She sighed. "I get found out having sneaked out of the Temple without my observer. Master Hamner will be obliged to punish me somehow. Teaching basic telekinesis to the younglings out in the Transitory Mists, for example. That's a.s.suming the government doesn't prosecute me, which they might."

"Which they will will. They're not showing any mercy to the Jedi right now."

She glared at him. "Thanks. You're making me feel much much better." better."

The second comlink sounded, this one with a chime identical to the one at Jaina's Temple quarters. She took a deep breath, then pressed the b.u.t.ton. She made her voice sound sleepy. "What is it?"

"h.e.l.lo, Jedi Solo. It's Dab. Routine location check."

"Weren't you-what time is it?"

"I'm sorry. Yes, it was just an hour ago. My randomizer went off again."

"Dab, just go away. I'm tired, I'm in bed, you know know I'm here." I'm here."

"I have to see you in person, Jedi Solo. You know the rules."

Jaina switched off the comlink and mouthed a curse. She glanced at Jag. "I'm sunk."

"Maybe not. Maybe the Empire can rescue a Jedi." He reached over and plucked the comlink from her fingers, and smiled at her startled expression. He thumbed the comlink on. "Who's out there?" He made his own voice hoa.r.s.e, sleepy.

Jaina stared at him.

"It's Dab. Dab Hantaq," Dab said.

"Where's my blaster?"

Jaina caught on and suppressed a laugh. As she'd heard her mother say many times over the years, she said, "It's under your pillow. Where it always is."

"Give me just a second. All right, let him in. I'm going to burn a hole right between his eyes."

"Jag, he's only doing his duty-"

"Vape his duty. Come to think of it, vape the neat little hole between his eyes. I'm going to burn his face clean off. Closed-casket funeral for him, diplomatic immunity for me. Let him in."

Dab's voice emerged from the comlink: "Um, Jedi Solo, I'm satisfied that you're here. I'm just going to mark this one as confirmed."

Jaina breathed a silent sigh of relief. "Thank you, Dab. Good night."

"Good night."

She took the comlink back and switched it off. "Staying ahead of the Moffs is keeping you sharp."

Wearing workmen's jumpsuits similar to Seff's, Jag and Winter clambered down through the street-level access hole into the underground just in front of Valin's prison. Jag pulled the hatch closed above them.

This was a well-maintained maze of permacrete tunnels, metal pipes, access hatches, and machinery, some of it ancient. None of the tunnels headed in the direction of the prison.

"Which is as it should be," Winter said. "Tunnels to and from the prison would mean a higher rate of escapes."

Jag looked up and down the pa.s.sageways leading from the access. "So what has Seff been doing? We haven't seen any sign that he's been removing debris."

"Let's find out."

Half an hour's exploration revealed some of what Seff had been up to. An electronics junction box that was suspiciously free of grime held an oversized, very powerful datapad recently patched into the box's electronic components. Winter activated it, spent a few minutes bypa.s.sing its simple security, and then flipped through the presets in its programming. Each showed a length of permacrete tunnel, walls at right angles to an almost blemish-free floor, dim glow rods in a line across the ceiling. One preset displayed a simple diagram of the underground area, showing the leading edge of the prison and a spot a quarter kilometer away joined by some sort of access tunnel.

"Got it," Winter said. "It's a riot raid tunnel."

"Which is what, exactly?"

"It's a tunnel with only two accesses. One is at the prison, and it can't be opened from the prison side. It's probably not even detectable as a door on the prison side-it'd be disguised as a permacrete wall, maybe in a storage area. The other end goes straight to a law enforcement station of some sort and can only be opened from inside the station. If there's a prison riot or ma.s.s breakout and the prisoners take over, the authorities have a fast, secret way to get into the prison."

Jag considered. "So he's sliced into the holocams observing the tunnel and probably subverted them-and he may have already drilled an access into the tunnel itself. He'll be working on a bypa.s.s for the prison-end door next."

"That's it. He goes into the prison from this access, thaws Valin, brings him out the same way. Minimal fuss. But how does he find Valin?"

