FIVE

Jaina slumped in the pilot’s seat, too exhausted for sleep. She felt an approaching presence and turned to face Tekli, the young Chadra-Fan healer.

The furry little female looked perturbed—all four of the nostrils on her upturned snout flared, as if she were scenting the air for danger. Her large rounded ears were folded back into subdued half-moons, and her quick, almost furtive movements made her look more rodentlike than usual.

Jaina hauled herself upright. “How is Tahiri?”

“Sleeping.” The healer sighed. “The broken bone in her arm is set, her wounds patched as best I can. But I do not envy her her dreams.”

Dreams. Jaina grimaced at the thought. “Why take the chance? First opportunity, I’m going straight into a healing trance.”

“That is probably wise.”

Tekli stood quietly, her long-fingered hands tightly clasped. She looked as if she were trying to gather her thoughts, or perhaps her courage.

Jaina smoothed a hand wearily over her untidy brown hair. “This isn’t a diplomatic dinner. How about we jettison the protocol and get to whatever’s on your mind.”

“You have set course for Coruscant.”

“That’s right.”

“Is this wise? We are flying an enemy ship. We cannot communicate with the city towers to relay our identities and intentions.”

Jaina folded her arms. “How many living Yuuzhan Vong ships do you suppose the Republic has?”

The little Chadra-Fan blinked. “I don’t know.”

“Last I heard, two. By now they could both be dead and useless. They don’t seem to live long without regular attention from the shapers—the Vong maintenance techs. Chances are, the Republic will be so glad to get their hands on a living ship and living pilot they’ll give us landing clearance.”

“As they did to the supposed Yuuzhan Vong defector, the priestess Elan?”

Jaina blew out a long sigh. “I see your point. How can the Republic know that we’re not faking surrender? For all they know, we could be on a suicide mission to release some biological weapon upon Coruscant.”

“It has crossed my mind. No doubt it may occur to others.”

Jaina glanced at Lowbacca, who was still poking delicately about in the frigate’s navibrain. “What about it, Lowie? Any chance this thing can change hyperspace destination without emerging to sublight speed?”

The Wookiee sent her an incredulous stare, then cast his eyes upward and shook his head in disgust.

She shrugged this off. “So we emerge into Coruscant space and keep out of the main lanes while we program another hyperspace jump. There must be somewhere that we can land this rock in one piece rather than as a shower of gravel. Then we can make our way to a population center and send communications from there.”

The Chadra-Fan’s lopped-back ears perked up into their usual, rounded shape. “Yes. Much better.”

“Got a destination in mind?”

Lowbacca woofed a suggestion.

“Gallinore,” Jaina mused. “That’s in the Hapes Cluster, but it’s relatively close. If we are very careful, we could probably get in undetected.”

Tenel Ka’s head came up sharply. “I know Gallinore well. It could be done.”

“But we’d be cutting right across Yuuzhan Vong territory,” Ganner pointed out. “Chances are, we’d run right into heavy dovin basal mining.”

“Good point,” Jaina agreed. “This jump took us through enemy-held territory. The question is, how do the Yuuzhan Vong ships get through the minefield?”

Lowbacca pointed to the navibrain and went into a vigorous spate of growls and yelps.

The young pilot frowned. “What do you mean, the ship just went around them? How does that work?”

The Wookiee shrugged. Jaina’s face was deeply troubled as she considered the possible implications of this. After a moment she shook off her introspection. “Anyone else have anything to add? Alema? Tesar? How about you, Zekk?”

“You’re the pilot,” Zekk responded. “But I see your point—we should come to a consensus before the need for action arises. Gallinore sounds good. How much longer in hyperspace, Lowie?”

The Wookiee held up a massive furred paw and began to count down from five. Jaina reached for the cognition hood and pulled it back over her head.

She was instantly flooded with images of light—not the expected, sudden appearance of blurry starlines, but a multiverse of frantically strobing, swirling lights.

The skies over Coruscant blazed with fleeing transport ships, darting E-wings and XJs, strangely undisciplined squadrons of coralskippers. Brief, brilliant explosions flared and faded, each coming on the heels of another in rapid cadence.

