed species other than the Fia about the place, too—a couple of mournful Gran and a group of Sullustans chattering among themselves. She presumed this area of the city contained government offices of some kind, since most of the Fia she passed wore similar clothes: not uniforms, but more the conservative kind of garb one might find in an office anywhere. They noticed her, too, but did nothing to stop her. In fact, some even went out of their way to avoid her, almost as if alarmed to see her walking these corridors.

This troubled her as much as the newness of the diplomatic quarters. Why should they be so frightened of her? Perhaps it wasn’t of her as such, she thought, but of a human loose in the city. But still, what had they seen to encourage such ill feeling? A Yevetha she could understand, but Gran and Sullustans?

Tahiri set aside the thought for now; she would address it later, with the others in the security of their quarters. For now she concentrated on looking both lost and curious, choosing routes with the least pedestrian traffic, and constantly checking over her shoulder for a sign of the guards she felt sure would by now be coming after her …

Her comlink bleeped. Without breaking stride, she raised her wrist and said, “Hello?”

“This is Leia. Where are you, Tahiri? Assistant Primate Thrum pointed out that we seem to have lost you. To be honest, I hadn’t noticed. I was so wrapped up in the tour.”

Tahiri smiled to herself. “Sorry,” she said, playing along with the charade. “I should have called you before now. I went to go back to my room to get something and must have taken a wrong turn along the way.”

“Would you like us to send someone to fetch you?”

“No, that’s all right. I can find my way back.”

“Are you sure?” Tahiri could hear Thrum babbling something behind Leia’s words, but couldn’t quite make it out.

“I’ll call you if I can’t retrace my steps. Until then, I’m sure I’ll be perfectly safe.”

There was no good argument to that. It wasn’t as if she was out on the streets where a criminal element might threaten her; she was inside a government building populated by clerks. And Thrum could hardly insist that she return because they were nervous about her.

“That’s fine, Tahiri,” Leia said. “Come back when you’re ready. Have fun while you’re young, that’s what I say. And I’m sure Assistant Primate Thrum would agree.”

The line went dead. Tahiri smiled even wider, imagining the frustration Thrum must have been feeling in the face of Leia’s incessant chattering.

The thought of the talkative locals brought something home to her then. The Fia around here were conversing with none of the driven intensity of Primate Persha or her assistant. They were discussing the everyday occurrences of their lives in some detail, yes, but nothing more than that. She couldn’t help wonder if the endless chattering of the Fia she had been formally introduced to was the nervous prattle of someone hoping to avoid awkward questions.

She continued through the building for a while longer before coming to the realization that she wasn’t about to learn anything new this way. The corridors were remarkable only in that they all appeared almost exactly the same, and the only doors she found to be open led to nothing more interesting than storerooms or offices, often occupied by gossiping bureaucrats. Because she didn’t know what exactly to look for, beyond anything that might explain the communications blackout to Galantos, she didn’t have any clear objectives. And besides which, after an hour or more, she was starting to get a little bored with the game.

Deciding to make her way back to the others, she found a turbolift and dropped ten floors; she walked around briefly before going back up the same shaft to the floor she had started on. Then, figuring that if she had any pursuers on her tail, this would set them back a little, she wound her way back to the security post she had snuck through earlier. The same guards were there when she returned, both looking tremendously relieved to see her.

“Mistress Veila! You have returned!”

“Please forgive our lack o courtesy when you came by earlier,” said one, approaching her. “It was remiss of us not to be here to give you directions.”

“It’s really nothing,” she said breezily. “I had a nice stroll.”

“Please allow me to escort you back to your rooms,” he said obsequiously. “We would hate for you to become lost again.”

“That won’t be necessary,” Tahiri said, with a small wave of her hand. “I can find my own way back.”

“I’m sure that won’t be necessary,” the second guard said, stepping up beside the first.

His partner nodded. “She can find her own way back,” he said, and gestured her through without another word.

