need to pour frill syrup on honeycrust."
"I wasn't," he replied, smiling that annoying smile again.
They reached the X-wings in silence, where Kyp's people
were already arrayed. There were more than a dozen and
one, now, and she recognized few of them. They all had a
certain raggedness to them, a look of almost never sleeping.
They had eyes as hard and glinting as Corusca gems, and
they looked at Kyp as if he were some Master of old.
"All right," Kyp told them. "We want to fly quiet this time. Most of
you know we seeded a moon of the sixth planet with a signal emitter. They'll
go there first and find
nothing but a wayward probe. Keeping the planet between us and them
will allow us a sunward course. By the time we need to change our vector,
the solar radiation ought to cloak us from their long-range sensors. Then we
put the sun behind us and make the jump. Any questions?"
There were none, only a swelling sense of pride and confidence. Jaina
tried to shrug it off-these weren't her feelings, after all. But it was
infectious.
"Great," Kyp said. "As soon as we're out, I'll' trigger the thermal
charges. They won't find a thing, and we can always dig in here again."
They cleared the planet without incident, keeping comm silence until
they were well around the primary. There, Kyp peeled off from his wing and
came alongside Jaina. He signaled for her to switch to a private channel.
"Ready?" he asked, when she'd made the switch.
"I didn't think we had reached the node."
"The Dozen are headed to another hiding hole. We're heading Coreward.
We split up here."
Jaina nodded. "Just give me the jump, so I can lay it in."
"Coming," Kyp said.
They made the jump, and then another. After that they had a long
realspace jaunt through another uninhabited system.
"Jaina ?"
"Still here," she said. Kyp was only about ten meters away. He had his
cockpit light on, so she could see his face through the transparisteel.
"Why did Luke send you? Really?"
"I didn't lie to you. He's trying to pull the Jedi back together." She
paused. "He also wanted to know what you were up to."
"That's very paternal of him," Kyp remarked. "Almost as paternal as
planting a tracer in my ship last time I was on Coruscant."
"You found-" She suddenly recognized that Kyp had been nudging her very
subtly in the Force.
"Don't ever do that," she snapped.
"I do what I must," Kyp replied. "I guessed there was a tracer. I
couldn't find it. Must be something new. I had to trick you into confirming
it, though, and I respected your intelligence enough to believe you wouldn't
fall for such a simple ruse without a nudge. I do apologize, but then, you
did come to spy on me."
"If you think that, you don't know much about me," Jaina replied. She
glared across the empty space at him.
"Perhaps that's true. But you didn't willingly tell me about the
tracer."
"That's not my secret to give out." "Neither are mine. Do you
understand?" Jaina thought about that a moment, then nodded. "Understood."
"Okay."
"No, not okay. I'm still not happy with you, Kyp. I don't think I like
who you've become."
"I've become what I need to be. What your uncle Luke was in the war
against the Empire." "Boy, you must love your mirror."
"No. I'm not saying I like what I've become either, Jaina. Your uncle
Luke eventually went to the dark side-"
"Hey," Jaina snapped. "At least he fought it. You spent what, a week
training to be a Jedi before the dark side seduced you?"
Kyp laughed easily. "Something like that." "And you blew up a planet,
right? If it hadn't been for Master Skywalker speaking for you, you'd be in
prison to this day, if not dead. And my father-"
"I know what I owe Han," Kyp said. "I won't forget it. I haven't even
begun paying off that debt."
"Or the one to Uncle Luke. But that doesn't stop you from bad-mouthing
him all over the galaxy, does it? It doesn't stop you from undermining him
as a leader."
"Any time Luke is ready to be a leader again, I'm ready to follow him,"
Kyp said.
"Riiight. Just so long as he tells you to do things you already want to
and doesn't tell you to do anything you don't want to."
"You've just described what a real leader does."
"Yeah? And that's what you are, aren't you? A leader. I see the way
your squadron looks at you. You like it too much. I doubt very much you
would give that up, whatever course of action Master Skywalker might lead us
on."
"Jaina," Kyp said, after a moment, "I won't say you don't have a few
good points there. Maybe I am addicted to this now. That doesn't mean it
shouldn't be done. Every day, thousands of living, breathing beings are
sacrificed to the Yuuzhan Vong gods. There's a pit on Dantooine. I've seen
it. It's almost two kilometers across and full of bones. And the slaves,
what they make the slaves do ..."
He stopped, and she felt waves of anger, pity, and grief lap over her.
"The Vong obliterate whole worlds, and yes, I know I did that once, but I'm
not crazy enough to think it was right. The Vong think it's a holy
obligation. Maybe Master Skywalker is right to urge a passive role. Maybe
that's what the Force really asks of us. But I don't believe it. Luke
Skywalker risked everything in bis war, the war against the Empire.