Lowbacca began to howl in protest.

“I know it’s not your fault,” Jaina yelled as she jinked to avoid several pink streaks exploding from X-wing laser cannons. “You didn’t get us lost. This is Coruscant.”

“This was Coruscant,” Zekk murmured, his voice hollow with shock and grief.

Ganner thrust him out of the way and dropped into the gunner’s seat. “Line them up, Jaina, and I’ll take them out.”

A tiny blue comet flared toward them. The missile blinked out of existence meters from the ship. Immediately a secondary attack—a barrage of laserfire—hammered the coral hull. The frigate shuddered. Fine, black dust showered down over the Jedi.

“Those were Republic ships,” Ganner said grimly. “I can’t return fire on them!”

Instead, he sent a plasma bolt hurling toward a Yuuzhan Vong skip. Alema Rar lunged at him, seizing his arm with both hands and jerking his hand free of the targeting glove.

“We came dressed for the wrong party,” she reminded him. “Keep that up, and everyone will be firing at us!”

Jaina opened her mind, reached out as far as the ship’s considerable sensors could span. Information engulfed her. The data was staggering, the conclusion inescapable:

Coruscant was lost, and the fleeing New Republic ships were badly outnumbered by the invading force.

The Twi’lek was right: any attempt to help would only draw the ire of the Yuuzhan Vong and place the Jedi survivors squarely between the warring factions.

She glanced at Lowbacca, tilted her hooded head at an inquiring angle. For a moment, the Wookiee’s face reflected her own conflicted thoughts. He offered a halfhearted comment about the enemy of an enemy being a friend.

Before Jaina could respond, a warning sizzled through the hood and into her mind. Her gaze darted toward a proton torpedo cutting a livid blue streak toward them.

“Something tells me,” she replied as she dodged the Republic ship’s missile, “that we won’t be making many friends today.”

   Leia grimaced as a painfully familiar X-wing darted directly into the Falcon’s flight path.

“Are you sure Kyp Durron wasn’t hooked up to that scrambled yammosk?” she said tartly.

“Watch,” Han said in a smug tone. He delivered an open-handed whack to the control panel. A concussion missile exploded toward the Jedi pilot’s ship. As if he’d expected this, Kyp whipped his X-wing into a hard, rolling turn. Han’s missile put a solid hit on the skip pursuing Kyp.

A quick grin tugged at one corner of Han’s mouth. “Taught him that one myself.”

“Are you bragging or confessing?”

“Kyp’s fighting on the same side we are,” he reminded. “Not everyone agrees with his methods, but no one gives more than he does.”

Leia closed her eyes as the ever-present grief swept over her in waves, followed swiftly by the stark fear that came from knowing she could lose two more children. “That’s true enough. Kyp was more than willing to give your daughter to the cause.”

Han fell silent for several moments, negotiating his way through a floating graveyard of newly dead ships with far more care than the effort warranted.

Too late, Leia realized how deeply her words had cut. Han had lost Chewbacca on Sernpidal. There was enough superstition in Han’s makeup to view that planet’s graveyard as a sort of interdiction field for Solo luck. To his way of thinking, Jaina’s mission to Sernpidal had been a near miss, a tragedy just barely averted.

She glanced over at her husband. His bleak expression and haunted eyes recalled the terrible months after Chewbacca’s death, and his struggle to accept the vulnerability of those he loved. When the realization of Anakin’s death seared through her, she’d been too engulfed by her own agony to ease Han into that knowledge; in fact, from what she remembered, she’d thrown the terrible news at him like a brick of duracrete. Right now, he looked as if she’d hit him squarely between the eyes.

Remorse jolted through Leia. She was not the only one who had lost a son.

She touched Han’s arm lightly. “Grief has a way of making people act selfish and stupid.”

He sent her a quick, wary look. “Are we talking about me?”

“Not this time,” she said, and sighed. “I’m sorry, Han. Jaina can take care of herself, and the Sernpidal mission probably ended up moving the war effort forward. That doesn’t change the fact that Kyp lied to Jaina. Worse—he used the Force to sway her judgment. I just don’t trust him.”

