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  Leia looked no happier than he. Her face was pale, her lip trembling, and still she somehow found the strength to hold her head up and look proud. “There is one condition,” she said, turning to Lando. “I want you to deliver them.”

  For the first time in a very long while, Lando looked surprised. “Me?”

  “You’re the only one who can make this work,” Leia said. “I know I wasn’t much help with Borsk, but if you’ll do this—”

  Lando raised his hands. “We’re way past favors here,” he said. “I’ll help any way I can.”

  FOURTEEN

  The hulking war droid rotated two hundred degrees on his waist coupling and pointed the business end of his blaster arm at Raynar Thul. “Plan point fourteen, Private.”

  “I’m not a private.” Raynar was dressed as usual in the colors of his family’s merchant house, in this case scarlet breeches, purple waist sash, and a golden tunic that matched the color of his bristly blond hair. “We’re not in the military.”

  “Point fourteen,” 1-1A insisted.

  Raynar rolled his eyes. “The crew bursts into the dining area and gets the drop on the Jedi,” he said. “Point fifteen. The Jedi yield their weapons.”

  “Lightsabers,” 1-1A corrected. “And I did not ask for point fifteen, soldier.”

  “I’m not a soldier,” Raynar said wearily.

  Anakin and the sixteen members of his strike team were sitting on the lush conform couches on the observation deck of Lando Calrissian’s private space yacht, rehearsing the plan Anakin had worked out with Luke, Lando, his father, mother, and about half the Jedi on Eclipse. There were a thousand little details, but basically the scheme called for the Lady Luck’s crew to “surprise” the Jedi when the Yuuzhan Vong boarded. As the invaders took their prisoners away, a pair of YVH war droids would slip out of the disposal lock with an equipment pod and attach to the bottom of the enemy boarding shuttle. When the shuttle returned to its mothership, the droids would ride along, concealed from view by the shuttle itself. To make certain the droids went undetected, the strike team would stage a diversion.

  “Point thirty-two, sir.”

  Recalling that the droid considered him the group officer, Anakin looked up to find 1-1A’s blaster arm leveled at his face. As usual, staring down the black tunnel of death brought his thoughts into sharp focus.

  “I use the Force to tear open the weapons locker and pass out blasters,” Anakin said. “The blasters will be stored with power packs disengaged.”

  “This part troubles me,” Tenel Ka said. “Surely, the Yuuzhan Vong will find it too convenient.”

  “Consider the alternative,” Lando said, stepping onto the observation deck with them. “My crew is all volunteer, but they won’t die just to make things look good.”

  “Which only proves her point,” Ganner said. As the oldest Jedi Knight aboard, he would serve as a decoy commander so that Anakin would remain free—or as free as possible—to quietly lead the group. “The Yuuzhan Vong aren’t stupid.”

  “No, they’re not, which is why I can sell this,” Lando said. “Disengaging power packs is a common safety procedure—one that anyone about to betray a shipload of Jedi would certainly take.”

  “This came up in the planning meeting,” Anakin said. “Dad thought it was a good idea.”

  Ganner shrugged, then—much to Anakin’s relief—nodded. Serving as a decoy leader had been Ganner’s own suggestion, and Anakin’s biggest worry so far was that the older man would have trouble separating the two roles.

  “I have a question,” Raynar said.

  “Why am I not surprised,” Jaina muttered.

  Lando smiled. “Ask away. You need to be confident in this plan.”

  “Yuuzhan Vong ships are alive, right?” he asked. “So how come this one isn’t going to feel the droids attaching?”

  “That would be like a shenbit feeling something on itz shell,” Bela Hara rasped. “Armor serves no purpose if one feelz pain when it is struck.”

  “These are hulls, not armor,” Raynar objected. “And if the ships are alive—”

  “They’re not alive like that,” Jaina said. “They have brains, but the brains only control certain functions, like computers do aboard our ships. And they don’t have feeling in their hulls—at least none of the ships I’ve been on did.”

  “They couldn’t,” Jacen said. “Feeling requires nerve endings, and nerve endings close enough to feel the exterior of the hull would freeze solid. Imagine standing on Hoth barefoot.”

