FOUR

Within the confines of his XJX-wing, Kyp Durron stretched his lanky form as best he could. He settled back into the groove he’d worn into the seat over the course of two years and more battles than he would ever admit to fighting.

“How many has it been?” he wondered aloud.

A light on his console flashed, signaling a communication from Zero-One, the battered Q9 droid Kyp had recently bought cheap from the estate of a Mon Calamari philosopher.

IS THIS A REQUEST FOR DATA OR A RHETORICAL QUESTION?

Kyp smiled briefly and shoved a hand through his too-long dark hair. “Great. Now even droids are questioning my motives.”

NOT AT ALL. IN GENERAL, THE DISCUSSION OF PHILOSOPHY IS READILY DISCERNIBLE FROM A CALL TO ACTION.

“I’ve noticed that,” he said dryly.

TO AVOID FUTURE MISUNDERSTANDING, HOWEVER, PERHAPS YOU SHOULD GIVE DIRECT ORDERS IN SECOND PERSON IMPERATIVE; FOR EXAMPLE, “SET COORDINATES FOR THE ABREGADO SYSTEM,” OR “DIVERT POWER TO THE REAR SHIELDS.”

“How about ‘Report to the maintenance bay for a personality graft?’ ” Kyp supplied helpfully.

A moment passed. IS THAT AN ORDER OR AN INSULT?

“Whatever works.”

Kyp left Zero-One to ponder this and turned his attention to the task ahead. He took point position. On either side of his X-wing flew six pristine XJ fighters. These were Kyp’s Dozen, the newest members of an ever-shifting fellowship of heroes or rogues or villains, depending upon whom you asked.

Kyp checked the navigation screen for their bearings. “Still playing philosopher, Zero-One?”

I FAIL TO COMPREHEND THE UNDERLYING SEMANTIC MEANING OF YOUR QUERY.

“It was what you might call ‘a hint.’ Stop gazing at your … central interface terminal and tend to astronavigation. We should be coming up on our hyperspace coordinates before long.”

AS I AM WELL AWARE. IT IS POSSIBLE TO THINK AND ACT AT THE SAME TIME, the droid responded.

“Apparently you haven’t attended any of the recent Jedi meetings,” Kyp said.

YOU ARE THE ONLY JEDI WITH WHOM I INTERFACE. UNFORTUNATELY, I WAS NOT PROGRAMMED TO EXPERIENCE GRATITUDE.

Kyp grinned fleetingly. “Was that a non sequitur or an insult?”

WHATEVER WORKS.

“I take less abuse from the Vong,” Kyp complained as he switched his comm to the designated open channel.

“Not long now, Dozen. Our primary mission is to protect the ship carrying the Jedi scientists. We’re flying in groups of four. Each lieutenant will name command targets. I’ll assess the situation once we emerge in Coruscant space and revise our strategy as needed.”

“Hard to believe that Skywalker’s Jedi are finally getting off their thumbs,” observed Ian Rim, Kyp’s latest lieutenant.

“You’re forgetting about Anakin Solo,” put in Veema, a plump and pretty woman who was edging into her fifth decade of life. Kyp liked her—at least, as much as he allowed himself to care personally about any of his pilots. Her sense of fun was legendary among certain circles, and her warm, inviting smile had probably started more tavern brawls than a bad-tempered Gamorrean. Anyone who crossed Veema, however, soon realized that she had dimples of duracrete and a talent for holding grudges that a Hutt might envy.

“Last I heard, Anakin went to the Yavin system, alone, against orders from Skywalker and Borsk Fey’lya,” Veema continued. She let out a sound halfway between a sigh and a purr. “Young, handsome, reckless, and maybe a little stupid—definitely my kind of man! Care to introduce us, Kyp?”

“Why should I? I’ve nothing against the kid.”

“He’s not the only one taking action,” observed Octa Ramis, the only other Jedi in Kyp’s group. A somber woman whose solid frame spoke of her origin on a high-gravity world, Octa had been shifting to an increasingly militant position for some time. She was the first Jedi to join forces with Kyp—that is, if you didn’t count Jaina Solo’s temporary and Force-assisted cooperation at Sernpidal.