Everything, including the peril of turning to the dark side as his father
did. That was his war, Jaina. That was his war. This one is ours. Luke wants
to protect us from ourselves. I say we're all grown up. The old Jedi order
died with the Old Republic. Then there was Luke, and only Luke, and a lot of
fumbling to re-create the Jedi from what little he knew of them. He did the
best he could, and he made mistakes. I was one of them. His generation of
Jedi was put together like a rickety space scow, but from it something new
has emerged. It's not the old Jedi order, nor should it be."
His 'eyes burned across the space between them like quasars. "We,
Jaina, are the new Jedi order. And this is our war."
TWENTY
The Millennium Falcon was purring, and the controls felt just right in
Han's hands. Better than they had felt in a very long time, as a matter of
fact. Oh, the coralskippers tried their best. They swooped in close, firing
their molten projectiles and skittering away from return fire like a school
of particularly ugly fish. The larger craft-about the size of the Falcon
itself-kept a steady fire of its own weapons, releasing whole flights of
grutchins. But today was not a lucky day for the Yuuzhan Vong, at least not
so far.
Han whooped and turned tight, scraping so close to the transport analog
that one of the pursuing coralskippers, already singed by laser fire,
smacked right into it.
In his peripheral vision, he saw another skip flame out, drilled by
turbolasers. "Kid can shoot," Han told his copilot. "He's your son," Leia
said. Her voice surprised him. For a nanosecond he'd for
gotten it was her
there, expecting to find Chewie instead.
And the odd thing? He didn't feel the gullet-sucking sorrow he usually
did. A little wistful, maybe, a little melancholy. A little happiness, too,
to have his wife beside him, He'd nearly wrecked that, hadn't he?
He blinked as a volley of Yuuzhan Vong ordnance found his shields when
they shouldn't have. "Like I said, Han-" Leia sputtered. He'd built some
distance from the largest Yuuzhan Vong vessel. Now he turned and built g's
toward it. "Concussion missiles when I tell you." "Han?"
The Yuuzhan Vong ship loomed closer and closer, and Han grinned out of
the side of his mouth. "Yeah, sweetheart?" "You've noticed we're going to
hit that thing?"
Han held course.
Leia nearly shrieked because the alternating smooth and striated
pattern of yorik coral filled nearly the entire viewport. At the last
instant Han nosed up slightly to miss by a few tens of centimeters.
"Missiles, now!" Han said.
The missiles detonated just behind them, a full spread. The Yuuzhan
Vong ship broke in half.
"Noticed I'm going to hit what thing?" Han asked innocently.
"Have you lost it?" Leia exclaimed. "What do you think, that you're
twenty again?"
"It ain't the years-"
She smiled, leaned over, and kissed him. "As I've said before, you have
your moments. I always knew you were a scoundrel at heart."
"Me?" The exaggerated innocence that had once come so naturally felt
suddenly right again.
The rest of the Yuuzhan Vong ships went out like Hapan paper lamps
caught in a high wind, and Jacen shot them into star food. Without the
yammosk on the larger ship to coordinate them, the skips were less than
dexterous.
"Speaking of scoundrels," Han said, tapping on the comm unit.
"Hailing the freighter Tinmolok."
The hail was answered immediately. "Yes, yes. Do not shoot! We are
unarmed! We are Etti! We are not Yuuzhan Vong!"
"So you say," Han said easily. "I can see that you're taking cargo into
occupied space."
"Relief only! Food for the native populace!"
"Oh, really? Well, now, that I've got to see. I'm coming alongside."
"No, no, I..."
"No problem. Just glad to be able to help."
"Please, Captain, may I ask who you are?" Han leaned back and clasped
the back of his head in his hands. "You, sir, are speaking to the proud
captain of the, ah-" He glanced at Leia. "-Princess of Blood. Prepare to be
boarded." Leia rolled her eyes.
"This is piracy," the Etti captain-one Swori Mdimu- grumbled as Han and
Jacen took possession of the crew's sidearms.
"That's good," Han told him. "I thought I was going to have to write it
down for you, so you'd know what happened. Though for the record, it's
actually privateering. See, pirates steal from anyone. They're greedy, and
they just don't care who they hijack. Privateers, on the other hand, only
attack ships allied with a certain fleet. In this case, I'm choosing for my
targets any lowlife gutless and stupid enough to supply the Yuuzhan Vong or
the Peace Brigade, or any other collaborationist scum, with anything
whatever." "I told you-"
"Look," Han said. "In about five minutes, I'm going to see your cargo.
If it's just a bunch of food that the Yuuzhan Vong are buying for their
captives out of the goodness of their sweet, tattooed hearts, I'll let you
go, with apologies. But if I find you're carrying weapons and ordnance, or
any other sort of war materiel, I'm going to smack you around. And if you
have captives. . . Well, you have an imagination. Use it." "No!" the captain
said. "No captives. It's as you said. Weapons for the Peace Brigade. Not my
idea! I have an employer. I need this job. Please don't kill me and my
crew."
