"Right now?" Mara asked.

"Especially now."

Luke caught Welk's gaze, then-still moving slowly-raised his remaining lightsaber to high guard.

"Are you ready, son?"

"We are not your son!"

The Dark Jedi sailed forward, bristling at the condescension, striking at the flank Luke had left open.

Moving even slower than was necessary, Luke pulled his guard around and rotated away. A soft flutter sounded behind him. The hilt of his lightsaber grew cold-as Alema's had a moment earlier-and the blade died.

By then Luke had already released the weapon and accelerated to his best speed, slipping forward even as he twisted away from the attack. The sudden speed change caught Welk by surprise. Luke trapped the Dark Jedi's wrist in an X-block and continued to pivot smoothly away, forcing those hands into a tight circle and driving the lightsaber back up into Welk's stomach in one not-so-fast motion.

Welk let out a bloodcurdling scream and tried to deactivate the lightsaber, but Luke had his hand over the switch and now he was the strong one. He wrenched the handle free and ripped the blade out the Dark Jedi's side, then turned to face the attack he felt certain would be coming from Lomi Plo-and went spinning out of control when the air suddenly grew light and thin again and he could once more move at normal speed.

Luke saw the wall flashing past, coming up fast, barbed mandibles protruding where he was about to hit. He deactivated the lightsaber, then reached out in the Force and jerked the larva from its cell, slammed into it in midair, and tumbled off in a new direction.

This time he managed to stop himself before he hit another wall. He reignited Welk's lightsaber and spun around with the crimson blade swinging-then felt a jolt of alarm and sensed Mara approaching out of the darkness.

"Hey, it's me!" Mara used the Force to push the weapon down. "Don't you recognize your own wife anymore?"

Luke deactivated the blade. "Sorry."

Being careful to keep the beam below her chin so he didn't blind her, Luke turned his helmet lamp in Mara's direction. Her Force aura had subsided to a mere blush, and the charred circles on her body reminded him of how much his own electrobolt wounds ached. But it was the jagged, triangular puncture wound in her right abdomen that he found most alarming. About the size of three fingers bunched together, it was smeared with grime and oozing dark blood.

"How are you feeling?"

"About as good as I look." As Mara spoke, her eyes were searching the darkness around them. "But I'll last until we can find Alema. Any idea where she's-"

A series of dull thuds reverberated through the chamber, followed by the fading light and dying crackle of the thermal detonators that had just discharged inside a wall across the chamber. An instant later, a pair of Han's YVH bugcruncher droids rode into the chamber on the blue-white tails of their propulsion thrusters and quickly swung toward the Skywalkers.

"Remain calm!" one ordered in its ultradeep, ultramale voice.

"Remain stationary! Help is coming."

FORTY-ONE.

The bolt burns had been smeared with bacta salve, the puncture wounds were covered with actibandages on both sides, and there was enough stericlean in the air to disinfect half the nest. All that could be done in the field, Leia had done, and still she did not like how her sister-in-law looked. Mara had an ashy complexion and a hint of blue in her lips, and her eyes were so sunken they looked like crash craters.

"We'll get you to the Falcon soon," Leia said. They were back in the membrosia chamber, where the worst of the battle had taken place, waiting for a pair of fresh vac suits for Mara and Luke. "Bug four should be returning anytime now."

"No hurry." Mara squeezed Leia's hand. "I've been hit worse than this. "

"It's not you she's worried about," Han said. "If I don't get out of this place soon..."

Han let his sentence trail off, and Leia turned to find him shining his helmet lamp into the haze-filled darkness. The beam extended only about ten meters before terminating in a wall of floating Gorog corpses.

"What, Han?"

"I don't know." Han pointed into the carnage, then swung his helmet lamp away to reveal a faint golden glow snaking through the corpses and floating blood globules. "Trouble, maybe."

Leia reached out in the Force and felt a swarm of Killiks approaching in the company of three Joiners.

"It's Jaina and Zekk!" she said. "With Raynar."

"Like I said," Han muttered. "Trouble."