“I heard about a few hotheaded Jedi who take, shall we say, a very proactive approach to the Peace Brigade,” Ian Rim said.

“What if they do?” Octa said, snarling. “Who cares what happens to those Sith-spawned cowards? Jedi for Jedi—I’ve no quarrel with that!”

“But others do,” Kyp observed with a sigh. “I know the three Ian’s talking about. Maybe I should try to reel them in a bit.”

He switched off the comm and addressed his astromech droid. “What would that make me, Zero-One—the voice of reason?”

I AM NOT PROGRAMMED TO APPRECIATE IRONY.

“Bring on the Vong,” Kyp muttered as he switched back to his squadron.

“Talk to me, Dozen.”

“For highest kill count, I’ve got two credits on Veema,” Ian Rim offered. “No one can go through males of any species like she can!”

The woman’s laughter tinkled, but Kyp heard the edge beneath the shimmering sound. “Better plan on using some of your winnings to buy me a drink.”

“You’re on. Anyone else want to get in on this?”

The chatter flowed over Kyp, fading into perceived static as he reached out with the Force, trusting his instincts and emotions to take him through the coming battle, as they had so many times before.

“You’re pretty quiet, Kyp,” a disembodied voice observed.

“Only on the outside.”

He spoke without thinking. His comment was met with a moment’s silence, then some uncertain laughter. None of the pilots had actually seen Kyp’s darker side unleashed, but all of them had heard stories. No one dared speak of what he’d been, and what he’d done.

But it was always there.

“Five credits on Octa,” Kyp said lightly. “And if you beat Veema’s score by more than three, Octa, I’ll throw in Zero-One as a bonus.”

“I’ll keep the margin down to two,” Octa said somberly.

The Q9 unit let out an indignant bleep. This drew a burst of genuine laughter—partly because Octa’s riposte broke the sudden tension, and partly because every pilot in the squadron recognized her humor as unintentional.

Most commanders Kyp knew wanted their pilots silent and focused as they approached battle. Kyp encouraged banter. It kept their minds occupied and allowed emotions to rise to the surface. He didn’t know of any pilots—not live ones, anyway—who thought their way through a battle. The speed and ferocity of ship-to-ship combat was a matter of instinct, reflex, and luck. No one would ever mistake Han Solo for a philosopher, and he’d been flying longer and better than anyone Kyp knew.

When it came right down to it, what was there to think about? The Yuuzhan Vong had to be stopped: it was that simple. After today’s fight was over, let the dithering old folks debate how the enemy had managed to move on Coruscant. He’d be off fighting the next battle.

Kyp glanced at the navigation panel and gave the order to go to lightspeed. Once the jump was complete, he settled down into the silence and darkness. With a discipline born partly of the Force, partly from long experience as a pilot, he willed himself to snatch a bit of sleep while he could.

He awakened abruptly as sensors announced the coming emergence from hyperspace. Stars flared into existence, and every light on his control panel came alive.

The Jedi glanced at the multitude of flashing icons on his display, each representing an enemy skip. “Trying to tell me something, Zero-One?”

EXPERIENTIAL DATA INDICATE THAT YOU DO NOT APPRECIATE SUBTLETY.

If anything, the droid had erred on the side of understatement. With a surge of dismay, Kyp realized he was leading his pilots into a maelstrom.

The skies over Coruscant strobed and burned. Ships of every size and description hurtled away from the doomed world. A vast Yuuzhan Vong fleet awaited them. A few escaped, aided more by the general chaos than any coordinated defense. There was no sign of the Jedi wing.

The Dozen swept in, holding their wedge-shaped formation. The only sign of their consternation was the silence coming from the open comm.

One of the Dozen, an early XJ prototype in pristine condition, dipped out of formation and started lagging behind like a distracted toddler.

Kyp frowned. “Five, acknowledge.”

The ship swiftly moved back into place. “Five here.”