“Luke does.”

“Luke is …” She paused, considered. “Optimistic.”

Han snorted. “Since when did you start pulling your punches?”

His wife responded with a wan smile and turned back to the navigational computer. Her fingers poised over the controls, uncertain. “Where do we go now?” she wondered aloud.

An out-of-control skip spun toward them. Bursts of fire erupted from the Falcon’s belly guns as Luke Skywalker reduced the vessel to rubble. A large chunk of coral slammed into the forward shields. The cabin lights blinked out, then flared uncertainly back.

“Anywhere but here,” Han said. “Don’t get me wrong: I’m glad to have Luke and Mara aboard. Your brother’s not bad with weaponry, but he’s not, well—”

“You?” Leia suggested.

Han managed a reasonable imitation of his old, cocky smirk. “I don’t like to brag.”

She began to input coordinates for a brief hyperspace jump. Her fingers faltered to a stop as a strange sensation crept over her—a presence perceived through the Force, yet one that felt more like a gathering storm cloud than a living being. Her brow furrowed as she tried to make sense of it.

The touch on her shoulder made her jump. “You’re wound about three turns too tight,” he observed.

Suddenly the answer came to her. She sat up, pulling away from Han. “Jaina!”

The color leeched from his face. “She’s not …”

“No,” Leia said hastily. “But she’s still in danger—only now she’s nearby. Circle around, head back toward the battle.”

As Han pulled the Falcon around, Leia’s brown eyes scanned the roiling skies. A Yuuzhan Vong frigate twisted through the confusion, several X-wings in close pursuit. Coralskippers converged on the frigate, surrounding it with a protective convoy. Several pairs of mismatched ships peeled away as the situation devolved into a chaotic dogfight.

Leia seized the obvious and logical explanation. Jaina had returned from her mission and gone straight to the nearest Rogue Squadron post. That would be like her. Communication being what it was, she might not have been able to get a message through.

Even as Leia’s thoughts took shape, plasma spurted from a coralskipper and scored a direct hit on one of the X-wings. She felt a surge of fury in that nebulous Jainasense as the Republic pilot dissolved along with the ship, and then a colder, darker emotion took its place.

Her brows drew down in a worried scowl as she tracked the acrid scent of vengeance to her daughter’s ship.

“There,” she said, pointing toward the frigate and the small fleet of beleaguered X-wings giving dogged pursuit. “Jaina’s over there.”

A grin broke over Han’s face. He leaned toward the comm. “Kyp, you’re about to join Rogue Squadron.”

The only response from the Jedi’s X-wing was an incredulous comment of a Q9 droid.

“Jaina’s with those X-wings trying to take down that midsized rock, the one busy avoiding entanglement,” Han explained. “What do you think: can a Yuuzhan Vong ship move that fast and maneuver that well, and still use its shields?”

“Let’s find out.”

Kyp veered off and circled wide, closing in on the frigate from above. Streams of red light poured from his X-wing and pelted the enemy ship. The dovin basal absorbed most of Kyp’s shots in miniature gravity wells and dodged nearly all the rest through a series of deft, economical movements.

“Not bad,” Han muttered, frowning as he stared at the midsized Yuuzhan Vong ship.

Suddenly the enemy frigate pulled away and described a tight, rising loop.

Leia clutched Han’s arm. “It’s coming right into your line of fire!”

“Yeah.”

The laconic response earned Han an incredulous, sidelong glare. He shook off Leia’s grip and reached for the intraship comm. “The big one’s mine, Mara. You can pick off anything it brings our way.”

“You’re the captain,” his sister-in-law replied.

Leia’s face cleared suddenly as she understood the path his thoughts were taking. “Jaina? In that enemy ship?”

“One way to find out.”

Han fired a missile at the frigate, waiting a hair’s breadth longer than he had with Kyp. The Yuuzhan Vong ship rolled deftly aside as if the pilot had been expecting the attack. Han’s missile struck one of the skips that trailed protectively in its wake. A shielding singularity swallowed the first assault, but Mara finished the job with a quick one–two attack.

