Star by Star (13 page)

“In a minute.”

Leia cast an appealing glance at her daughter, who quietly used the Force to slide the doctor out of the way.

Fey’lya was looking directly into the cam now, his fangs bared in a politician’s meaningless smile.

“It is my duty to announce that the Peace Vote—or the Appeasement Vote, as it has become known in some circles—has failed by a two-to-one ratio.”

“Not even close!” Anakin cried. “How about that?”

The room—and much of the corridor outside—erupted into a chorus of cheering.

The nervesplicer stepped to Leia’s side, his face twisted into a frown. “Princess, are you listening? The repair was fully successful. You can start walking later today. Your legs are going to be fine.”

“I know, Doctor.” Leia pulled the nervesplicer’s face down to hers and kissed his cheek—she had no idea why, other than because she was so happy—then said, “Thank you.”

“Uh, my pleasure.”

The nervesplicer rubbed his cheek, then scowled and retreated. As he departed, Leia sensed that not everyone in the room was completely at ease. She turned to see her brother staring out the transparisteel viewport, his brow furrowed and his jaw clenched, seeming older and wearier than she ever remembered seeing him.

Leia nudged her sister-in-law. “Is Luke seeing something?”

Though Mara would not necessarily share in Luke’s Force-vision—if that was what was happening—the two of them were
close enough that she could tell if it was anything to be concerned about.

“We can clear everyone out,” Han volunteered.

Mara shook her head. “He’s been doing this a lot, lately.” She took Luke’s hand. “I’m pretty sure he just falls into thinking and forgets where he is.”

“Yeah.” Han flashed a concerned look in Leia’s direction. “Happens to me all the time.”

“Han, it’s nothing to worry about.” Luke flashed a smile, then turned to Leia and the others. “Jedi Masters don’t crack up—they just get eccentric.”

“That’s a comfort,” Han said.

Luke laughed, then said, “Seriously, I was thinking about where the Jedi go from here. We know this situation has to get worse before it gets better.”

Leia nodded. “With Pomt gone, there’s no way to make those charges stick,” she said. The chief of staff had been found dead with a recorded statement blaming himself for all of the troubles in Shesh’s office. “Nobody believes she’s innocent, but proving it’s another matter.”

“There’s Viqi—and too many like her,” Luke agreed. “The Appeasement Vote failed by a two-to-one margin—”

“But that means a third of the Senate voted against us,” Mara finished. “The next time, a corruption panel isn’t going to save us.”

“That’s right,” Luke said. “The Jedi are going to need a quiet way to move around the galaxy, a great river that can carry them wherever they need to go.”

Leia saw where this was going. “And you’re thinking Han and I would be a good team to set up this great river?”

“You
do
have the skills,” Luke said. “A smuggler and a diplomat.”

Han did not even hesitate. He simply took one glance at their children, got a hard look in his eye, then set his jaw and turned to Leia. “What do you think, partner? Want to wander around the galaxy together?”

“Sure.” Leia pulled him onto the bed and twined her fingers into his. “But I’m navigating.”

They appeared without warning from beyond the edge of galactic space: a warrior race called the Yuuzhan Vong, armed with surprise, treachery, and a bizarre organic technology that proved a match—too often more than a match—for the New Republic and its allies. Even the Jedi, under the leadership of Luke Skywalker, found themselves thrown on the defensive, deprived of their greatest strength. For somehow, inexplicably, the Yuuzhan Vong seemed to be utterly devoid of the Force.

The alien assault caught the New Republic unawares. Before they could rally and strike back, several worlds were destroyed and countless beings killed—among them the Wookiee Chewbacca, loyal friend and partner of Han Solo.

The New Republic won the day—the first of a series of costly victories. Behind that alien advance fleet came a seemingly endless stream of ships and warriors. The planet Ithor fell to Yuuzhan Vong treachery—a devastating loss for the New Republic and a personal one for Jedi Corran Horn, who took the blame.

