by Greg Keyes
Jaina looked down at the floor. “No,” she said, “he’s still not advocating what you’re doing. He’s trying to build a network to pass people and information in and out of Yuuzhan Vong space. A system of places like this, and ships—”
“But no direct action. No bringing the fight home to the Yuuzhan Vong.”
“Not exactly—not the way you mean. But, Kyp, he is doing something, and he needs your help.”
Kyp shook his head. “I think he sent you out here to find out what I’m doing.”
“Partly. But he also sent me to bring you back into the fold.”
Kyp rubbed his jaw thoughtfully for a moment. “I don’t object to what Master Skywalker is doing. I have my bolt-holes and contacts, but they’re limited, scattered, one day at a time. I don’t have the resources or the leisure to build and maintain a stable network. If Luke does, that’s great. I wish he would take a more active hand, but this is more than I was starting to think he would do. He’s right; I can be of help to him, in certain sectors. And I’ll do it—I’ll meet with him. But Jaina, I need something from you in return.” He frowned. “Though this arrest business changes things.” He mulled that over a bit and shrugged. “I’ll lay it out for you anyway. I’m not on good terms with any of the military leaders. I need someone who is. Is that still you?”
Jaina thought back to her last encounter with Rogue Squadron. And Wedge Antilles, so far as she knew, was still on the side of the Jedi.
“They might listen to me,” she allowed.
“Or your mother.”
“What do you need, Kyp?” Jaina asked wearily.
He looked at her as if for the first time. “It can wait a few hours,” he said. “Why don’t you get cleaned up? We sank an old cargo tank to use as a warm room. There’s a hot tub of water calling your name.”
“That sounds really, really good,” Jaina said. “That’s not a proposition I’m prepared to refuse, anyway.”
The rogue Jedi’s eyes twinkled mischievously. “When you’re done, we’ll discuss what other propositions you might find interesting.”
That did something tickly to Jaina’s stomach. She tried to ignore it.
Clean and in a change of clothes, Jaina spent half an hour limbering up, enjoying the luxury of motion. Then she rejoined Kyp in the tactical room. A few more of his Dozen—plus however many now—were in evidence. They nodded at her when she entered.
“That better?” Kyp asked.
“A lot better,” Jaina told him. “Solar diameters better. Parsecs better. So. What’s up?”
“I like that,” Kyp said. “You get to the point.” He gestured for her to take a seat.
“Like I said earlier,” he began, as she settled into the reinforced flimsiplast chair, “we’ve been mostly taking things day by day. Harassing Yuuzhan Vong convoys, providing aid to resistance movements, keeping our receivers tuned. The problem was, nothing we could ever do was enough. We were no more than ore mites, irritating the Vong. The other thing I realized was how little we really know about them. How many are there? Where do they come from? Are they still coming? So a few months ago I decided to spend some time on an extended recon. We began at the Rim, where they first entered, then visited Belkadan and Helska. It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t as hard as I expected, either. I found a few answers. I found a lot more questions. But Sernpidal—Gavin Darklighter took Rogue Squadron to Sernpidal. After.”
Jaina stiffened.
“Right,” Kyp said. “You were with him, weren’t you? What you saw was confidential, not something for crazy Kyp Durron to know. But when people see strange things, Jaina, they talk.” He leaned forward on his elbows. “I’ve been known to accuse the New Republic and the Jedi of being slow to act, of having their priorities confused. Sometimes I’ve been right; maybe other times I’ve misstated the case. This time …”
He tapped on a holo display, and the Sernpidal system appeared. An adjustment, and a small section of it came into tight focus—a crescent of debris.
“The remains of Sernpidal.”
Jaina suddenly felt her throat closing and tears welling behind her eyes. She’d thought she had a handle on this, on Chewbacca’s death, but seeing the wreck of an entire planet, knowing somewhere in that jumble of rocks were the molecules that had once knit together into a person who had lived and loved, had held her when she was young—it stung. In some ways, Chewie had been a bigger part of her life than her own mother.