The golden glow resolved itself into a line of shine-b.a.l.l.s being carried by a long column of Killiks in chitinous pressure suits of many different configurations. At the head of the procession came the hulking form of Raynar Thul, his vac suit helmet tucked under one arm, his scar-frozen face red with fury. Half a meter behind, Jaina and Zekk followed, looking more nervous than angry.

Leia waited as they approached, then bowed to Raynar. "UnuThul, I'm sorry we must meet-"

"So are we," Raynar said. The battle-pitted form of Bug Four drifted out from among the ma.s.s of Unu following him. The droid's photoreceptors were dark, the seams of his body sh.e.l.l were smeared with soot, and he was surrounded by the acrid stink of scorched circuits.

"Your droid murdered Unu."

Giving Leia no chance to respond, Raynar floated around her to the sides of Luke and Mara, and several hand-sized Killik healers poked their tiny heads up past the collar of his pressure suit. Leia started to go after him, but was stopped by a gentle Force tug.

"Wait with us," Jaina said from behind Leia. "Trying to explain now will only make Unu angrier."

"Thank you for the advice." Leia turned to face Jaina and caught the flash of several tiny eyes peering out of her collar, too. "Looks crowded in there."

Jaina stared into Leia's eyes. "Not really."

"It grows on you," Zekk said. He reached over and rubbed the backs of his fingers down Jaina's cheek.

"To tell the truth, we kind of like it," Jaina added.

"Oh," Leia said. "I would have thought all that creeping inside your suit would feel, um, uncomfortable.'"

Jaina and Zekk shook their heads in unison.

"Not at all," Jaina said.

"It makes us feel whole," Zekk added.

The trio spent an awkward moment looking at each other, Jaina and Zekk softly humming and clicking to themselves, Leia hiding her feelings behind a polite smile. Though she had already sensed in the Force what had become of her daughter and Zekk, actually seeing them behave like Joiners was almost more than she could bear. Her heart was dropping with every beat.

Finally, Jaina asked, "What are you doing here, Mother?" Little Killik healers began to crawl out of her suit and launch themselves into the darkness. "We thought you were going to open negotiations with the Chiss."

"I had another idea," Leia said. "One that might actually work."

Jaina and Zekk waited patiently for her to elaborate.

"There's no sense explaining it twice," Leia said. "Let's wait until Ray-er, UnuThul is available."

A hurt look came to the faces of Jaina and Zekk. Leia felt a pang of regret, but she did not apologize. Too much depended on her plan, and she could not risk having the pair speak against it before she had a chance to present it to Raynar.

"What about Dad?" Jaina asked quietly. She glanced toward Han, who remained with Luke and Mara but was looking over at his daughter and Zekk. "Is he still going to cut our tether for staying?"

"It may take some time for your father to accept this," Leia said.

"He still has nightmares about whatever happened to him after that misunderstanding with the Kamarians."

"We're not Kamarians," Jaina objected. Zekk absentmindedly rubbed his forearm along the back of her neck, and Han made a sour face and looked away. "We're still his daughter."

"Just give your father some time," Leia said. She did not know how to explain-without offending Jaina and Zekk - what she knew in her heart: that Han was not as disappointed with Jaina as he was angry in himself; that he blamed himself for not protecting her from what she had become.

"This is going to be hard for him."

"It will be hard on us all, we think," Zekk said.

Raynar slipped away from Luke and Mara-who were now crawling with Killik healers-and returned to Leia. He fixed his gaze on her, and suddenly her vision darkened around the edges. His blue eyes seemed the only lights in the chamber, and she felt an enormous, murky presence pressing down on her inside.

'Wow you can explain this slaughter, Princess Leia," Raynar said.

"Why did the Jedi kill all these Kind?"

"Quite simply, we had no choice," Leia said. "They were attacking Luke and Mara."

This drew a round of suit-m.u.f.fled chest pulsing from the entourage of Unu.

"Strange," Raynar said. "This does not look like the Skywalkers'

nest. Are you sure they were not the ones attacking?"