The voice was ridiculously young—a boyish growl that had yet to achieve a genuine baritone. The pilot, Chem, was the son of a wealthy diplomat, a collector who’d filled a small warehouse with gleaming, never-flown ships. On his fourteenth birthday, Chem stole his mother’s favorite ship and set out to track down Kyp’s Dozen. He hadn’t asked for admission—just followed the squadron around from one mission to another. After several standard months, and the loss and replacement of more pilots than Kyp cared to count, he’d taken Chem on as a regular. Since then, the kid had vaped seven Vong coralskippers and squandered his inheritance on such frivolous things as new XJs, concussion missiles, and fuel.

“Keep focused, Five. I’d hate to see you get a scratch on that showpiece of yours,” Kyp admonished lightly.

“So would I, sir. Under those circumstances, I’d rather face the warmaster himself than the ship’s rightful owner.”

“Copy that,” Ian Rim broke in. “I used to keep company with Chem’s mother. You thought the Vong were mean and ugly?”

“She speaks well of you, too,” Chem retorted without missing a beat. “Or at least of your flying skills. Says if you’d stuck to it, you could have been the best nerf herder on Corellia.”

Kyp chuckled at the idea of the hotshot pilot sputtering along on a ponderous herding sled—an image that made nerf herder such a potent insult. The short exchange broke some of the tension he sensed in each of his pilots. All but one. A deep sense of unease remained in the youngest pilot.

He switched to a private channel. “Problems, Five?”

There was a moment of silence. “The lights are going out, sir. Coruscant’s lights.”

The Jedi nodded in understanding. Far below, the eternal, never-sleeping city-planet was fading into darkness, facing its first true night since time out of mind. Yuuzhan Vong drop ships, big as mountains, blotted out vast portions of cityscape as they settled down to the business of slaughter. Blastboat analogs spewed molten rock hot enough to melt the glittering towers into dark slag heaps. Enemy transports spat out coralskippers like obscenities. The rocklike ships whirled in a deadly dance, a meteor swarm choreographed by some unseen, malevolent power.

Then a squadron of coralskippers swept toward the Dozen and a burst of plasma blossomed against Kyp’s forward shield.

“It’s our job to hold back the night, Chem. Don’t let yourself get distracted from that.”

“Yes, sir!”

Kyp’s sensors flared, alerting him to another fleet emerging from hyperspace. Kyp glanced at the Jedi wing and groaned. The “fleet” comprised perhaps a dozen X-wings, several battered E-wings, and a few ships that defied classification. All these ships protectively encircled a battered corvette.

“This Danni Quee travels in style. Impressed, Zero-One?” he asked, speaking too low for the comm to pick up.

NOT YET.

“Yeah, for once we’re agreed.”

Kyp switched back to the open channel. “Just like we practiced, Dozen. On my signal, break into fours. Lieutenants, call your targets. May the Force be with you all.”

The Yuuzhan Vong fleet responded to the new threats with precisely choreographed, tactically sound maneuvers. Some of the coralskippers and a blastboat flew to meet the Jedi wing. Other units swooped down on evacuee ships like hunting hawk-bats, daring the fighters of both squadrons to pursue. Still others veered toward the Dozen.

“And guess what?” Kyp murmured. “There’s enough of them to go around!”

The lead coralskippers began to vomit plasma. Kyp signaled the order to break, then tapped his controls. A modified thruster sent him in a sharp, vertical rise. The bolt streaked harmlessly past …

 … and slammed into one of the ships behind him—a ship that shouldn’t have been in that position.

Kyp didn’t see the impact, couldn’t hear the explosion or the rending apart of metal and ceramic. But he felt the flare of a young man’s fear and disbelief, then the searing realization of what a moment’s inattention could cost.

“Chem,” he said through gritted teeth.

The Jedi let his guilt and grief flow, carrying a burst of Force power with it. His long fingers danced over the controls, sending a stuttering firestorm of lasers toward the oncoming Yuuzhan Vong.

To his surprise, the larger-than-average coralskipper setting a course for the Jedi corvette swallowed every bolt that came its way.