Kyp felt her grief and gave her the space of a few moments to adjust. Then he pointed to the holo.
“They did it to make ships,” he said softly. “They grow the ships as they grow all of their tools. They feed the young ones on broken planets.” He looked significantly at Jaina. “You knew this, right?”
She nodded.
“Right. Coralskippers, bigger ships, all of the things we’ve seen already. But then there’s this.”
He magnified yet again.
As they looked at the image, Kyp continued. “Gavin Darklighter saw the Yuuzhan Vong growing a ship the size of the Death Star. Why didn’t anyone think that was a serious thing?”
The … thing … portrayed in the holograph was clearly a Yuuzhan Vong ship. It had the same organic look to it, and in color and alternating textures rough and smooth was much like the larger ships Jaina had already seen. But in form it was quite different.
It spidered across the sky, a huge, multilegged monster with each leg—or arm, or whatever—curving in the same direction, so the whole thing looked like a mad sculptor’s attempt to portray a galaxy. It was beautiful and terrible, and it made her mouth dry to look at it.
“It didn’t look like that before,” Jaina said. “It was just an ovoid.”
“What you and Gavin saw was hardly more than a seed,” Kyp said. “That thing could swallow Death Stars for lunch. And no one has done anything.”
“We’ve had our hands sort of full,” she replied, aware that her voice was hushed. “How did you get this? Surely after Rogue Squadron’s recon, the Yuuzhan Vong buttoned up the system.”
“Oh, indeed they did,” Kyp replied. “And for anyone besides someone trained as a pilot and a Jedi, I would say it was nearly impossible. But I’m the guy who guided your father through the Maw, using nothing but the most rudimentary command of the Force, and I’ve come a long way since then. Fluctuations in gravity are always squirreling little hyperspace entry points in and out of existence, spalled off larger ones. The Sernpidal system has been unstable since they destroyed the planet, which is how Darklighter got in. The Yuuzhan Vong have mostly corrected their earlier mistakes, but they can’t cover all of them, especially those near the primary—and also when they’re creating their own gravitic anomalies.”
“Maybe because they think no one would be stupid enough to jump that close to a star?”
“Stupid or not, it worked. Despite that they very nearly interdicted me. I lost a wingmate and made a jump out that nearly shredded me near a neutron star.” He grinned again. “But it was worth it. I got a good, close look.”
“You know what it is?”
“Yes. The whole thing isn’t on-line yet, but they were putting some of its systems through trials while we were there.”
“So what is it?”
“A gravitic weapon.”
“Like a dovin basal?”
Kyp laughed. “Dovin basals, the big ones, can pull down a moon. They can generate anomalies that resemble quantum black holes. This thing could collapse a star.”
“How do you know that’s what it is? Why haven’t we seen something like this before?”
“It’s taken them a long time to grow it, Jaina. They couldn’t grow one out there in the void between the galaxies, could they? And maybe not just any planet will do—maybe there was something special about Sernpidal. But remember, this was one of the first things they did when they began the invasion of our galaxy.”
“There is some evidence they’ve been out on the Rim for at least fifty years,”
Jaina pointed out.
“I’ve seen a little evidence of that, too. But they weren’t ready to invade, then. Blowing up a planet might have attracted someone’s attention.” He held up his hands. “I don’t know. I only know one thing—that thing has to be stopped, now, before it’s operational.”
“I still don’t understand how you can know what it is,” Jaina said. “You’ve never been shy about jumping to conclusions.”
Kyp tapped the holo console again. The view zoomed out.
“This is time lapse,” he said softly. “Remember that Sernpidal was a hundred and fifteen thousand kilometers from its primary, which is still the approximate position of this weapon.”
Jaina watched, at first not understanding what she was seeing. From the primary’s corona, a small flare erupted, something she had seen happen on numerous occasions around numerous stars.
But the flare kept going, first a full solar diameter, then two. And as it grew longer, it gathered strength rather than diminishing, became a ribbon of superheated hydrogen and helium, dimming and cooling as it went but still clearly visible. In the artificial quickness of time lapse, it was only moments before the streamer reached the gigantic Yuuzhan Vong construction.
