She was losing this argument. Losing to Tahiri, who was both years her junior and all bottled up in pain because she’d lost Anakin.
“Luke and Mara aren’t as close to Jacen as I am. I’m his twin.” Deep down, she knew that the statement was insupportable, that Luke and Mara had skill, experience, and Force sensitivity enough for this task. But it was the argument she’d chosen, so she stubbornly stuck with it.
“So I’ll go instead of you.”
“You?”
Tahiri nodded, solemn. “Other than you, who’d be better? I don’t know Jacen as well as you do. I can’t feel him in the Force as well. But I know him better than any Jedi who wasn’t in a Force-bond with him the way we were on that Yuuzhan Vong worldship. And no one, no one, knows the Yuuzhan Vong, at least the way they think, better than I do.”
Jaina just looked at her, unable to argue that point. “I think …” She felt the heat of her argument slip away from her. She dropped almost effortlessly into a reflective state. She was sure Luke would approve of the transition. “I think you’ll let your emotions get the better of you.”
“I could say the same thing about you. Which brings us back to the point. Does neither of us go, or do I go?”
Jaina sighed, defeated. Oddly, the defeat didn’t anger or irritate her. She just felt more tired than before. “You go.” She felt Tahiri begin to lean forward for an embrace, but Jaina turned away before that feeling could be translated into action. She didn’t want Tahiri to feel closer to her. It would only hurt Tahiri more once she was dead. “Thanks for caring.”
“You’re welcome … but you may not want to thank me after the other thing I have to say.”
There was something in Tahiri’s voice, some reluctant warning, that caused Jaina to turn back to look at her more closely. Tahiri’s expression was an odd mix: concern, apprehension, a reluctance to hurt.
“All right,” Jaina said, dubious. “Let’s hear it.”
“First, believe me, I understand that what I’m saying is none of my business. But I have to say it anyway.” Tahiri took a deep breath to compose herself. “I think you should stop avoiding your mother.”
“Avoiding her?” Jaina offered Tahiri an incredulous expression. “She’s everywhere. I bump into her a dozen times a day.”
“You know what I mean. You’re not avoiding her as a defender of Borleias. You’re avoiding her as your mother.”
“That’s ridiculous. I haven’t started calling her ‘Leia’ or ‘Hey, you,’ or ‘What’s-your-name, Han’s wife.’ ” “You have started calling her ‘Mother’ instead of ‘Mom.’ ”
“Have I?” Jaina frowned, trying to remember.
Tahiri just stared at her, and Jaina had the uneasy feeling the girl was staring right through the screens of logic she’d erected for herself as though they were the most highly polished transparisteel.
Jaina relented. “Look,” she said. “I love my mother. But we don’t have, I don’t know, the kind of connection most mothers and daughters have. We were apart so often when I was a kid … she was trying to hammer the New Republic government into shape, and Jacen, Anakin, and I were on lonely little worlds with Chewbacca, or Winter, or on Yavin Four.”
“Did that keep you from having a connection, or did it simply make you mad at her?”
“That’s a stupid question.”
“If you say so. But you can reach out to her at any time, and, click, you’ll be connected again.” Tears filled Tahiri’s eyes and she turned away. “There’s a point where you realize that you’ve had the last talk you’re ever going to have with someone you love. That he’s gone. Have you realized that about your mom? Has she realized that about you?”
Jaina’s own vision blurred with tears. Her resolve finally gone, she reached out for Tahiri and pulled her close. “It’s not that way,” she said, the words having a hard time working their way around the sudden knot in her throat. “It isn’t.”
“If you say so.” Tahiri held her in return for several long moments, then pulled away, not meeting Jaina’s eyes. “I need to go get cleaned up.”
ELEVEN
Borleias Occupation, Day 39
“My name,” the man said, “is Sharr Latt. I’m a Wraith.”
