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  “Someone else has died?” she asked, fearing the truth even as she surmised it.

  “Lusa,” Anakin said, voice cracking. Lusa was one of their close friends from the academy on Yavin 4, a nature-loving Chironian female. Anakin gestured vaguely toward the frozen carcasses in the tissue locker. “A pack of voxyn ran her down.”

  “We just heard over the subspace,” Tahiri added. “She was at home, just running through a meadow.”

  “She was supposed to be safe,” Jaina added, finally pulling her face out of Lowbacca’s fur. “Chiron is a long way from the Yuuzhan Vong.”

  Cilghal felt a stab of guilt. “I am sorry to be so slow. I have learned much about these creatures, but nothing of use.”

  Raynar mumbled a suggestion that she work harder. Out of respect for his grief, Cilghal pretended not to hear and began to fumble into her cryosuit.

  Lowbacca was not so generous, groaning softly and admonishing the young Jedi for his rudeness. Raynar started to say something in reply, but his throat failed him and he turned back toward the tissue locker.

  Jaina stepped away from Lowbacca and patted Raynar’s arm, then turned to Cilghal. “Forgive Raynar, Cilghal. He and Lusa were very close.” Though Jaina’s eyes were puffy from crying, Cilghal could feel that the red came from anger. “No one is angry at you. Jedi are dying, and the senate blames us for losing the war. Sometimes, I think we should just go off into the Unknown Regions and leave the New Republic to the Yuuzhan Vong.”

  “I understand,” Cilghal said. Grief—especially young grief—had to have an outlet, or it would eat away the vessel. “But what will we do when the Yuuzhan Vong come for us there?”

  Jaina’s eyes hardened, but she nodded. “I know—and I suppose there’s no guarantee the Chiss would welcome us.”

  “Then I suppose we must find a way to defend this part of the galaxy.” Cilghal nearly fell as she thrust her leg into the cryosuit. “If we can.”

  “Don’t these creatures have a weakness?” Tahiri asked. “The Sand People say everyone has a weakness—everyone except them.”

  “The voxyn have no weakness I have found,” Cilghal answered. “As we suspected, they are part of this galaxy and part of the Yuuzhan Vong’s, but I have not gone far beyond that. There is so much that makes no sense.”

  “You are tired.” Tenel Ka came over and held one of the suit’s bulky arms. “I will help you.”

  “Maybe she should rest.” Anakin turned around, revealing eyes as red as Tenel Ka’s. “It’s hard to think straight when you can’t even stand.”

  Cilghal smiled at his concern. “You’re right, of course, but I cannot bring myself to sleep while others are dying.” She pushed her arm through the second sleeve. “I may as well work.”

  “Is there anything we can do?” Tenel Ka asked. “We have sentry duty in an hour, but—”

  “You can watch,” Cilghal said. “You can tell me how I keep contaminating these samples.”

  “Contaminating them?” Tahiri asked. “What do you mean?”

  “Their genetic codes always map the same,” Cilghal said. “It’s not the equipment—I have checked—so I must be contaminating the samples when I collect them.”

  Tenel Ka exchanged glances with her friends, then laid a hand on Cilghal’s arm to stop her from closing the suit. “How many times have you tried?”

  “Four,” Cilghal said.

  “And they always map the same?” Jaina asked. “Exactly the same?”

  Cilghal nodded, struggling to see what the young Jedi were driving at. “Even when Tekli gathers the samples.” Tekli was her apprentice, a young Chadra-Fan no older than Jaina. “We are making a systematic error somewhere.”

  “And what if you are not?” Tenel Ka asked.

  A wave of weariness came over Cilghal, and she shook her head. “We are. No two genetic sequences are identical. There are always differences.”

  “Not always,” Jaina said.

  Cilghal frowned, then felt her skin brighten to a pale green. “Clones?” she gasped. “They’re cloning the voxyn!”

  “Why would they do that?” Tenel Ka asked. “Would it not make more sense to breed them?”

  “Perhaps.” Cilghal was suddenly wide awake, her thoughts flying at lightspeed. “Unless they have only one.”

  Anakin’s eyes lit with excitement—or perhaps it was determination. “That would be a weakness, definitely.”

  “But these voxyn all came from the same shipment,” Tenel Ka observed. “Can we be sure that a pack from another shipment would not come from a different master?”

  Cilghal thought for a moment, going over all the different kinds of tests—both scientific and through the Force—she could run. She kept coming to the same conclusion.

