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.”
SIX
A storm raged outside General Soontir Fel’s viewport, the first of the winter monsoon season. Frozen rain swirled through roiling gray clouds and rattled against the transparisteel ports. Ice coated the duracrete landing pads and hung from the eaves of the Chiss barracks in neat rows, like ready weapons lining an armory shelf. Tall, blue-skinned pilots strode confidently over the slick walkways, aided by their spike-soled boots and their native athleticism.
Despite the steady hum of the room’s heating unit, the cold seeped into Fel’s joints. A phantom ache throbbed in his missing eye, despite the dark patch he sometimes wore. For the first time in his life he felt old and tired, especially when he considered the challenges ahead.
A hard winter was on its way, the general mused, one that could last for several Corellian years. The Chiss base, the latest of many that Fel had established over the years, was set in a particularly harsh environment of an inhospitable world. Most of his advisers had perceived no reason why anyone would choose to place a base here.
Fel only hoped that the Yuuzhan Vong would follow the same logic.
He turned away from the viewport to study the officer standing at stiff attention before his desk. The young man wore the formal black uniform of the Syndic Mitth’raw’nuruodo’s household phalanx, and the insignia of a colonel. His black hair was cut short, exposing the entire length of the scar that ran up from his right eyebrow well into his hairline. A thin streak of white hair followed the path of that scar, as if to emphasize the maturity that had come too soon, and at great price.
“We have had this discussion before, Colonel,” Fel commented. “This phalanx is committed to the same goals you’ve espoused. We responded at Garqi. We fought at Ithor. The Imperial command recalled Admiral Pellaeon after that debacle, with what they considered to be good reason. Given the outcome of that engagement and the withdrawal of Imperial support, I saw little value in committing phalanx squadrons.”
“I disagree.” The young colonel bowed to emphasize that his words expressed opinion, but not disrespect. “I will concede that no one, not the New Republic nor the Imperial forces nor the Chiss, could counter the biological weapons that destroyed Ithor. The presence of this household’s phalanx had no impact on this outcome. Ithor, however, was the only world utterly destroyed. The invaders have followed more conventional tactics in their subsequent conquests.”
“And therein lies the problem. How successful were you and your Rogue Squadron allies in fending off any of these conquests through ‘conventional tactics’?”
The young man’s lips thinned. “My two squadrons were recalled shortly after Ithor, sir. We had neither the time nor the opportunity to make an appreciable difference. This is not an excuse, sir, but simple fact.”
“Two squadrons,” the general repeated. “Twenty-four clawcraft and a beacon ship. How much difference could this force have made at Ord Mantell? Or Duro? Hundreds, possibly thousands of worlds are under Yuuzhan Vong control.”
“With respect, sir, I was commissioned in this household to serve and uphold the ideals of Grand Admiral Thrawn.”
“Which did not, I might point out, include stupidity,” the general observed coldly. “I expected better of you—a not uncommon dynamic between fathers and their sons.”
Colonel Jagged Fel acknowledged the reprimand with a small bow and a faint, wry smile.
“You were trained by Chiss tacticians,” Baron Fel continued. “Tell me: do we have the ships, weaponry, personnel, or for that matter the knowledge needed to take on these invaders?”
“We do not,” Jag admitted. “Permission to speak freely?”
The baron lifted one hand in a gesture of assent.
“Chiss sages conclude that the Yuuzhan Vong must have spent generations traveling between galaxies. These invaders are not likely to consider the so-called Unknown Regions a daunting prospect.”
“I agree,” Baron Fel said. “The Chiss parliament does not, and neither do the Imperial leaders. The invasion path has swept steadily toward the Core Worlds, leading many to believe that the invaders will
bypass both Chiss and Imperial territory entirely.”
As Jag absorbed this, his pale green eyes narrowed and his jaw squared. “This phalanx has never been ruled by the thinking of tradition-bound Chiss senators, or by Imperial politicians whose first concern is personal power. Was a change-of-policy holocube issued during my recent absence?”
The general’s eyebrows lifted. Jag inclined his head in a bow that held acknowledgment of his impropriety, but no apology.
“Chiss society pretends that Snydic Mitth’raw’nuruodo does not exist, but they know quite well that we are out here. They send their sons and daughters to this phalanx’s academies and bases. They were more than willing to accept the protection and technology that Thrawn’s conquests and alliances offered them, and they are willing to accept what we, successors to the grand admiral’s goals, can do for them.”
“But we could do more.” Jag took a step forward, his expression intense, his formality forgotten. “You know what we have faced out here. The Yuuzhan Vong might have caught Borsk Fey’lya and his ilk unaware, but the Chiss have long expected something of this nature. In fact, we have turned aside foes that might have swept across the galaxy and left little for these new invaders to destroy!”
The baron’s eyes narrowed, and his lips pursed as he considered his son’s passionate words. “You speak of yourself as one of the Chiss. Do you see yourself in that light?”
Jag blinked, put off stride by this seeming non sequitur. “It is difficult to do otherwise,” he said carefully. “I was raised among the Chiss, trained with them. Their rules and standards and expectations became my own.”
“You met and exceeded these standards, and as a result you command your former Chiss peers,” his father continued. “With rank comes responsibility. The course you propose shows little sense of responsibility for the pilots under your command.”
Jag’s face betrayed no opinion on this matter, but his bearing subtly reverted to a formal, military stance. “Sir, may I request that you list my failings plainly, so that I might address them.”
“Do you know how to stop the Yuuzhan Vong?”
Dark Journey Page 5