He was a bit over average height, with hair that was just a few degrees of color away from pure white, worn in a slightly shaggy haircut. His eyes were blue and amused; his features belonged to the sort of comic entertainer who abused his audience and got laughs from it. He wore red pants and vest, a sky-blue long-sleeved shirt and boots; a broad red swath of cloth, more decorative than functional, served him as a belt, and a matching headband circled his brow. His accent belonged to the lower-class humans of Coruscant, and the smile on his face could have been interpreted as insincere or mocking—or both.
Jaina turned to the man’s companion. This being was a Gamorrean, one of the thick-bodied, snout-nosed, tusk-mouthed humanoids to be found fighting battles or doing low-complexity jobs all over the galaxy. This Gamorrean wore anonymous brown garments of human styling. “And is this one a Wraith, too?” Jaina asked, joking.
“I am,” the Gamorrean answered. Jaina jumped. Many Gamorreans understood Basic, but their vocal cords were not adequate to let them speak it. The Gamorrean continued, “My name is Voort saBinring. You can call me Piggy.”
There was a certain mechanical inflection to Piggy’s voice that led Jaina to believe his speech was artificially augmented. That would explain things. To cover for her sudden discomfiture, she shook each of their hands in turn, then asked, “So, what are we doing today?”
Sharr pointed through the blue-tinted window out into the jungle beyond the blackness of the kill zone. “We’re going out there. We’ll find a pool fed by cool underground springs. We’ll bathe one another while Piggy stands guard, and see what develops from there.” He shrugged. “Or, we can talk about psychological warfare and how it is applied to the Yuuzhan Vong.”
“I’ll take the psychological warfare.”
He nodded. “That’s pretty much what I figured. And since Piggy won’t need to guard us, I expect he’ll be tutoring you in small-unit starfighter tactics.”
She gave Piggy a narrow look. “Did you used to be a starfighter pilot?”
The Gamorrean nodded, causing his jowls and rolls of belly fat to wobble. “I did. I served your father on one campaign.”
“I think he told me about you when I was very young. One of those ‘you can be whatever you want when you grow up’ stories. ‘The Gamorrean Who Became a Fighter Pilot.’ I thought he’d made it up.”
“I have kept a low profile since those days. I have not done much flying.”
“That sort of suggests that you might not have much to teach me about small-unit tactics.”
The Gamorrean smiled, a broadening and curving of his mouth that revealed more teeth—teeth far cleaner and straighter than most Gamorreans enjoyed, Jaina saw. “I think I will surprise you,” Piggy said.
* * *
“Your work in the Hapes Cluster was pretty good,” Sharr said. The three of them were now on top of the biotics building. Below them in the near distance were the landing fields; beyond, stretching to the horizon, was jungle. The afternoon sun bore down upon them, but Jaina welcomed the heat after the coldness of space she’d experienced in the morning’s mission.
They were in clear sight of any Yuuzhan Vong observers that might be lurking at the jungle’s edge, but the Yuuzhan Vong traditionally did not employ snipers.
“ ‘Pretty good,’ ” Jaina said. “Meaning you think it could have been better.” She lay facedown on a blocky duracrete protrusion, staring off into the ship berthing area of the killing field, and watched the mechanics working on the Record Time. The surface she lay upon vibrated; within it was air-circulation machinery.
Sharr, leaning with his back against a smaller protrusion housing pumping equipment, kept his attention on his datapad and nodded absently. A few meters away, Piggy lay sprawled on his back on th
e roof surface, hands behind his head, eyes closed, enjoying the sunlight. His shirt was off, his belly expansive enough that Jaina suspected she could probably set a landspeeder down on it. She entertained the notion of painting landing stripes on it.
“How?” she persisted.
“Your tricks were good ones,” Sharr said, and met her gaze. “But they weren’t layered. You’d have one trick, and it would baffle them and kill them, and that would be it. Sometimes two. You need to have trick after trick available, so there’s never any end to them; that’s what they expect of their Trickster goddess.
“The second problem is that the Yuuzhan Vong could eventually figure out how you performed your tricks. That bit with the tracers, where each Yuuzhan Vong ship broadcast the distinctive signal of your ship, so they’d fire on one another—good thinking. But if you’d had a little charge in each one that would detonate it, leaving behind a scorch pattern like a laser hit—then they’d never have understood how you caused them to fire on one another. And it’s incomprehension, never figuring out the trick, that fills them—or us, for that matter—with supernatural dread.”
