Jacen heard Vergere’s story in silence as he squatted on his heels on the resinous floor of the coral ship. He did not answer her question, but instead asked a question of his own.
“Where is Zonama Sekot? I’ve never heard of a living planet.”
Vergere shrugged her narrow shoulders. “It left,” she said simply.
Jacen stared at her.
“I felt Sekot’s good-bye. I had saved it once, but I sensed it was under a new threat. The planet had hyperdrive engines—it was capable of going into hyperspace. So it fled.”
Jacen blinked. “Where did it go?”
“I remind you that I have been away for a number of years. I will not venture to guess.”
Jacen rubbed his chin. “One hears stories of planets that move. But usually in the same tapcafs, and from the same people, who tell you of the Cursed Palace of Zabba Two, or old Admiral Fa’rey’s ghost ship that plies the Daragon Trail.”
Vergere gave a sniff. “I do not venture into tapcafs. I would not hear such stories.”
Jacen gave a quiet smile. “No. You venture into more dangerous places than bars.”
Vergere’s crest feathers rippled. “You did not answer my question. Did I do wrong on Zonama Sekot? Or did I not?”
“What I think,” Jacen said, “is that I’m still worried about my sister.” He knew perfectly well that Vergere had told her story at this moment partly in order to distract him from his anxiety over Jaina.
Vergere made a sound somewhere between a snort and a sneeze. She straightened her legs and reared to her full height of slightly over a meter. “You haven’t been paying attention!”
“I have. I’m still thinking about it. But I’m also still concerned about Jaina.”
Vergere made the noise again. Jacen’s thoughts returned to the mystery of the vanished planet.
“I’ve never heard of Zonama Sekot by that name. And if your warning ever reached the Jedi Council, I haven’t heard of it—but then it’s not likely I would have. We haven’t had a Jedi Council in more than a generation.”
“What became of it, then?” Vergere paced back and forth before Jacen, the patchy feathers on her frame fluffing and then smoothing again. “Perhaps you can tell me what has happened to the Republic in my absence. Tell me why the thousands of Jedi Knights I expected to contact on my return no longer exist, why there are only a few score half-trained young Jedi in their place, and what all of this has to do with this Sith Lord you mentioned on Coruscant, this Vader, your grandfather, whom I remember as that turbulent little Padawan, Anakin Skywalker.”
Crouching, Jacen watched Vergere’s agitated pacing. He shook his head and gave a laugh. “Well,” he said, “you’d better sit down again, because this is a very long story.”
This time Vergere sat in silence while Jacen spoke. When he was done with his bare narrative, she asked questions, and Jacen replied as completely as he could. At the end, they were both silent for a long, long moment.
Finally Jacen broke the silence. “May I worry about Jaina now?”
“No, you may not.”
“Why not?”
Vergere straightened and approached the coral ship’s little control station. “Best to worry for ourselves,” she said. “We’re about to fall out of hyperspace. When we arrive in realspace, we’ll be near a well-defended world of the New Republic, guarded by fighters very jumpy after the fall of Coruscant. We are in a Yuuzhan Vong vessel, with no means of contacting these trigger-happy defenders, and we have no defenses and no weapons.”
Jacen looked at her. “What do you suggest we do?”
Vergere’s feathery crest gave a little flutter. “Foolish question,” she said. “Naturally, we trust the Force.”