“Emperor’s black bones,” Jaina breathed.
“You see?” Kyp said. “Extrapolate. Only about an eighth of its systems seem to be ‘alive,’ yet it can generate a gravity well powerful enough and focused enough to pull enormous quantities of solar atmosphere over a hundred thousand kilometers. The dovin basal on Sernpidal pales to absolute insignificance next to that. Think of the size of the singularities it can create—big enough to swallow a ship? A planet? If we let them take that thing out, nothing can stop them.”
Speechless, Jaina could only nod in horrified agreement.
FOURTEEN
“Oh, my goodness,” C-3PO bleated as the Falcon dropped out of hyperspace with a sort of flat thud that sent them all a centimeter into the air. “It’s another one of those terrible Yuuzhan Vong interdictors!”
“Relax, Threepio,” Han said, his voice so dry he sounded almost bored. “The inertial dampeners are just being a little cranky, that’s all. Lando’s so-called technicians were a little less than thorough.”
“More likely they didn’t understand the extent to which this ship is put together with chewstim and wishful thinking,” Leia joked. “No one else has ever been able to repair this thing except—”
She broke off, and Han knew why. The unfinished thought, except you and Chewbacca, was true. He and Chewie had made the Falcon galaxy-famous for doing the impossible, but it had almost always involved the Wookiee and him improvising circuits even as their shields were failing.
“You can say it,” he told her.
“Look, Han,” Leia said softly. “He can never be replaced—”
“No,” he replied, more sharply than intended. “Not with Droma, not with you.” His voice softened. “But he could never have replaced you, either, Leia. Let’s leave it at that, huh? I like my new copilot just fine.”
“Thank you. That means a lot to me.”
“I mean, she’s a little mouthy for my taste, and kinda snooty, but at least she’s easy enough on the eyes—even with the new hairdo.”
Leia’s tender expression was metamorphosing into something less benign when the mass detector bleeped and C-3PO cried, “I told you! I absolutely told you!”
“Threepio,” Han snapped, “have you ever been fired from a concussion missile tube?”
“No, sir. Of course, I did nearly fall out of the garbage-ejection tube a short time ago, which I must admit was terrifying, simply terrifying. I—”
“Threepio!” Han shouted.
C-3PO cocked his head and put one golden finger to the slit that implied his mouth. “Perhaps I should go see what Artoo is doing.”
“Yes, do that.”
Meanwhile, Leia had been analyzing whatever it was that had come out of hyperspace right behind them.
“It’s a freighter,” she said.
“A freighter? Here?” They were in occupied space, not far from Tynna.
Leia brought up the profile, revealing a blocky drive married to a long series of detachable storage pods headed up by a narrow habitation compartment. “Kuat Drive Yards Marl-class heavy freighter,” Leia confirmed.
“Out here?” Han repeated incredulously. “She’ll be easy pickings for the first Yuuzhan Vong ship she runs into. And where could she be going? Hutt space?”
“Maybe it’s a relief vessel,” Leia said. “Or a smuggler running weapons to the Hutts.”
“That thing’s got no legs,” Han said. “Any smuggler worth his spice would know better.”
“Well, there it is,” Leia said.
“I can see that.” He set his lips. “I just had an unpleasant thought.”
Leia nodded grimly. “I just had the same thought.”
“Yeah. Have they seen us yet?”
“I doubt it.”
“Let’s keep it that way. Run silent and let them pass. We’ll see for sure where they’re going.”
“Why don’t we just ask them?”
Han gave her a brief open-mouthed stare. “Boy, do you have a lot to learn. Let me handle this, willya? I know what I’m doing.”
“Right. I’ve heard that a time or two. I’ve usually had cause to regret it.”
“At least you always lived to regret it, sweetheart.”
When the Falcon powered down, Jacen was deep in meditation. He’d spent hours coaxing his wants, needs, and expectations into corners of his mind far from the conscious, surrendering himself into the silent flow of the Force.