“I like the sound of ‘supernatural dread,’ ” Jaina admitted. It was a pleasing enough thought that she didn’t take offense at Sharr’s criticism of her efforts.
“We want them to suspect, not that you’re somehow associated with Yun-Harla, not that you’re a priestess or something, but that you are her.” Sharr closed his datapad and tucked it into a pocket. “Everything you do should promote that impression, even in extremely minor ways. In fact, you’re doing it now.”
She gave him a curious look. “How?”
“A goddess does not work. And here you are, lounging around, being lazy in clear view of all the pilots and mechanics in the field below. A goddess does not fear. And here you are, in plain sight of the Yuuzhan Vong, unconcerned. A goddess is superior to mortals. And here you are, resting on a higher level than your two companions. Speaking of companions, goddesses have strange ones. Hence a Gamorrean and some idiot in nauseatingly bright colors.” Sharr looked down at his outfit and shuddered.
“I get it,” Jaina said. “This is why Piggy is here even though he’s not talking about starfighter tactics yet.”
“Very good.” Sharr nodded. “From now on, you’re on stage every minute of every day. We’re not going to say you’re a goddess. We’re just going to treat you as though you are one, and you’re going to act accordingly.”
“Never ask when you can order,” Piggy said.
“Never work—except the work Yun-Harla would perform,” Sharr said. “Putting together tricks, that is. Don’t carry things for yourself. We’ll get you a porter if you don’t have someone who’ll do it for you.”
“Don’t be subtle in your motions,” Piggy said. “Big, generous gestures, as though you were used to conducting an orchestra.”
Jaina grimaced. “People are going to hate me. They’re going to think I’ve become horribly stuck up.”
“That’s right.” Sharr gave her another smile, this one more genuine, though still definitely tinged with mockery.
“But in private—”
“In private,” Piggy said, “you continue the illusion. Though you can tell anyone you trust absolutely.”
“No, she can’t,” Sharr said.
“Yes, she can.”
“I’m the psychological warfare expert here, and I say she can’t.”
“I’m three times your mass, and can take off your head with a single bite, and I say she can.”
“Excuse me? ” Jaina let a little shrillness creep into her voice. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m still here.”
Piggy opened his eyes to glance at her, then he and Sharr exchanged looks.
“She has us on that one,” Sharr said to Jaina.
“She is indeed still here.”
“Listen, Great One,” Sharr said.
“Don’t call me that.”
“I need to. We all do. The thing about telling people—inevitably, the Yuuzhan Vong will have spies here. In our camp, in our base. The more people who know that you’re not really becoming as arrogant as a Kuati merchant-princess, the more likely it is that those spies will notice. Tell whomever you want—but be aware that every extra person means the chances increase that the truth will spread.”
“General Antilles has already broken Twin Suns Squadron out of the normal command structure,” Piggy said. “Which makes sense, as a goddess wouldn’t have a formal rank within New Republic hierarchy.”
“Good point.” Sharr pulled out his datapad and keyed in a few words. “That means we can arrange for your pilots to be called by whatever maximum rank they’ve attained, since it has no bearing on your unit’s command structure. Colonel Jagged Fel. Jedi Master Kyp Durron.” He frowned. “No, not just Jedi Master. Kyp Durron, the Destroyer of Worlds, is subordinate to Jaina. To the Yuuzhan Vong, that will be significant.” Then he returned his attention to Jaina. “What do you think?”
She gave him a smile. She hoped that, to some distant observer watching her through organic optics, it would look as wicked as it felt. “You mentioned a porter. Can I have anyone I want as my manservant?”
Sharr nodded. “That’s what it is to be a goddess.”
“No,” said Jag Fel. He didn’t raise his voice or even look at them. He continued ratcheting the hydrospanner on the lower starboard claw of his TIE clawcraft, improving, with millimeter-by-millimeter precision, the alignment of that claw’s laser.