  This seemed to convince Raynar. He winced and nodded to Lando. “Thanks—now I’m confident.”

  YVH 1-1A swiveled toward Lowbacca. “Point thirty-three, Private.”

  Lowbacca groaned something long and low that Anakin recognized as a crude offer involving a memory wipe. The Wookiee’s translation droid, Em Teedee, flitted down in front of him.

  “Are you sure you want to say that to a war droid, Master Lowbacca?”

  When Lowbacca answered with a growl, Em Teedee zipped around behind Tekli and emitted a burst of static that caused 1-1A’s photoreceptors to light.

  Lando interposed himself between Lowbacca and the war droid. “That’s all for now, One-One-A. Stand down.” He shot Lowbacca a weary look, then turned to the others. “We’ve transferred the extra two YVHs and your equipment pod, and Tendra is down on the bridge plotting our route with the crew.”

  “We’re ready,” Tahiri said confidently. “One-One-A has seen to that.”

  Lando’s expression grew even more stern. “One-One-A is a droid. He can make you drill and practice, but he can’t prepare you—not for something like this.”

  “I’m not sure I understand,” Ulaha Kore ventured. “Our rehearsals have been flawless. Certainly, we must be ready to improvise—every good ensemble is—but current projections give us a … seventy-two percent chance of success.”

  Anakin did not want to ask about the margin of error. There were still so many unknowns that he suspected the swing could place their chances either above 100 percent or below 50.

  Lando sat across from the Bith and stared into her glassy eyes, his own gaze harder and colder than Anakin had ever seen. “What I’m talking about can’t be measured.” He glanced at the others. “Things are going to go wrong. No matter how many times we rehearse, no matter how well we plan, this isn’t going to happen the way we expect. You’ll need to react fast.”

  “No different from any battle,” Ganner said.

  “This isn’t a battle, Rhysode. Get that into your head.” Lando glared at Ganner until Ganner looked away, then continued to glare some more. “You’re not going as warriors, you’re going as spies. You’ll have to do things that don’t sit well inside. You can’t balk. You can’t even hesitate.”

  “We won’t.” It was Alema Rar who said this, and Anakin knew by the look in her eyes that she, at least, understood exactly what Lando was telling them. “I won’t.”

  Lando studied the Twi’lek only a moment before nodding. “You’ve been there, I know.” He turned to the others and said, “Watch Alema. She’ll do what’s necessary, and so should you.”

  “What are you saying?” Jacen asked. “That any means justify the ends?”

  “He means we have only two concerns,” Alema said, the silkiness of her voice belying the steel of her words. “The first is to complete our mission. The second is to return alive.”

  “That way lies the dark side,” Jacen insisted. “If we have no concern for the methods we use to win our goals, we are no better than the Emperor … or the Yuuzhan Vong.”

  “Perhaps so,” Alema agreed. “But if the path before us is dark, we dare not shy away—not for our own sakes, but for the sake of those who will fall if we fail.”

  “And for Numa and Lusa and Eelysa and everyone else the voxyn have taken already,” Raynar added.

  Alema rewarded his support with a vaguely promising smile. “Of course. For their sakes most of all.”

  “No. Vengeanc
e leads to the dark side,” Zekk said. “I won’t be a part of something like that.”

  Everyone started to talk at once, Alema and Raynar arguing that destroying the voxyn and defeating the Yuuzhan Vong would justify any action, Zekk telling them they didn’t know what they were talking about, Jacen insisting it was wrong to put the ends before the means. Though the others seemed to fall somewhere between the two poles, they spoke just as loudly, drawing even Eryl Besa and Jovan Drark, an imperturbable Rodian, into the argument on opposite sides. Only the Barabels, squatting in the corner with their reptilian pupils narrowed to vertical slits, seemed in possession of themselves.

  Anakin sighed deep inside, then noticed Lando watching him and realized just how wise his mother had been in choosing the arms merchant to ferry them to the enemy. As sincere as Lando’s warning about not hesitating might be, there was a hidden agenda behind his words. Knowing the strike team was going to have this argument eventually, he had intentionally provoked it while they could take time to work things through—and now he was waiting for Anakin to solve the problem.