In fact, Tahiri did know her way back to her rooms, but that wasn’t where she was heading. She was letting her instincts, not her head, guide her again. Someone else had stayed in these rooms—she was more convinced of this now than she had been before. She half closed her eyes to shut out the distraction of her physical senses, walking where her feelings led her, reaching out with the Force to make sense of her suspicions. Whoever it was who had been the Fia’s guest, she could feel their echoes and shadows all around her: in the walls, the carpets, the gilt-edged cornices, the carvings …

She moved along the corridors, the feelings becoming stronger with each step she took, finally reaching their peak when she turned into one long passage leading to a wide viewport. The viewport itself looked directly out into the clear skies of Galantos, the sunlight through the decorative and colored glass casting rainbow hues across the numerous doors that lined the passage.

She stepped uneasily forward, her hands reaching out to touch each door in turn as she passed. They all seemed devoid of anything out of the ordinary, and yet the corridor rang with an odd, discordant resonance. The feeling was so strong now, in fact, it was almost tangible. Someone—

She stopped abruptly. Her entire body tingled as her fingertips came into contact with the door at the far end of the corridor. She wasn’t normally able to sense individuals so strongly, particularly in the ambience of an unfamiliar world. So what made this one so special? Why was her stomach churning at the thought of opening this door? What exactly was it in these echoes that disturbed her so intensely?

You are being foolish, she chided herself. You are a Jedi Knight and that is an empty room. There’s nothing in there to be frightened of, but fear itself.

The door slid open when she touched the keypad: nothing to hide, it would seem, or else the door would have been locked. But the mysterious presence hit her like a wave of stale air, making her flinch.

Somewhere in the distance she thought she heard voices calling her, so, despite her apprehensions, she stepped into the room. Her movements were slow and awkward, as though she were trying to take strides in a Mimban swamp.

As expected, the room was unoccupied. It was far from being empty, though. The feelings were so strong now that her entire body felt as though it was about to explode—and, such was the discomfort they were giving her, right then she would have been happy if it had.

Still allowing her instincts to guide her, Tahiri stepped over to the bed, lifting the quilt covering it to look underneath. Finding nothing, she lifted the entire mattress.

There.

At full stretch, she could just manage to get her fingers on the tiny silver object that lay on the dusty floor. And the moment she touched it, a shock went through her that sent her reeling. She lay on the floor, clutching the object, panting to catch her breath and fighting to hold the darkness at the back of her mind from sweeping in.

This was it: this was what had been calling to her. Just like the voices were calling to her now …

“Mistress Veila! Are you all right?”

Was it a Fia who had called her name? She couldn’t be sure; she was too busy trying to stay conscious.

“You must come with us, please,” the owner of the voice continued. “You should not be here!”

She felt herself actively complying with the request, even though she seemed to have no real control over her body. It was as if she were lost in a vague fog, her movements as clumsy as a puppet’s.

Turning, she saw three Fia guards at the door, one stepping in to take her arm and guide her out into the corridor. There, the other two took position close behind her. They were speaking, but she couldn’t quite make out the words, as though she were disassociated completely from her body, looking down from above on all that was happening. And it was all because of the thing in her hand …

She brought the pendant up to examine it more closely. It was silver in appearance, but fashioned from a substance unfamiliar to her, and molded in the shape of a bulbous-headed, many-tentacled jellyfish—a bizarre cross between an Umgullian blob and a Sarlacc.

But she knew what it was. Although she’d never seen anything quite like it before, she recognized it immediately.

It was an image of the Yuuzhan Vong deity Yun-Yammka, the Slayer.

A wail came bubbling up from inside her, crying out in a language she wasn’t supposed to know: Ukla-na vissa crai!

Tahiri clutched the totem to her chest as the world grayed around her and plunged her, finally, into black.

*  *  *

In the week following the telling of the Rapuung story, Nom Anor accompanied I’pan on his missions to the upper levels. Using his knowledge of security codes and resource management, he was able to appropriate many of the raw materials the Shamed Ones needed to build their new home, things they hadn’t previously been able to gain access to. Slowly but surely this ragtag bunch of Shamed Ones was becoming indebted to him, living a life they would not have been able to had he not been introduced to them. He had given them the lambents that supplied them light when the bioluminescent globes failed, and the arksh that gave them warmth during those colder nights, as well as the h’merrig, the biological processor that produced a significant percentage of their daily food. He had stolen the materials in good conscience, not caring how the thefts might hurt Shimrra’s war effort. For now, all that concerned him was engendering the trust of his new companions. And while his small contributions had helped in this, it hadn’t been enough to win over everyone—especially the likes of Kunra, who remained suspicious of his motives.