All around them, mechanics tinkered with damaged starfighters, pilots lifted off in courier shuttles, messengers flashed by on landspeeders; the cacophony kept their words from carrying very far across the docking bay.
“It’s important.” Sharr leaned against the claw. At Jag’s glare, he straightened away from it. “Don’t give us some sort of idiotic excuse that your pride won’t take it. Lives may depend on it.”
Jaina, a couple of steps back, not deigning to speak directly to a mere mortal, merely smiled. She held up her hand as though to admire her nails; Yuuzhan Vong spies were not likely to see that they were unpainted, cut short, and—she finally noticed—dirty.
“I’m happy to participate in any plan so long as it’s the best plan to accomplish its goal,” Jag said. He straightened and slapped shut the hatch that had allowed him access to the claw’s internal systemry. He ignored Sharr and addressed Jaina directly. “This isn’t the best plan. You haven’t thought it out.”
Jaina gave him a cold stare. “Yes, it is. You just don’t want to do it.”
“No, I have a better idea.”
Sharr snorted. “Better than what an expert on psychological warfare and a Jedi Knight have assembled. Of course.”
Jag turned an unfriendly smile on him. “Kyp Durron.” Sharr’s expression changed as he considered the suggestion.
Jag continued, “To your presumed Yuuzhan Vong spies and observers, I’m just an unknown quantity—a pilot from a place the Yuuzhan Vong haven’t encountered yet. But Jedi Master Kyp Durron, if they see him bowing to her, carrying her baggage, digging dirt from beneath her nails—”
Jaina tried very hard to keep her outrage from being reflected in her expression. She didn’t think she succeeded very well.
“—they’ll be impressed. Who else would a Jedi Master bow to but a goddess, right? It’ll create rumors among our people, as well as theirs.” Jag turned half away from them and dogged down the panel he’d shut.
More than just finishing his point, Jag had also signaled an end to the discussion. But to turn away and leave with no further discussion would be to lose points. Jaina waited until she was sure she had her voice under control, had lowered it to something like Leia’s political voice, and said, “I’d like you to work up the events of two days ago as a sim. Maybe more of us can learn to save extravehiculars just with vehicle maneuvering.”
Jag tucked his hydrospanner into a belt loop, turned toward her, and executed a salute so sharp and meticulous t
hat Jaina could detect no sign of resentment or irritation in it. “It will be done,” he said.
She returned the salute, spun on her heel, and headed back to the main building.
Sharr caught up with her. “I’ve only known him for five minutes and already I hate him,” he said.
Jaina made an exasperated face. Despite the irritation she felt, she had to admit—to herself, anyway—that Jag had been right. “Oh, he’s not so bad.”
Luke’s Coruscant expedition came together with startling speed.
Iella offered him the services of the Wraiths, the most experienced Intelligence cell on Borleias. Luke met Face Loran, the unit leader, and already knew Kell Tainer. Face introduced him to the other Wraiths who’d been on Coruscant when it fell.
Elassar Targon was a middle-aged Devaronian with a bounce to his walk that suggested a much younger man. He wore a flamboyant jacket, military in its cut, in reflective black with gold fringe, red piping, and numerous medals hanging from it; the fringe and medals swung as he walked, and he accentuated the effect by often making a circular gesture—“To ward off bad luck,” he explained. “It really works. Try it.” But Luke noted that the man’s shirt, trousers, and knee-high boots were a matte black, and suspected that Elassar could lose or reverse the jacket to become instantly inconspicuous. Inconspicuous, that is, anywhere Devaronians were to be seen.
Baljos Arnjak was a human; he spoke with the clipped, precise accent of a Coruscant native, or one who aspired to Coruscant ancestry. He was tall and lean, with dark hair, mustache and beard that made his pale skin seem absolutely pallid. He was dressed in a multiply stained orange pilot’s jumpsuit that suggested he was a mechanic who wore only hand-me-downs, but Face introduced him as the team’s biological expert—a man with nearly as much expertise in Yuuzhan Vong technology as Danni Quee.
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