Kyp shook his head in astonishment. The stutter-trigger technique had been developed early in the war in response to the pattern of shielding singularities—miniature black holes, really—that the enemy’s dovin basals generated. Somehow the Yuuzhan Vong, or at least this one, had found a way to counter this attack.

“You want to dance?” Kyp said grimly. “Fine with me. I’ll lead.”

He swept in, a laser firestorm leading the way. Several coralskippers circled in to support the larger ship. As the Jedi led them away, he carefully noted the shape and diameter of the big ship’s protective shield. He jinked sharply, putting a passing military ship between himself and his attackers just long enough to drop a pair of concussion missiles. Quickly he darted away, drawing the Yuuzhan Vong with him and leaving the missiles floating like harmless flotsam.

Octa responded at once to this signal. She and the three pilots under her command unleashed a barrage of quick-stuttering laserfire at the big coralskipper.

Kyp reached out with the Force and eased the floating missiles toward the big skip. He reversed the flow of Force energy and brought the missiles to a stop just short of the dovin basal’s reach.

While Octa kept the big skip busy, Kyp quickly took stock of the nearby battle. A large Corellian freighter, most likely carrying passengers fleeing the planet, managed to hurtle through the blockade just a few kilometers from the Jedi corvette. Immediately several coralskippers converged in attack. The refugees unwittingly led this new force directly toward Danni Quee’s ship.

“Veema, get that freighter out of here,” Kyp ordered.

A quartet of XJs darted off in tight formation to engage the enemy ships. Laserfire battled streams of plasma as Kyp’s pilots provided a diversion for the fleeing refugee ship.

A thin bolt of plasma sheered through the wing of Veema’s ship. The off-balance XJ tumbled wildly, hopelessly out of control, and crashed into the very ship it had been protecting. The XJ exploded—and took the freighter’s port fusion engine out with it.

A huge fissure sizzled down the side of the battered freighter, brilliant from the explosion within. Kyp—his emotions open and raw from his own peculiar battle mode—felt the sharp surge of terror, and then the sudden sundering of every life on that ship.

With a great effort of will, Kyp snapped his attention back to the big coralskipper. The Yuuzhan Vong had apparently taken note of the protection given the old corvette. The big coralskipper moved inexorably toward Danni Quee’s vessel. A stray laser beam struck one of the concussion missiles. It exploded: a white-fire blossom bursting from an eerie pink stem. The skip, however, had moved beyond the explosion’s range.

But Kyp no longer needed this particular missile. He ordered Octa’s squadron to regroup in a defensive position around the Jedi scientist’s ship.

“As the Master says, size matters not,” he murmured.

He released his hold on the second missile, not caring that it was swallowed by one of the coralskipper’s stuttering singularities. Reaching deep into himself, he sought resources he had not used for many years.

Once before, Kyp had seized a ship and dragged it out of the fierce heart of a gas giant. Now he reached out with the Force and took hold of the dead freighter.

It shot forward with astonishing ease, moving steadily through the vacuum of space toward the shielded coralskipper.

Ian Rim’s dark chuckle came through the comm. “Subtle as always, Kyp! Let’s not let this one get away, Dozen!” he shouted.

The lieutenant spun off in a tight turn, his two surviving pilots following closely. They darted around the big coralskipper, cutting off its retreat, taking and returning fire from the other enemy skips. Their daring maneuvers soon exacted a price—Ian’s ship got caught in a Yuuzhan Vong crossfire. The double blast of plasma proved too much for his shields, and the ship dissolved in a bright splatter of plasma and superheated metal.

The pilots Ian had commanded doggedly held the course he’d plotted. The XJs continued to harry the big skip, forcing it to keep up its stuttering shields as the dead freighter closed in. At the last moment, the surviving X-wings shot away toward safety.

The freighter never got close. One moment it was there; the next it simply disappeared into a void. What happened next was not exactly what Kyp had had in mind.

He’d hoped for a physical impact, or, barring that, that the freighter might overwhelm the dovin basal’s capacity, leaving the big coralskipper vulnerable to attack. It had never occurred to him that the skip’s multiple singularities might merge into one and fold in on the Yuuzhan Vong ship like a glove turning inside out. But suddenly, the freighter was gone. So was the coralskipper.