None of that mattered right now, though. He was on another mission with I’pan, and this time collecting equipment and gaining the Shamed Ones’ trust was far from his mind. This time, he had a different agenda.

“How much farther?” His tone was full of irritation as he squeezed himself between two enormous conduits.

“Almost there.” I’pan looked around to get his bearings, then headed for a small hole in one of the walls. On the other side was a ferrocrete tunnel originally intended to give maintenance droids access to a seemingly endless stream of cables and pipes bunched overhead. The tunnel curved away slightly to the left and had no entrances or exits other than those that had been knocked through the ferrocrete by other explorers. For all Nom Anor could tell, it might have circumnavigated the entire wretched planet.

They came across the corroded remains of a droid halfway along their journey. It was slumped on its side, burned out and stripped of all its useful parts. The expression on its blackened, empty face was a hideous parody of life. Nom Anor kicked it over, stepping on the fragments for good measure as he passed.

Soon they reached a narrow crack in the side of the tunnel, and I’pan put a knobby finger to his lips, calling for quiet. Then he slipped awkwardly but soundlessly through the crack. Nom Anor waited anxiously in the tunnel, fearing a trap. There was nowhere to hide in this endless, abominable place.

I’pan’s hand suddenly reemerged from the crack and waved him through. “They’re not here yet,” he said. “We’ll have to wait.”

Nom Anor followed I’pan into the sub-basement. Despite years of infiltrating the infidel societies, he still felt slightly hemmed in by the sharp edges, flat planes, and impossibly perfect corners that characterized such rooms. Nothing in nature exhibited such properties as these artificial monstrosities—or at least not simultaneously, anyway. It felt as though their very design was intended to suck the life out of those who occupied them, as if in some vain attempt to fill their terrible emptiness.

The room’s only door was locked from the outside. If he was patient, he told himself, he would soon be safely back in the reassuring jumble of the deepest levels, where the weight of all the buildings above warped the edges, bowed the planes, and thwarted the corners sufficiently to fool the mind into thinking it might almost be natural. Almost.

I’pan collapsed bonelessly into a corner, appearing in the shadows to be little more than a pile of rubbish under all the rags. Finding a spot in the center of the room, where someone had unsuccessfully attempted to soften the room’s harshness by planting a vurruk carpet, Nom Anor concentrated on breathing exercises to pass the time. He was much fitter than he had been before Ebaq 9. He hadn’t noticed how the years of stress had racked his body until a few weeks of a solid, simple exercise regime washed it clean. His pulse was again strong, and the gash across his fingers had healed perfectly into a ragged, attractive scar. He felt younger than he had in decades. Nom Anor’s self-imposed exile may not have advanced his return with any great speed, but physically it was doing him a world of good.

The sound of scuffling from the far side of the basement’s door broke his meditation. Nom Anor and I’pan rose to their feet together as the lock clunked, the door opened, and three people stepped through. The leader, a tall man with no eyesacks to speak of, stopped in front of I’pan but stared critically over at Nom Anor. He held a sack in one hand, which he passed to I’pan without a word.

I’pan took it. “Aarn, T’less, Shoon-mi,” he said when the door was safely shut, addressing each of the strangers in turn. “I have brought someone who wishes to learn more about the Jeedai.”

The three Shamed Ones studied Nom Anor closely. It was clear they didn’t recognize him. He knew their type well. They carried an air of toil with them, as though subservience was an atmosphere that could be bottled. I’pan had explained in advance that these three didn’t belong to a rogue group such as the one Nom Anor had stumbled across; such were rare, even following the spread of the Jedi heresy. These three were properly employed workers operating under cover.

“His name is—” I’pan started, but was stopped as Nom Anor stepped forward, pushing his companion aside.

“I am Amorrn,” he said. The false name was intended ostensibly to avoid alarm over his former existence, but mainly to reduce the chances that word of his survival would reach Shimrra.

The tall one nodded. “I am Shoon-mi,” he said, “Niiriit’s crèche-brother. When she fell from grace, it was I who freed her from the priests’ cells and allowed her to escape. She has told you about me?”

Niiriit hadn’t, but Nom Anor could see in the man’s sad eyes a yearning for acknowledgment. He knew this sort, too: his immediate family would have been Shamed along with Niiriit, and he was brave enough as a result to resist the established order in small ways, yet too cowardly to abandon it entirely.