  “There is no way to be sure,” she said. “Not from one set of samples.”

  “Then we need more samples.” Anakin was already half out the door before he seemed to realize that Tahiri was the only one following. He scowled back at the others. “We need them now.”

  NINE

  The signal was scratchy, but clear enough to recognize a familiar name as the Corellian newscaster’s sober voice filled Anakin’s cockpit.

  “Kuati senator Viqi Shesh said the New Republic will receive the envoy with cautious optimism.”

  Anakin opened a channel to the rest of his small task force. “Are you guys getting this?” They were sitting on an asteroid on the outskirts of the Froz system, powered down and quietly keeping tabs on inbound traffic. With Kyp Durron supplying from here, it seemed a good place to look for the voxyn Cilghal needed. “The Yuuzhan Vong are sending an envoy after all.”

  “Neg that commclutter, Little Brother,” Jaina ordered. Anakin was in command of the mission, but, being a veteran Rogue Squadron pilot, Jaina was in charge of tactical aspects. As Luke had put it before allowing them to leave Eclipse, Anakin decided what to do, Jaina decided how. “Stay passive. Let’s not spray rays on idle chatter. Never know who might be listening.”

  Anakin clicked an acknowledgment, then Viqi Shesh’s cloying voice replaced that of the newscaster.

  “I’m the last to condone bargaining with murderers, but I do think we have something to talk about,” she said. “If we can make our foes understand that the New Republic has no control over the Jedi, perhaps the Yuuzhan Vong will apply pressure where it belongs.”

  “Would making the Yuuzhan Vong understand include helping them find the Jedi’s secret base?” the newscaster asked. “Isn’t that why they took hostages in the first place?”

  “I’ve been a friend of the Jedi since I joined the senate, but in this case, Luke Skywalker is thinking only of his followers. The rash acts of the Jedi have endangered the citizens of an entire world, and now he refuses to take responsibility.”

  “How do you like that?” Zekk said, ignoring Jaina’s request for comm silence. While he and Jaina had been close when they were younger, they had drifted apart since she volunteered for Rogue Squadron, and now he sometimes seemed to place a premium on annoying her. “The Yuuzhan Vong threaten a billion lives, we get blamed.”

  “Bounty Hunter, what did I say?”

  “Excuse me,” Tenel Ka said. Along with Lowbacca, Raynar, and Ulaha Kore—who in addition to being a talented musician was also a Force-gifted tactical analyst—Tenel Ka was manning their sensor platform, a converted blastboat named the Big Eye. “We have a contact entering the system. Their transponder identifies them as the freighter Speed Queen.”

  Tenel Ka fed the coordinates directly to the X-wing astromech droids, then added, “A second craft has exited hyperspace. It is on a convergence course to the first.”

  “Enemy interdictor?” Jaina asked.

  A favorite tactic of the Yuuzhan Vong interdiction forces was to lurk outside their assigned system, then catch inbound traffic with a quick hyperspace hop.

  Tenel Ka took only a moment to confirm Jaina’s deduction. “It does not register on the sensors, and there is no ion efflux. It ma
sses out at corvette size.”

  “Little Brother?” Jaina said.

  “Give me a sec.”

  Being the group’s most powerful in the Force, Anakin reached out, stretching his awareness to just shy of the population concentration around Froz. He felt no voxyn aboard the corvette, nor even the Yuuzhan Vong flying it. This latter was no surprise. Though the living crystal he had stolen from the enemy base on Yavin 4 enabled him to sense Yuuzhan Vong—in a different, much hazier way than Jedi sensed most other beings—his perceptions at such distances were too weak to discern anything less than a massive concentration. He was somewhat surprised to detect a more ordinary presence on a frozen moon near the edge of the system, something that was startled to feel his touch.

  “Negative voxyn,” he reported. “Something on that moon in Orbit Twelve, but I can’t tell what. Not Yuuzhan Vong, though.”

  “Nor did we three feel anything hungry,” the rasping voice of one of Saba Sebatyne’s Barabel apprentices agreed. Anakin had been reluctant to bring the newcomers along until Luke pointedly reminded him that they had survived more than fifty space battles flying ancient Y-wings for the Wild Knights. On the way out, they had also proven adept pilots in the new XJ3—with variable-stutter lasers, decoy-enhanced proton torpedoes, and grab-proof shields, the newest and most sophisticated X-wing yet. “But the presence in Orbit Twelve was human.”