And so were the fleeing X-wings.

Death came to the pilots with a speed that neither fear nor thought could match. Neither of them saw its approach. None of their final emotions came through to Kyp—only a sudden, almost deafening blast of silence.

Grief and guilt rose in Kyp like a dark tide. He bore down, sternly crushing these emotions before they could alter his focus, his course. He would not do this. He would not give way to the uncertainty that had so crippled his fellow Jedi.

Yet he could not deny that once again, he had undertaken a massive use of Force power and, in doing so, had inadvertently caused the death of those close to him.

Kyp forced himself back into the battle. He quickly took stock of his situation. Only Octa remained, and two of her pilots. The four of them could still do some damage.

He hailed his surviving Dozen and named a vector reasonably free of battle. “We’ll regroup in quartet formation under my command.”

The ships responded at once, jinking a path through the Jedi ships.

Suddenly a surge of grief came from Octa Ramis, and then a brief, anguished epiphany, and, finally, fury. Kyp was not very surprised to note that her anger was directed not at the Yuuzhan Vong, but at him.

“Master Skywalker was right,” she said with deadly calm. “You may consider this a desertion.”

Her XJ peeled off and circled back to the Jedi wing. After a moment, the two surviving members of her squadron followed.

Kyp let her go.

Nine more of his pilots had died, adding their names to the lengthening roster of those who had died under his command since the war started. Though their deaths weighed heavily on Kyp, he accepted this as the fortunes of war. But never before had he crossed the lines he’d drawn long ago and brought about a comrade’s death through the power of the Force. At this dark moment, it seemed to him that this single act negated all the good he had done, all his steadfast arguments, everything for which he stood.

A moment of indecision, no more, but the price was high. Coralskippers closed in on Octa’s ships like a pack of voxyn.

Kyp streaked in, determined to take as many of them with him as he could.

Suddenly, inexplicably, the Yuuzhan Vong attack began to falter. Several of the coralskippers veered away in erratic, almost drunken flight. Octa Ramis took advantage of this seeming confusion to give pursuit. The other XJs followed.

Two skips hurtled toward the Jedi woman’s ship. The enemy ships grazed each other, veered wildly apart, over-compensated. Back they came, slamming into a sidelong collision.

Shards of coral hammered the XJs with deadly shrapnel. Both of the ships spun away, out of control. Only Octa returned to the battered Jedi fleet.

“Objective secured,” she said coldly.

Kyp could only nod. For months now, Danni Quee’s team had been working on blocking a yammosk, a hideous, telepathic creature that coordinated many ships. Judging by the sudden confusion among the Yuuzhan Vong, they had succeeded.

But he, Kyp Durron, had failed.

Again.

A flood of emotion swept through him, and a dozen hard years suddenly fell away. For a moment Kyp knew the fresh anguish of his brother’s death. The darkness of that terrible time flooded back, and the despair.

“Jaina,” he murmured suddenly, for no reason that he could comprehend.

Kyp shook his head as if to clear it. Of course he was aware of pretty, pragmatic Jaina Solo—what Jedi wasn’t?—but she didn’t exactly fly in his orbit. There was nothing between them that could explain the fleeting connection; in fact, her reaction after the attack on the Sernpidal shipwomb suggested that Jaina wouldn’t so much as spit at him if he were on fire.

At that moment a familiar ship soared into view, a disreputable antique that was nonetheless one of the biggest legends in the galaxy. Three coralskippers blundered after it, spewing lethal rock.

“Not the Falcon,” Kyp vowed darkly, finding a measure of focus in this new threat. “Not a chance.”

The Jedi dropped his remaining two missiles and used the Force to hurl them at the enemy ships. Once again he stopped them just short of the singularities. He busied the skips’ dovin basals with a quick flurry of laserfire, then let the missiles hammer in. Two of the alien ships exploded. Coral shards melted as they hurtled through gouts of plasma thrown by a third ship.