He tuned out the sensations of the Force around him: his mother, the lesser voices of his father and the Noghri, the faint impressions of the droids and the ship itself. He wasn’t searching for anything at all, merely trying to become a part of the living Force, detached from the particulars of it. Just to feel it ebbing and flowing through him, not even seeking understanding, for in seeking one often missed what was sought, or came to an understanding tainted by desire.
Desire, like fear and anger, had to be released.
For a brief moment he almost found that center he was searching for, the universe spreading out in its entirety, and in that instant he saw again a vision of the galaxy tipping, of a fundamental imbalance waiting to happen.
There, memory and desire betrayed him. He saw himself facing Warmaster Tsavong Lah, his mother bleeding at his feet. He saw his brother, Anakin, confident and cocky after his escape from Yavin 4. He saw himself, only days before, slaying the two living coralskippers and their pilots.
The death of one diminishes us all. Surely that had to be the case with the Yuuzhan Vong as well, though they didn’t appear in the Force.
Which was impossible, if the Force was what the old Jedi Masters said it was.
He actually wished Anakin were here, so they could have one of their arguments. Anakin now held that what they knew as the Force was only a manifestation of something greater, more overarching, something Jedi could only glimpse. To Jacen that felt utterly wrong, and yet it was hard to dispute that it fit the facts as they stood now.
Anakin also thought of the Force as little more than an energy source, something with which the Jedi worked their wills. That also felt wrong, and yet Jacen now seriously questioned the opposing view, that the Force had a will of its own, and that the proper role of the Jedi was to understand that will and work through it.
Neither extreme felt right in Jacen’s gut, and yet he had no answer of his own. He had abandoned his vow not to use the Force, but it had given him no more certainty about when or how it ought to be used, or what a Jedi ought to do. Again, Anakin’s certainty was both enviable and worrisome. Anakin was determined to oppose evil, and just as determined that he could know what evil was, even without the Force to enlighten him.
Maybe Anakin was right. Jacen knew that he couldn’t just stand by and do nothing. He had been given gifts a
nd learned to use them, and it was incumbent on him that he find the proper way to do so. But how was he to judge? Who was he to judge?
Maybe he had been wrong to strike out on his own, to leave the apprenticeship of Master Skywalker. But somehow, he knew, Uncle Luke’s path could not be his, no more than Anakin’s could be.
As it was, he took each situation as he found it. He’d hated killing the Yuuzhan Vong, but the situation hadn’t suggested or allowed for any alternative other than the death or capture of his family. It may have been a bad choice, but at the time it was the only one he was capable of making.
He tried to untangle himself from this internal dialogue, but the more he tried, the more frustrated he became, and he was on the verge of admitting failure anyway when something changed around him.
He came back, bringing the near world into focus, and found everything off but emergency lights.
“Dear me!” C-3PO moaned. “I knew it!”
“Threepio?”
“Master Jacen! You’re conscious!”
“What’s going on, Threepio? How long have we been powered down?”
“Ever since that mass came out of hyperspace,” C-3PO said. “I wanted to help, but Captain Solo was quite unpleasant.”
“I’m sure it’s not you he was mad at, Threepio,” Jacen assured the droid. “I’ll go see what’s going on.”
“Look there,” his father was saying as Jacen entered the cockpit.
“I see,” Leia breathed. “Yuuzhan Vong.”
Jacen studied the long-range scanner readouts. “They’re attacking that freighter?” he asked.
“No,” Han said. “They ain’t attacking it, kid. They’re escorting it.”
“Escorting? Where are we?”
“One jump from the Cha Raaba system,” Han replied.
“Cha Raaba? That’s where Ylesia is, right?”
“Kid gets a gold epaulet,” Han murmured.
“And Ylesia is where the Peace Brigade is headquartered,” Leia added. “So that ship—”
“Supplies for the Brigade and the Vong,” Han concluded. “Couldn’t have figured it better myself. Looks like Lando was right, only if the Peace Brigade is moving stuff inside Yuuzhan Vong space, someone must be moving it to them from outside.”