  Unsure of whether the Barabel was trying to show him up or be helpful, Anakin assumed the latter. “Thanks for the backup, uh, One?”

  There was a rhythmic hissing that suggested chuckling. “Tail Two, Little Brother.”

  Anakin felt the heat rise to his cheeks. “Sorry.”

  Tail One was the male, Tesar Sebatyne. Two and Three were Bela and Krasov Hara—not sisters, they insisted, but hatchmates. Whatever that meant, their sense of humor gave Anakin the shudders. They had been the ones to suggest the Tail code names, which they seemed to find hilarious for some reason no one understood.

  Raynar saved Anakin the embarrassment of a more protracted silence. “Why are we sitting here? Let’s do something.”

  “We can’t interfere, Merchantman,” Anakin said. He was as eager as Raynar to avenge Lusa’s death, but Luke had ordered them to focus solely on the mission. With Viqi Shesh and her allies already suggesting the Jedi should surrender for the greater good, the slightest incident could turn the rest of the senate against them. “And the Speed Queen is better off without us. If the Yuuzhan Vong see us coming, they’ll blast and run. This way, they might let it off with a search.”

  “Fact,” Tenel Ka confirmed. “They have used their dovin basals to bring the Speed Queen to a halt, and a small launch is separating from their hull.”

  A trio of blips, one marked in New Republic red and two in Yuuzhan Vong blue, appeared on Anakin’s tactical display. He had his astromech droid, Fiver, call up the technical data and saw no reason to disagree with Tenel Ka. Even the Yuuzhan Vong did not destroy every vessel they found; if the ship was not carrying war matériel or Jedi, they often released it in the hope of picking it up outbound filled with refugees.

  A raspy Barabel voice—Anakin thought it was Krasov—said, “Little Brother, we feel … someone does not obey the orderz of Uncle Master.”

  An instant later, a swarm of blips appeared on Anakin’s sensor display. He called, “Big Eye?”

  “A flight of X-wings,” Tenel Ka reported. “Twelve XJ3s.”

  “Likelihood ninety-nine point …” Ulaha paused, then said, “Well, that is Kyp’s Dozen. Undoubtedly.”

  “Big Eye, open a secure subspace channel,” Anakin said. “And download the coordinates for a microjump.”

  “Little Brother,” Jaina warned, “remember what—”

  “Just in case.” Anakin’s subspace comm light came on, and he activated his microphone. “X-wing flight, you know who this is.”

  He reached out with the Force to identify himself, and felt a presence almost as strong as his own in return.

  “Request you break off,” he said. “You’ll cause some real trouble for us—for all of us.”

  “Trouble, yes,” the familiar voice of Kyp Durron replied, “but not for us.”

  On Anakin’s tactical display, the Yuuzhan Vong boarding shuttle dissolved into static and vanished. Simply vanished, no sign of attack from the X-wings—no propellant trails, no energy flashes, nothing.

  “Big Eye?” Anakin asked. “Is something wrong with—”

  The corvette lashed out with plasma cannons and magma missiles, and Anakin’s display filled with streaks of red energy. Nothing wrong with Big Eye’s sensor package. Kyp had destroyed the shuttle … how? The Force? It didn’t seem possible. Only the most powerful Jedi could use it that way; only Dark Jedi would. Killing with the Force directly opened a Jedi to corruption, made him hungry for power. At least that was what Luke said. Anakin knew his uncle and Mara had been disappointed by their latest meeting with Kyp; perhaps this was the reason.

  The Dozen began to juke and jink, lacing the tactical display with flashes of laserfire. Enemy plasma balls flared against their shields or streaked off and vanished, then the corvette’s blip was engulfed in static. Anakin thought maybe a proton torpedo, but his display had not shown any propellant trails.

  When the static faded, the corvette remained, its fire faded to a mere dribble. The XJ3 X-wings swarmed, blasting it with laser bolts and finishing it with proton torpedoes. This time, propellant trails glowed brilliant blue on Anakin’s display.

  Kyp’s voice came over the subspace. “See? No trouble.”

  The Speed Queen fired its sublight drives and lumbered off. Though Anakin knew rogue attacks would ultimately prove harmful to both the Jedi and the New Republic, Lusa’s death was still too fresh for him to feel anything but glad.

  “Nice shooting,” he said.