“That’s Jaina,” Han said firmly. “Thousands of pilots can get from here to there in an X-wing, but how many could make a hunk of rock twirl like a Twi’lek dancing girl?”

“Han—”

“Two,” he stated, answering his own question. “And I’m the other one.”

Still dubious, Leia turned to the Force for confirmation. Again she reached out to Jaina. Again she perceived not the vivid, impetuous energy she’d always associated with her daughter, but a storm-cloud presence—cool, impending, pitiless.

Leia frowned. Anger led to the dark side. She had heard this so many times. Yet the emotions that rolled off her daughter were disturbingly familiar, and very like Leia’s perception of her own father—not the spectral Anakin Skywalker who had begged her forgiveness, but his earlier, living incarnation as Darth Vader.

Never had Leia considered the possibility that Jaina, the most pragmatic and least complicated of her children, might slip into darkness. She reached for Jaina again, more insistently. Through the Force she sensed her daughter’s rejected pain, her carefully shielded emotions—and her unacknowledged thirst for revenge. It occurred to Leia that ice could be as deadly as fire.

If this insight proved true, then she’d lost another of her children, this time to something more terrible than death.

“Decide,” Han said tersely. “The Yuuzhan Vong could blame that frigate’s maneuver on the scrambled yammosk, but sooner or later Jaina’s gonna have to pick a side.”

She quickly shook off her fears and switched the comm to hailing frequency. “This is Leia Organa Solo aboard the Millennium Falcon. The Yuuzhan Vong frigate nearby is under the command of my daughter, Lieutenant Jaina Solo. Her Yuuzhan Vong escort does not realize this. Hold your fire, and we’ll see that the frigate escapes, and the coralskippers do not.”

There was a moment’s hesitation, then the pursuing X-wings pulled away.

The intercom crackled. “Leia, are you sure about this?” Mara asked. “I hate to admit it, but I don’t feel Jaina out there.”

She glanced at Han, who nodded. “We’re sure.”

The Yuuzhan Vong frigate, its way clear, shot off in rapid acceleration and disappeared into hyperspace. The Falcon followed, taking the short jump Leia had programmed.

Han’s shoulders slumped. His hand found hers, claimed it. “We did the right thing, didn’t we? I mean, letting a potential enemy go?”

The unwitting implication of his words nearly broke Leia’s heart. She met her husband’s eyes and read the rare moment of self-doubt written there.

“That was Jaina,” she asserted, both answering and avoiding his question.

His gaze sharpened. “Then why do you look so worried?”

For a moment Leia was tempted to share her doubts, to see if they might dissipate if given voice. But if she was wrong, planting this seed in Han’s mind would be selfish, even cruel. She would never accuse Han of favoritism, but Jaina had always been the child he understood best, the one who’d taken straight after him in talents and tastes, the kid who’d taken every opportunity to follow him around. Han would grieve terribly if Jaina were taken from them by this war, but he had lost others in battle and he could come to terms with it in time. This, though—this he could never comprehend.

“Well?” Han prompted. “What’s wrong?”

Leia settled on a partial truth. “Jacen wasn’t with Jaina. I can still sense him,” she added hastily, “but he wasn’t with her.”

Han nodded, taking this in. “Then we’ll have to trust them both to find their way back.”

She blinked, startled again by the unintentional aptness of his comments. “You’re right. They’re grown now, and capable. But it isn’t easy to let them go their own way.”

“No, it isn’t.” He attempted a cocky grin and managed a decent if decidedly one-sided imitation. “Since when did any of us need things to be easy?”

Leia gratefully took his lead. Humor pushed back the numbing grief—if only for the time it took to smile.

“You’ve got a point, flyboy. If I needed proof of that, all I need to do is remember that we’re still married.”

He leaned forward, touched his forehead to hers. “Last time I checked.”

His strength flowed into her, mixed with a sweetness that she’d feared they’d misplaced long ago. Leia lifted her face until their lips were a whisper apart.

“Check again.”