  “Quiet.” Anakin waited a moment, then tried again, and when that failed, shouted, “Shut up! That’s an order!”

  His rudeness, and the Force he used to augment his voice, finally got through to the others. Before the argument could resume, he continued, “Nobody is turning to the dark side on this mission.” He glared at Raynar and Alema. “Is that clear?”

  “I didn’t mean to suggest we should,” Alema began quietly. “Only that we can’t shy—”

  “Is that clear?” Anakin demanded again.

  Alema’s lekku curled at the tips, but she pushed her lip out and said, “Of course, Anakin.”

  Anakin felt more than glimpsed the strange smirk that came to Tahiri’s face. While she was not fond of any of the strike team’s female Jedi, she seemed to truly dislike Alema. Deciding to puzzle over the matter later, he turned to Raynar and cocked his brow.

  Raynar nodded. “Fine. Who’d want to anyway?”

  Anakin accepted this and turned to Zekk and Jacen. “But Lando’s right. We may have to do some things we don’t feel good about, and do them quickly. If you can’t live with that, maybe you should catch a ride home on the freighter.”

  “What kind of things?” Jacen asked. “If we talk about our limits now—”

  “Jacen!” Anakin hissed. “Can you do this?”

  Instead of answering, Jacen looked around for support. He found it, of course, especially from Zekk and Tenel Ka, but Anakin began to think even his brother’s special talent for handling animals might not be worth the discord he would bring to the team. He looked to Lando for guidance, but found only the expressionless face of a seasoned gambler. Anakin would have to solve this problem on his own; where they were going, there would be no advice from old heroes of the Rebellion.

  Anakin took a deep breath, using a Jedi relaxation technique to clear his mind so he could concentrate. Throughout the Yuuzhan Vong invasion, he and Jacen had been drifting apart, until they had reached a point where they had barely been able to speak to each other without an undercurrent of resentment and blame. Those wounds were only now beginning to heal. The last thing Anakin wanted to do was remove his brother from the team and open them again, but he had to think of the mission—and of the others who would be on it.

  Anakin turned to his brother. “Jacen, maybe—”

  “Anakin, I’ve had a brainstorm!” Though Jaina’s tone was enthusiastic, Anakin could feel his sister’s agitation through the Force. Nearly as troubled by the schism as the brothers themselves, she had spoken to them both about trying to bridge it. “You know how we’ve been worried about the breaking?”

  “Yeah?” Anakin answered cautiously. Everyone on Eclipse knew how much value the Yuuzhan Vong placed on trying to break the will of Jedi prisoners. His biggest concern was that their “captors” would start it aboard the transfer vessel, and that someone in the group would not be able to endure it long enough to cross the frontier. “What’s that have to do with what we’re talking about?”

  “You remember how we used that telepathic Force union during that first Yuuzhan Vong attack at Dubrillion?” Jaina asked. The three siblings had reached out to each other through the Force to share perceptions. “What if Jacen could help us all do that? We could use the link to bolster each other mentally and emotionally.”

  “This is a good plan,” Tenel Ka said. “Every interrogator knows that mental isolation is key to breaking a victim’s resistance.”

  Anakin saw the potential—just as he saw how desperately his sister was trying to prevent the gulf between him and Jacen from widening any farther. Cautiously, he asked, “How can we do that?”

  Jaina’s expression grew confident. “I’ve been talking to Tesar and his hatchmates about the Wild Knights’ combat tactics.” She glanced in the Barabels’ direction. “I think we could adapt a couple to our situation.”

  “Yes, this one thinkz we could,” Tesar said. “Perhapz we could even use the bond to create a big meld-fight.”

  Anakin raised his brow. Meld-fight was what the Barabels had called their incredible display of cohesion during the confused battle at Froz. “An interesting possibility.”

  “But we’d need Jacen,” Jaina pressed. “He’s the only one with enough empathic power to bind us all together.”

  Or to drive us apart, Anakin thought. But, as he studied the expectant faces watching him, he realized much of the damage had been done already. Sending Jacen back now would not only disappoint his sister, it would alienate Zekk, Tenel Ka, and many of the others who shared his concerns about the dark side. It would also widen the gulf between the two brothers—and Anakin wanted that about as much as he wanted another Yuuzhan Vong slave seed implanted in his head.