  He was about to ask after the two strange detonations when Tenel Ka’s voice came over their squadron comm channel.

  “New contacts,” she reported. “Two—no, three vessels. They appear somewhat larger.”

  Fiver whistled in alarm as he displayed the blips on Anakin’s sensor screen. The three were arrayed in a perfect “stacked triangle”: a ship above, on, and below the Dozen’s tactical plane, each vessel situated so that its firing lane passed safely between the other two. Anakin was about to ask for a tactical readout when a data line appeared beneath each ship, identifying all three as assault frigates—slow and clumsy, but heavily armed and well protected.

  “Ambush!” Anakin cried.

  “Fact,” Tenel Ka said. “Launching coralskippers now.”

  Clouds of faint blips swarmed from the frigates’ off-battle side. Most moved to take up positions around the killing zone, but a half dozen turned to pursue the fleeing Speed Queen.

  The Dozen broke formation, but the bigger ships had already loosed a salvo of corkscrewing lava missiles. A pair of Kyp’s X-wings flared briefly and vanished.

  Anakin was already lifting off the asteroid.

  “Hold on, Little Brother,” Jaina said. Despite her words, her X-wing was rising along with everyone else’s. “We’re not exactly following orders here.”

  “Are we exactly disobeying them?” Anakin demanded. He truly did not know what his uncle would want; whether Kyp had turned to the dark side or not, Luke would not want him killed—or, worse, captured. “We can’t let them have another of us—not after Lusa.”

  “This is different,” Tenel Ka said. “The argument could be made that Kyp has brought this on himself.”

  “Maybe,” Anakin said.

  He took a moment to collect himself. People had been accusing him of being reckless since Yavin 4, and the last thing he needed was to give them more ammunition. On the other hand, he had made up his mind.

  “Is that an argument you want to make?” he asked.

  Tenel Ka was quiet for a moment, then the blastboat rose.

  “No.”

  “Fine. We’re going in. Jaina, tell us how.�
�

  As the squadron formed around the Big Eye, Jaina said, “Our hop brings us out behind the low frigate. No fancy stuff, and don’t get carried away. Just blast an escape hole and head for home. Tails, you fly cover. No offense, but we haven’t worked together.”

  “No offense taken, Stickz,” a Barabel said. Worried that she might not respond as automatically to a different call sign, Jaina had asked the squadron to use her Rogue Squadron nickname. “We are honored to cover your backz. If Tail One may offer a suggestion?”

  Tenel Ka began the countdown, and Jaina said, “Seven seconds, One.”

  “Their missile crewz will be facing away when you arrive. If you send the blastboat on the first pasz—”

  “Risky, but it could work in a hurry,” Jaina said. “Odds, Minstrel?”

  “The probability of success is … eighty-two percent, with a margin of error—”

  Lowbacca rumbled his commitment to the Barabel plan, then Tenel Ka said, “Two, one, mark!”

  Anakin pushed the throttle and toggled the hyperdrive. The stars stretched into lines. Two seconds later, Fiver chirped to announce their arrival half a system away. To prevent the return to realspace from disorienting him, Anakin kept his eyes squeezed shut.

  He reached out with the Force and felt his squadron in formation behind him. Kyp and the Dozen were a short distance to the left, swirling about in the killing zone trying to avoid plasma balls and magma missiles. Now that he was close enough, he could also feel the Yuuzhan Vong over at the battle, an indistinct quaver just powerful enough to divert his attention at a crucial moment. He was tempted to remove his lightsaber’s lambent focusing crystal. A starfighter battle was no place to get distracted.

  The X-wing banked sharply right as Fiver, acting in tandem with the other astromech droids, lined up on target. Now past any danger of becoming disoriented, Anakin opened his eyes and saw the battle ahead, a tiny web of flashing color.

  “Everybody ready to play?” Jaina asked.

  Anakin keyed his microphone to answer affirmative and counted the right number of clicks as others did likewise. Through the Force, he sensed a strange resignation in his sister, not at all similar to his own adrenaline-charged excitement. She seemed more weary than tense, almost detached. Maybe that was how an ace pilot survived so many blinding-fast starfighter battles—or maybe it was the price of coming back alive, the all-too-organic result of stress overload. Perhaps senate politics weren’t the only reason Jaina’s leave from Rogue Squadron was indefinite. Perhaps the flight surgeons had suggested to Gavin that she needed a long rest.