The New Republic government unraveled a little more with each setback. Even the Jedi Knights began to splinter under the strain. And while Luke Skywalker struggled with the dilemma of how to handle the Jedi, he struggled with a private crisis, as well: His beloved wife, Mara, was ill and possibly dying from a debilitating and utterly mystifying disease, and it was taking much of her energy simply to stay alive. Lacking strong leadership, some of the Jedi fell under the sway of Kyp Durron, who advocated using every available resource to defeat the Yuuzhan Vong—including unbridled aggression, which could lead only to the dark side. Even the Solo children—Jedi Knights all—found themselves on different sides of the argument.

Consumed with grief and guilt for Chewbacca’s death, Han Solo turned away from his family, seeking expiation in action—and foiled a Yuuzhan Vong plot to eliminate the Jedi. He returned with what seemed to be an antidote to Mara Jade Skywalker’s illness, but not even that victory could erase the loss of his dearest friend—or mend his marriage to Leia.

Leia, too, was beset by guilt. She had disregarded a vision of the future, and now she blamed herself for the devastation of the Hapan fleet at Fondor—a mass destruction caused by the uncontrollable power of Centerpoint Station, a weapon armed by her younger son, Anakin.

The elder Solo son, Jacen, also had a vision, one in which he saw the galaxy moving toward darkness. Afraid of tipping the balance farther, the young Jedi temporarily abandoned the use of the Force altogether. Only the near-loss of his mother, Leia, compelled him to return to the Force.

But in saving Leia’s life Jacen had bested none other than the great Yuuzhan Vong warmaster Tsavong Lah. In retaliation, the warmaster declared a temporary truce on the condition that all Jedi—and Jacen in particular—be handed over to the Yuuzhan Vong.

Now the Jedi were being hunted. When the youngsters at the Jedi academy were threatened, Anakin Solo raced off to help, going undercover among the Yuuzhan Vong lower castes to rescue his friend Tahiri Veila. He ended up a hero—but the Jedi Temple on Yavin 4 was destroyed.

Luke and Mara found themselves declared traitors by the New Republic. As a pregnant Mara struggled with the recurrence of her disease, Luke began to assert his leadership over the Jedi. With Jaina Solo’s help, Kyp Durron convinced Luke and the military to let him lead a mission to destroy a Yuuzhan Vong superweapon. The mission was successful … but Jaina learned, too late, that what they had destroyed was not a weapon but a worldship in the making—one filled with civilians and intended for Yuuzhan Vong young. Once again the balance seemed to be tipping toward darkness. The only ray of light was the birth of Luke and Mara’s son, Ben Skywalker.

Their new worldship destroyed and their attempts to capture
the Jedi frustrated, the Yuuzhan Vong have declared the truce broken. Once again worlds will fall, as the alien forces push inexorably Coreward. And the Jedi may be the last hope in a galaxy that no longer wants them …

The dark sliver of a distant starliner crept into view, a blue needle of ion efflux pushing it across the immense sweep of a brilliant orange sun. Like a million such suns in the Core region alone, this one lacked any world with a civilization or even a sapient species, and it was too inconsequential for any name except an obsolete Imperial survey number. With so much emptiness, so many planets untouched, it seemed to Jaina Solo that there should have been no need for fighting, that there should have been room for all. But comfort was always easier to steal than to earn, peace easier to break than to keep—as her mother so often said—and so the Yuuzhan Vong had invaded a galaxy that might have welcomed them with open arms. It was a mistake the aliens had yet to understand, but one day, Jaina knew … one day the Jedi would teach them.

R2-D2 chirped an inquiry from the droid station at the rear of the
Jade Shadow
’s flight deck.

“Stay connected, Artoo.” Jaina did not turn around. “They still haven’t sent the signal, and Mara needs her rest.”

The droid whistled a lengthy objection.

Jaina glanced at the interface readout, then threw her hands into the air. “Fine. If that’s what she said, go wake her up.”