“She has told me many things,” he said. “She tells me that you, too, follow the ways of the Jedi.”

This was mostly true; she had spoken of a person closer to the surface who believed in a slightly different version of the heresy. She and Nom Anor had had many conversations on the topic of the Jedi, but she had never once mentioned her relationship to Shoon-mi. He wondered if her devotion to the heresy had burned out all other concerns—perhaps even any feelings for Kunra that might once have existed.

“I pay heed to what I hear,” Shoon-mi said cautiously.

“Will you tell me what that is?”

One of Shoon-mi’s companions looked nervous. “This is neither the place nor the time,” she said. “We are due back in—”

“You go, T’less,” Shoon-mi said with an edge as sharp as the room’s corners. “Tell Sh’simm we were held up in the yorik nursery. This is more important.” He looked directly at Nom Anor, his narrow eyes studying the ex-executor intensely. “And this is as good a place as any.”

The one called T’less nodded, glancing at Nom Anor before hastily slipping out of the room.

“Don’t let us get you into any trouble,” Nom Anor said ingratiatingly.

“We won’t be missed,” said the Shamed One I’pan had named Aarn. “Things are chaotic on the surface. Whatever it is that afflicts the dhuryam still causes great discomfort. There is confusion and instability. Many are joining our ranks as they are blamed for mistakes or inefficiencies caused by those higher up, and this influx makes it easier for us to slip through the cracks.”

Nom Anor listened with stunned amazement. Aarn clearly suffered from a different kind of heresy: that of rebellion. He’d had no idea that such things were discussed at any level of Yuuzhan Vong society, even among the Shamed Ones.

“I’pan has told me the story he heard on Duro,” Nom Anor said, swallowing his surprise. “But he tells me also that there are differences between his story and yours.”

Shoon-mi nodded. “In the version he tells, it was Mezhan Kwaad who killed Vua Rapuung. But I have heard that he survived her blow, and that he sacrificed himself directly so that the Jeedai could escape. And I also heard that it was his brother who killed him. Hul Rapuung was willing to consider that Mezhan Kwaad had Shamed him intentionally, but could not go so far as to accept the Jeedai as allies. When Vua died, his supporters fell on Hul and killed him, and it was during this confusion that the Jeedai escaped.”

“Even so,” Nom Anor said, “the message is essentially the same, is it not?”

Shoon-mi shook his head. “There are differences there, too. The Jeedai stands accused of using fire in his attack on the Yavin Four installation. That is an abomination of the first order. Most people who hear the story shy away from it, preferring to ignore it as an awkward detail rather than try to examine it and thereby come to a better understanding of the Jeedai’s way. But understanding is the key. Anakin Solo proved himself to be more than just an infidel tool user. Later, when his créche-mates were in danger, he sacrificed himself in glorious combat so that they might live. He did not shy away from death. You and I both know that these are not the actions of primitive infidels. They are adaptive strategies—strategies we can learn from.”

Nom Anor nodded, absorbing what he’d been told. This story of Vua Rapuung’s death rang closer to his memories. There was no mass uprising in the records, no clash between warriors with different ideologies, as I’pan had related it. But Shoon-mi had not mentioned the slaughter of the Shamed Ones on Yavin 4, either. In the mythic sense, clearly the deaths of a thousand Shamed Ones were irrelevant compared to the death of a single significant one.

The fact that Nom Anor had once turned down an invitation to duel with the great Anakin Solo would never be known. The executor had killed an entire squad of warriors with an infidel’s blaster in order to keep that particular secret from getting out.

“Where did you hear this story?” he asked.

“From me,” Aarn said, stepping forward.

The relatively youthful Shamed One had narrow features that spoke of generations of Shame before him—so much so, in fact, that Nom Anor found it an affront to his dignity even to be in the same room as the man, let alone talk to him.

“I heard it from one of us who served on Garqi.”

“And where did they hear it?”

Aarn shrugged, his craggy face pinched into a frown. “I’m not sure,” he said. “Why do you need to know?”

Nom Anor shrugged this time. “I am merely curious how there came to be two stories that differ so dramatically about the same event,” he said. “It’s not as if it happened that long ago. One of the stories must be partly false—but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the other is entirely true. If one should be false, why not the other, too?”