"Quit your whining. I'm not killing anybody, this time. I'm setting you
adrift in one of your shuttles." "Thank you. Thank you!"
"Here's how you thank me," Han said. "You tell anyone who'll listen
that we're out here. Any ship delivering to a Yuuzhan Vong-occupied system
is mine. And next time, I may not take prisoners. You get me?"
"I get you," Swori Mdimu said.
"Great. My, ah, buddy here is going to put you all in stun cuffs now.
I'm going to have a look at your cargo. If there are any surprises waiting
for me, better tell me now."
"There-there are two Yuuzhan Vong guards. They will be alerted."
"No kidding?" Han said. "Okay, so we're cuffing you and locking you up.
Then the two of us will take care of these guards."
"Two of you?" the Etti said incredulously. "Against Yuuzhan Vong?"
"Hey, don't worry. You want us to lose, right? But if we don't, I'll be
back, and we need to have a little talk about who exactly your employer is."
Once the prisoners were secure, Han started off down a corridor.
"Da-ah, Captain?" Jacen said. "Cargo hold's the other way."
"That's right," Han told him.
"What're you . . . ?"
"Just stay here. If the Yuuzhan Vong come up, give a yell. I'll be on
the bridge."
Han returned from the bridge a little later, and the two of them went
to the cargo access axis. At the first set of locks, they found two Yuuzhan
Vong guards, collapsed near the door. Their faces were masses of purple-not
from their own scarification, but from the capillaries that had burst
beneath their skin.
"You killed them," Jacen said dully, hardly believing it. "You sealed
off the compartment and let the air out."
Han glanced at his son. "Right on all but one count. They aren't dead."
Yuuzhan Vong the Force could not help him. One of the two stirred at his
touch, and he jumped back.
"See?" Han said, a sure note of satisfaction tinting his voice. "I just
dropped the pressure until they did. There are surveillance cams in here."
"Oh."
"Better cuff 'em, unless you want to fight 'em. I thought things would
go smoother this way."
"Dad, what if there had been captives in here?"
"Then I would have seen them on the surveillance. Jacen, give the old
man some credit."
"Permission to speak freely, Captain."
Han sighed. "Go ahead, son."
"Dad, I don't like this. Maybe you think being a pirate is okay, but-"
"Privateer," Han corrected.
"You really think there's a moral difference?"
"If there's ever a moral difference in being on one side instead of the
other in a war, yes. Doesn't your all-knowing Force tell you that?"
"I don't know what the Force wants. That's exactly the problem."
"Yeah?" Han said sarcastically. "You knew what to do when you found
your mother with her legs half cut off. Fortunately. Or do you think it was
wrong to save her life?"
Jacen reddened. "That's not fair."
"Fair?" Han threw his hands up. "Kids these days. Fair."
"Dad, I know the Yuuzhan Vong are a darkness that must be fought. But
aggression-that's not my way. Setting up Uncle Luke's great river, that I
know I can do. This ..
."
"And you thought we were going to be able to carry out Luke's grand
scheme without ever getting our hands dirty? You heard them back at the
Maw-we need ships, we need supplies and weapons, we need money." Han tapped
up the ship's manifest on the captain's datapad and whistled. "And now we
have all three. Three E-wings, right out of dry dock. Lommite, about two
hundred kilos. Enough rations to feed a small army." He glanced back up at
Jacen. "Not to mention that the Peace Brigade doesn't get any of this stuff.
C'mere. I want to see something."
They made their way through the crated supplies until they came to
those the manifest designated as weapons. Han worked the seal on one until
it popped open.
"Well, how do you like that?" Han remarked.
"Emperor's bones," Jacen breathed.
The crate contained not blasters, stun batons, or grenades, but Yuuzhan
Vong amphistaffs.
"Looks like our Brigade buddies are making the transition away from the
evils of technology," Han said. "Wonder if they've started scarring
themselves yet?" He looked significantly at Jacen. "You still don't think
this was worthwhile?"
Jacen stared at the hibernating weapon-beasts.
"It's done, now," he allowed.
Han shook his head. "I don't think so. I want to find out who is
sending this stuff. Those amphistaffs were grown somewhere. Where? Duro?
Obroa-skai?"
"You told the captain of this ship you would continue hijacking ships
bound for Yuuzhan Vong space. Was that the truth?"
"It was. I've been trying to explain why."
"It's a bad idea."
"Well, maybe. But like I told you earlier, I'm the captain."
"It's not that simple for me."
"No? Then here's something real simple. We're taking this freighter and
its cargo back to the Maw. When we're done, you're free to take one of these
E-wings to Luke and sit the rest of the war out meditating or whatnot.
Become a nurse or something. I don't care. But if you're going to keep this
up, I don't want you on my ship, son or not."
Jacen didn't answer, but his face went all stony. It was times like
this that Han occasionally wished he had just a little of that Force ability
to feel what others felt, because Jacen was a blank slate to him more often
than not.
As his son vanished around the corner, Han realized exactly what he had