R2-D2 unplugged and whirred off toward the passenger cabin, leaving Jaina alone on the flight deck of the
Jade Shadow
. Even in a standby orbit, with all systems powered down and the ion drives resting cold and quiet, the vessel felt more like a suit of formfitted battle armor than a seventy-ton starship. The flow-form seat, drop-deck helm, and full-view canopy gave her the sense of floating in open space, while a new retinal tracker kept the heads-up status holos centered just below her plane of vision.

Communications and countermeasures could be controlled from an array of glide switches on the throttle; a similar set on the stick managed sensors, weapons, and shields. Even the life-support system could be regulated by voice with an astromech unit plugged into the flight deck droid station. It was the perfect cockpit, and when the time came to have her own ship, Jaina intended to duplicate every detail—especially the seating arrangement, with the pilot alone down low in the front and the navigator and copilot seated side by side behind her. She liked that part the best.

Jaina’s reverie was interrupted by a sudden sense of deep disquiet, an unexpected stirring in the Force that soon built to a strange feeling of frenzy. She opened herself to it further and experienced an instant of terrible longings and ravenous hunger, not quite evil, but dark and feral—and brutal enough to make her gasp and withdraw from its touch.

A cold sweat running down her brow, Jaina slid the throttle comm switch to intercom and called Mara to the flight deck. While she waited, she studied the sensors. There was nothing unexpected, but Jaina knew better than to place too much faith in the instruments. They had put the
Shadow
into orbit around the orange sun’s closest planet, a rubble-ringed magma ball little more than twenty million kilometers from its star. Without R2-D2 at his station making constant resolution adjustments, all she could see was electromagnetic blast.

Catching a glimmer of movement in the canopy reflections, Jaina glanced at an activation reticle in the front of the cockpit. A small section of plexalloy opaqued into a mirror, and she saw the willowy form of Mara Jade Skywalker slipping onto the flight deck. Mara’s cascade of red-gold hair was a tangle of sleep snarls, but her complexion was no longer quite so ashen nor her green eyes quite so sunken. Jaina stood and, feeling a little like a child caught with her hand under the candy dropper, turned to vacate the pilot’s station.

Mara waved her down. “Sit. You’re entitled.” She dropped into the navigator’s chair, sweetening the filter-scrubbed air with a hint of talc and stericlean that seemed to cling to her even with her new baby thousands of light-years away. She lifted her chin toward the distant starliner. “That our two troublemakers?”

“The transponder identifies it as the
Nebula Chaser,
” Jaina said. R2-D2 plugged back into the droid station and confirmed the identity with a chirp. “But there’s been no rendezvous signal, and a moment ago I felt something, uh, strange in the Force.”

Mara nodded. “It’s still there. But I don’t think it’s our passengers. It doesn’t feel right.”

“Nothing feels right about this,” Jaina said. A thousand-meter Corellian cruiser with a customized Hoersch-Kessel sublight drive, the
Nebula Chaser
had already traversed half the face of the orange sun. It was now the size of Jaina’s finger, with a blue efflux tail three times that long. “They still haven’t signaled. Maybe we should give them one more orbit, then duck behind the planet and blow ions.”

Mara shook her head. “Luke’s right about these two; they’re getting people killed with their saber-flashing. We’d better snag them while they need the ride.” She pulled her crash webbing over her shoulders and clipped the buckle. “But let’s be ready. Power up.”

“Me?” Though Jaina had piloted the
Shadow
before, her aunt had done all the flying on the way out—perhaps because it had been Mara’s first real chance to fly her beloved vessel since giving birth to Ben, or perhaps because she had simply needed to keep her mind occupied on her first trip away from her new son. “It’s your ship.”

“I want to sleep some more anyway. You won’t believe what a luxury that is until you have a baby.” Mara was silent for a moment, then added sternly, “And that’s not a suggestion.”

“Check!” Jaina’s laugh was a little wistful. At nineteen, she had certainly been on dates, but the war had kept her too busy to pursue any serious relationships. Even now, she was only on temporary leave from Rogue Squadron—until the anti-Jedi sentiment in the senate faded. “Like I’d have time.”