“They overlap enough to convince me that the foundations, at least, are true,” Shoon-mi said. “You know how quickly rumors change. Word of mouth can distort truth in a very short space of time. But that does not change the essence of the story.”

Nom Anor nodded thoughtfully, pretending to consider the point Shoon-mi had made. “But which, then, is the most true? Which Jedi do I listen to? The one who uses fire, or the one who doesn’t?”

“You must follow your instincts,” Aarn said.

Nom Anor glanced at the Shamed One, briefly and with a hint of a snarl at the corner of his mouth. It incensed him to have to associate with the likes of the man, when a few months back it would have been beneath him to even waste a thought on his kind.

“I’d rather hoped to follow the story back to its source,” he said, speaking directly to Shoon-mi. “To the one who took it off Yavin Four in the first place—the one who saw it with his own eyes and was brave enough to repeat it.”

“I don’t have that one’s name,” Shoon-mi said. “I don’t know that anyone does, either.”

“He was never named in your version of the story?”

Niiriit’s brother shook his head. “I’d remember if he had been. That person would be as famous as Vua Rapuung.”

He’d also be dead, Nom Anor thought to himself. Going around telling stories about heretics was one thing, but admitting who it was who disobeyed War-master Tsavong Lah’s direct order was another thing altogether. It could have been anyone, though: a warrior might have smuggled out a favorite slave; the shaper Nen Yim might have spoken of her experiences on Yavin 4; or someone belonging to a domain rivaling Kwaad might have even spread such rumors. The possibilities were numerous.

“Are there any other differences between the stories, then?” he asked, hoping to sound more like an innocent student of the Jedi rather than someone with an ulterior motive.

“There’s some discrepancy over when the events occurred,” Aarn said.

“Yes, I know. One version suggests that all this happened when Yavin Four was still in the hands of the Jedi. Doesn’t that bother you?”

“Not really,” Aarn said. “Stories do change of their own accord. I would be more suspicious if all the versions were exactly the same.”

“Do you know of any others who tell tales like this, then?” Nom Anor asked.

“A few,” Shoon-mi said. “Everyone tells a handful of trusted friends, and each of those in turn tells another handful. That is the manner by which rumors spread. Not knowing who told who more than one or two reiterations ago may be frustrating, but it certainly makes things safer for all of us.”

That much was true, at least, Nom Anor thought. Without that fact working in its favor, the Jedi myth wouldn’t have filtered far enough to reach his ears. At the same time, though, not being able to trace it back would hardly work in his favor. Shimrra wouldn’t be happy with only half the information, if Nom Anor decided to divulge it. Unless the Supreme Overlord could be assured of wiping it out at its source, he would never believe that it had been completely eradicated. This would undoubtedly frustrate him, and that would make Nom Anor the source of this frustration.

The heresy was like disease eating away at the underside of Yuuzhan Vong culture. Beneath the surface, as he had always thought of it, beneath the warrior, shaper, and intendant castes, lay the foundations built by the workers. The efforts of the workers were sustained by the priests, who shored up any weak areas with babble that would barely hold water if one poked a single claw at it. The priests made everything possible because, without gods demanding sacrifice and servitude, what was there to stop the workers from rising up? Or the warriors from turning on the weak? The intendants from stealing from anyone they felt like? It was the glue of the gods that kept not just the Yuuzhan Vong invasion on course but the Yuuzhan Vong race as a whole together.

If something were to supplant the gods—new gods, or no gods at all—Nom Anor suspected that Yuuzhan Vong society would fly apart like a shattered planet. There would be no center left to hold it together; it would be eaten away, decayed. He knew it was his duty to report the extent of the heresy to Shimrra. To do otherwise would be to actively participate in the destruction of everything he had worked toward for decades. Yet part of him still wondered if there might not be some way he could turn all of this around to work in his favor, without bringing everything down around him. And wouldn’t that be the greatest irony of all? To use his enemies, the Jedi, as the means to his own victory?

“Amorrn?”

He realized that he had been too preoccupied with his thoughts to notice the conversation taking place around him.

“I’m sorry,” he said, gritting his teeth on the false camaraderie. “I was thinking of how strange it must have been for Vua Rapuung to be so close to a Jedi for so long.”