"It's complicated." Leia started to suggest they come back to that in a moment, but the presence in her chest grew heavy, and she found herself explaining more about the mission than might have been wise.

"This nest was drawing the Colony into a devastating war. We hoped to undermine their influence so you would consider our peace plan."

Han's jaw fell. "Leia! How about a little tact?"

"We prefer her candor," Raynar growled. His burning eyes continued to hold Leia's gaze. "But this slaughter was pointless. Eliminating this nest can only turn us against your plan."

"Unfortunately, we had no choice." By the sound of Luke's voice-Leia remained unable to see anything but Raynar's eyes - he was floating over to insert himself into the conversation. "They were trying to eliminate us. It was self-defense."

"Self-defense?" Raynar sounded outraged. "The Kind fight only when they are attacked."

"Yeah," Han said. "You're a lot like the Chiss that way."

Raynar turned to glare at Han. Leia's vision returned to normal, and she found Han sneering confidently back at Raynar, looking as though he were staring down an Aqualish bar brawler instead of the leader of an interstellar civilization.

Leia slipped between the two. "Let me show you something." She addressed herself not only to Raynar, but to the entire Unu entourage.

"You need to understand something about this nest, and then we can talk about whether the Colony truly wants peace."

Without waiting for permission, Leia turned toward the ceiling, leading Raynar, Han, and the Unu through the body-filled darkness toward the nursery entrance. Luke and Mara, who had stopped using the Force to compensate for their injuries, remained behind at the insistence of the Killik healers, and Jaina and Zekk stayed with them. Leia did not understand why, but there was a lot about her daughter and Zekk that she did not understand right now.

After a few moments, they reached the cave that Bugs Two and Three had blasted through the ceiling, and the smell of decay grew sickening.

Kyp and the other Masters were inside the nursery gathering Chiss survivors and searching for Lomi Plo, so Leia opened herself to the battle-meld and urged them to have the bugcrunchers stand down.

"Bugcrunchers?" Raynar said.

Leia was a little surprised, since she could not sense Raynar's presence in the meld, but Han was nonchalant.

"No offense. We had to call 'em something."

Halfway through the cave, they found Saba waiting. Her vac suit and face scales were smeared with wax and offal from pulling Chiss out of larval cells, and the stench rising off her was enough to send a rustle of revulsion through the Unu.

Saba allowed Raynar and the entourage to stare at her for a moment, then said, "This one is sorry for her smell. The work in here is meszy."

"What is your work?" Raynar asked.

Saba looked to Leia before answering.

"It will be better if we just show you," Leia said, directing her comment more to Saba than Raynar. "Any sign of Alema yet?"

"None," Saba said. "Perhapz she was disintegrated in a detonator explosion."

"Maybe." Having seen for herself how acute the Twi'lek's danger sense was, Leia had her doubts. "What about Lomi Plo?"

Saba turned her palms up. "Vanished."

"Lomi Plo is dead," Raynar said, as if by rote. "She died in the Crash."

Saba glanced his way, gnashing her fangs, then looked back to Leia.

"You are sure about this?"

Leia nodded. "Unu needs to see this." Silently, she added that it was still the only way to break the Dark Nest's hold on the Colony.

Saba shrugged, then led Leia and the others into the darkness of the nursery. The air was hot and dank and so filled with the stench of decay that Raynar gulped and the Unu rumbled their thoraxes. Kyp and the rest of the rescue team were working along the far side of the chamber, the beams of their helmet lamps sweeping across the wall but revealing little more than the hexagonal pattern of the nursery cells.

A few meters in, Leia stopped and swung her helmet lamp toward the nearest wall. The beam illuminated the half-devoured corpse of a Chiss prisoner, still curled around a squirming Gorog larva.

Raynar gasped, and the nearest Unu brought their mandibles together in shock. Han shined his helmet lamp on a second cell, and Saba a third.

Both of those cells also contained the bodies of Chiss captives.

"What is this?" Raynar demanded.