The Jedi switched to hailing frequency. “Millennium Falcon, this is Kyp Durron. Could you use a wingmate?”

“You give a great audition, kid. Consider yourself hired.”

Han Solo’s disembodied voice lifted some of the burden from Kyp’s shoulders.

His relief was short-lived. A Yuuzhan Vong blastboat made a ponderous turn and came in pursuit of the Falcon. The pilot noticed, too, and responded with an oath Kyp hadn’t heard since his days as a slave in the Kessel spice mines.

“You install those vertical thrusters, like I told you?” Han demanded.

“Got ’em.”

“Good. Use them.”

Kyp punched the drive. His head seemed determined to burrow between his shoulders as the ship made a sudden leap. An enormous, ship-swallowing plasma comet scorched a path through the place he had just been—and directly toward his friend’s ship.

But Han turned the Falcon abruptly up on her port side. The missile streaked past, taking out a pair of disoriented coralskippers before it cooled into tumbling rock.

The old ship leveled out and then whirled away, tracing an oddly teetering path as Han deftly evaded incoming fire. Then he abruptly flipped onto the starboard side. Another massive bolt shot by, missing the ship but heating the underside to a glowing red. The Falcon levelled out suddenly. Two confused coralskippers collided overhead.

“Hey, I told these people to use the flight restraints,” Han protested, responding to someone whose voice was beyond the reach of the comm. “Maybe if you’d issued a royal edict?”

The contentious fondness in Han’s voice identified the recipient of his sarcasm. An odd, hollow sensation settled in the pit of Kyp’s stomach at the prospect of confronting Leia Organa Solo.

He admired Han’s wife greatly, but her presence often left him keenly aware of the disparity between his youthful choices and hers. Leia had become a member of the Imperial Senate at sixteen, a hero of the Rebel Alliance two years later. At sixteen, Kyp had apprenticed himself to a long-dead Sith Lord. He’d rounded out his teen years by putting Master Skywalker in a near-death trance, forcibly erasing the memory of an Omwati scientist, commandeering a superweapon, and destroying a world and all its inhabitants. Thanks to Luke Skywalker’s intervention, Kyp’s crimes had been forgiven. Kyp had no illusions that anyone would forget them, least of all himself. Princess Leia did not remind him of what he’d been, but rather, what he might have become.

On the other hand, Leia’s presence on the Falcon might explain why Jaina had come so forcefully to Kyp’s mind. Leia wasn’t a fully trained Jedi, but Kyp suspected her raw powers rivaled those of her brother. Perhaps she’d heard something about her daughter and had inadvertently projected her response through the Force. Last thing Kyp had heard, the Solo kids were involved in some secret mission.

“From your last comment, I’d guess that Leia is flying copilot,” Kyp ventured.

“Looks that way,” Han agreed. Kyp didn’t need the Force to hear the deep affection in the man’s voice. But there was also a deep weariness and a certain brittle quality—things that Kyp had never associated with Han.

“Is everything all right?”

Han’s laugh sounded a trifle forced. “Leia’s up to the job, if that’s what you’re asking. And we’ve got two Jedi Masters aboard for good measure—Luke’s here, and Mara. What could go wrong?”

SOME CULTURES BELIEVE THAT RHETORICAL QUESTIONS HAVE A WAY OF TEMPTING FATE, Zero-One observed.

Kyp abruptly switched off the outside comm. “Who asked you?” he demanded.

RHETORICAL QUESTIONS ARE NOT DIRECTED AT ANYONE IN PARTICULAR. PERHAPS THAT IS WHY DESTINY CLAIMS THEM.

“Who did your philosophical programming—a cantina comic? Destiny claims them!” the Jedi scoffed. “Words to live by!”

EXPERIENTIAL DATA, KYP DURRON, SUGGEST THAT YOU DO PRECISELY THAT.

The sneer fell off Kyp’s face. He switched off the communication screen linking him to the disturbing Q9 unit and blew out a long sigh.

Then he fell into place beside the Falcon, his eyes scanning the roiling skies for his next fight.