“There have been others,” Aarn asserted. “I heard of a Jeedai who allowed himself to be captured, and he couldn’t be broken.”

I’pan nodded. “I’ve heard of him, too,” he said. “His name was Wurth Skidder. He seduced a yammosk with his mind and then killed it.”

Nom Anor said nothing, although he was certain he knew more about the incident than the Shamed Ones relating it to him. The Jedi Wurth Skidder had been a prisoner on Créche, a yammosk-carrying clustership destroyed at Fondor. Its commander, Chine-kal, had been circumspect in reports prior to his death, but what seemed certain was that Skidder had been close to the breaking point before an attempted rescue by one of the New Republic’s most daring irritants, Kyp Durron’s so-called Dozen. One member of this group, a Jedi by the name of Ganner, managed to kill the yammosk, but he had been unable to rescue his friend. The galling thing was that, although Wurth Skidder had died, it was true he had never been broken.

“Mezhan Kwaad couldn’t break the Jeedai-who-was shaped,” Aarn said.

“And then there are the Twins, also,” Shoon-mi said. “Both have been captured, and both have escaped. Yun-Yammka has never been able to break them, either.”

“So you are saying that they are even more powerful than the gods?” Nom Anor asked.

The question seemed to make Shoon-mi nervous. “Not necessarily,” he said. “But perhaps the Jeedai know more about the gods than the priests do.”

And there it was, stated boldly: the true heresy that had the potential to bring the Yuuzhan Vong species to its knees. Once the workers stopped listening to the priests, what would fill the vacuum? The warriors? The intendants? The Jedi?

The latter truly would be an abomination, Nom Anor knew. He would never allow himself to be dictated to by an infidel. But he would use them to get what he wanted: either news of the heresy could regain his favor with Shimrra, or the heresy itself could destabilize the Supreme Overlord’s rule. That seemed a simple enough progression. It wasn’t the normal way an ambitious Yuuzhan Vong climbed the ranks—but since the ladder one would normally ascend to further one’s status in the Yuuzhan Vong hierarchy had effectively been kicked out from under him, he was forced to resort to other methods. It wasn’t something he was particularly proud of, but it was necessary.

“We must return.” Aarn shuffled about on his feet. Nom Anor wondered if Shoon-mi’s blatant statement of faith had unsettled him, too.

“I understand,” Nom Anor said. “But I would very much like to talk to you again. The notion of truth intrigues me, and I’d like to hear as many different versions of Vua Rapuung’s story as possible. If you hear it from anyone else—”

“Then we shall tell you, Amorrn,” Shoon-mi said, nodding. “I’pan should take you to see Hrannik, too. I’ve heard she is also busy spreading the message.”

“I will,” I’pan said. “I know a couple of others, as well. The truth is spreading.”

“The truth is spreading,” Shoon-mi repeated, as though by rote.

Bidding a quick farewell, the two from the surface exited via the abominably right-angled door, leaving I’pan and Nom Anor alone again. His deformed companion opened the sack Shoon-mi had given him and looked inside.

“What is it?” Nom Anor asked.

“Food, some old clothes,” I’pan answered. “The usual stuff. Shoon-mi likes to look after his sister.”

“Why doesn’t she talk about him?”

“Because she believes he is a traitor to the truth,” I’pan said as though the answer should have been obvious. “As far as she is concerned, he should leave his unit and join her rather than paying lip service to the old gods. Until he does this, she will not even acknowledge his existence.”

“But she will accept his gifts,” Nom Anor observed wryly.

I’pan laughed at this. “She is not so proud that she will refuse help,” he said. “Survival is her priority; changing her brother is secondary.”

Nom Anor remembered the way Niiriit’s eyes had glowed in the light during the telling of I’pan’s story. She was a true fanatic, more dangerous to the system than any of the others. There was nothing more lethal than a trained warrior who had turned against her old leaders.

He smiled to himself, confident with the beginnings of a plan that was slowly forming in his head. All he needed now was the source of the Vua Rapuung rumor.

“Are you coming?” I’pan said, breaking into his thoughts.

Nom Anor smiled again, wider this time. “Time to go home, I’pan,” he said, nodding.

I’pan climbed through the fissure in the wall they had entered through earlier, leading him in the direction of the “home” he thought Nom Anor had been referring to.