  “Jacen, you have to do what I say when I say it.” Anakin caught his brother’s gaze and held it. “If something feels wrong, it’s on my head, not yours. If you can’t live with that, I’m sorry, but you can’t come.”

  Having sensed how close Anakin had been to sending him home before, Jacen knew better than to hesitate. He nodded and said, “I trust your judgment, Anakin. I really do.”

  FIFTEEN

  The data readouts went wild, then Danni was slammed back into her g-seat as Wonetun put them into a tight turn. A stocky Brubb reptoid from gravity-heavy Baros, Wonetun kept the inertial compensators dialed down to 92 percent because he liked to know when the blastboat shuddered; if someone in the crew got sick or blacked out for a few seconds, that was better than stressing the ancient hull welds. Danni fought to keep the purple out of her vision and strained to watch her display. The readouts continued to dance. It didn’t mean she had solved her riddle—Saba Sebatyne had not even said there was a yammosk present—but it meant something.

  The gunners vaporized the skips with a volley of stutter-fire from the blastboat’s big laser cannons, then Danni’s skin prickled with sudden apprehension. Still, she resisted the temptation to look away from her instruments. The readouts were rising and falling in intermittent surges that looked suspiciously contrived, and Danni would not let herself be distracted. Her fingers began to fly over her control panels, defining sensor sweeps and activating recorders.

  “Saba, could there be a yammosk out there?” She still did not look away from her instruments. “Please tell me there’s a yammosk out there.”

  “Oh yes, there is a yammosk. No doubt.” Saba’s tone was distracted, and she did not seem to catch the significance of Danni’s question. Speaking into the blastboat’s comm unit, she ordered, “Wild Knightz, prepare for return to the Jolly Man. Break left on this one’s mark …”

  Danni braced herself. The Jolly Man was not the cramped blastboat in which she was riding, but a fast-freighter standing some distance off in a pocket of space dust. It served the squadron as a mobile base, and to carry the Vigilances and Howlrunners—which had no hyperdrives—into and out of battle.

  “Three, two, mark!”

>   Danni strained to keep her head turned toward her data screens as Wonetun whipped the blastboat around. Several more readouts jumped to life, hovered there an instant, then dropped back to close-zero. When the data bars she had been watching answered with a flurry of oscillations, Danni ruled out coincidence. She was seeing a comm code, not some random graviton eddy.

  Saba must have felt her excitement through the Force, for the Barabel rasped, “You have found something, Danni Quee?”

  “I think so.” The blastboat’s hull thrummed as the gunners opened up. “Gravitic modulation. That’s how the yammosk communicates.”

  “Ah.” For the Barabel, it was almost a cry of excitement. Crimson flashes filled the ship interior as plasma balls started to burst against the shields. “If this one may make a suggestion, you should open a comm feed so your data will not be lost.”

  Danni tore her eyes away from her data screens. “Sith sabers!”

  Curving through space to intercept them was what at first looked like an entire ring of asteroids, but which the plasma-burping nodules on the closest monoliths quickly identified as an enemy fleet. She could not believe even the Wild Knights warranted such an effort—then she realized they did not.

  For the past few days, the squadron had been working a choke point not far from the gem-mining world of Arkania, ambushing Yuuzhan Vong corvettes as they felt their way out of the war zone. Everyone had assumed these patrols were merely scouting New Republic positions, but now it seemed obvious they had been clearing an invasion route. Danni did not need a galactic holograph to know that capturing Arkania would put the Yuuzhan Vong close to both the Perlemian Trade Route and the Hydian Way, and in position to threaten much of the Colonies region. She opened the data feed to the Jolly Man, then added an urgent alert for the subspace emergency band.

  The leading elements of the fleet fired a volley of magma missiles, forcing Wonetun to put the blastboat into a stomach-churning series of loops and rolls. Saba ordered him to turn up the inertial compensator so she could stay conscious. The enemy fleet was now so close it looked like one huge spray of yorik coral.