"Through the Force. Jaina says she can feel him, even in his present comatose state. More significantly, how did he find out about this tunnel?"

Winter shook her head. "I'm not sure. Back in the days of the Old Republic, Jedi sometimes helped the authorities in suppressing riots like this. Perhaps he found a reference to such an event in the Jedi Archives?"

"I'll ask Jaina to look into that ... Can you keep Seff's holocams from recording? If there's an access into that tunnel, we need to go down there."

"I can."

Seff's access was easy to find. A sheet of durasteel with weld marks all along its edges appeared to be a wall-damage patch, but turned out to be simply held in place by four large blobs of a gluelike substance. Behind the metal sheet was a ragged circular hole, clearly cut by a lightsaber, into the tunnel shown on Seff's monitor.

Jag and Winter entered the tunnel and walked its length, finding no sign of sabotage at the security station end. Seff had clearly been at work at the prison end, however.

Sophisticated bypa.s.s gear had been attached to the access console beside the blast door. Winter activated it and ran through its memory, determining that it had been testing thousands of possible activation codes at a rate designed to prevent the security station's central computer from flagging the events as intrusion attempts. "It shouldn't take him much longer," she told Jag. "A few hours, a day, maybe two."

In silent response, he pointed up. She looked that way and saw what he had found: two small thermal detonators, one affixed to the ceiling above the blast-door controls, one in the ceiling twenty meters down the tunnel.

"He brings Valin out, shuts the door if he can, and if there's pursuit, he triggers the detonators," Jag explained, "bringing the roof down and preventing further pursuit. There's another one, past the hole he cut, that will keep security station personnel from following."

Winter nodded. "So that's his plan. What's ours?"

"This tunnel is a perfect trap. We follow him in here-the two of us and Tahiri. We confront him, capture him, and spirit him back to the Jedi Temple."

"Which is simple and brilliant as long as everything goes right. Now let's get out of here and start planning for everything that might go wrong."

Jag signed. "I really thought that when I got out of flying for my living, I'd also get out of mission planning."

"You aren't that lucky."

CALRISSIAN-NUNB MINES, KESSEL.

SEATED AROUND THE TABLE WAS A WHO'S WHO OF NEW R REPUBLICERA piloting history, and Leia was so cheered to see them all that she could not stop smiling. piloting history, and Leia was so cheered to see them all that she could not stop smiling.

Wedge Antilles sat to Han's right. More relaxed now since his retirement was proving to have some staying power, he had his feet up on the table before him-scuffed, ancient boots on the elegant stone top, much to Lando's unspoken dismay. Wedge sipped from a tumbler of Corellian brandy. Lean and graying, he still had the sharp, angular features and piercing gaze of his youth. He was dressed in the flight uniform of a New Republic X-wing pilot, orange jumpsuit and mostly white accoutrements-but then, most of the pilots present had been dressed in the service uniforms appropriate to their starfighters when they arrived, and not all had had time to change into civilian clothes. Not all wanted to.

Next to Wedge was Derek "Hobbie" Klivian, still somber-some said mournful-of appearance, on a brief break from his duties as a Coruscant spokesman for the Zaltin Corporation, the bacta manufacturer.

Beside Hobbie sat Inyri Forge, a former Rogue Squadron pilot who had been born on Kessel-her parents and surviving siblings were among those who had been evacuated from the planet as the ground-shakes grew worse. They were temporarily quartered in old Imperial barracks on the garrison moon. Brown-haired and fine-boned, she looked almost too delicate to be a pilot, but her kill record made a lie of that a.s.sumption.

At the far end of the table was Kell Tainer. A large man about Leia's age, he was bald on top; he wore his long gray hair in a ponytail and had a drooping mustache. He looked far more like a pirate than a former member of New Republic Starfighter Command, but his experience as a pilot, demolitions expert, and mechanic made him invaluable for the process of converting thermal detonators into warheads for other types of missile systems.

Then there was Cheriss ke Hanadi, an Adumari pilot who was said to be deadlier with her vibroblade than with a starfighter; short, dark-haired, and freckled, she looked like she should be managing a farm goods store.

Next to Cheriss was Nrin Vakil, a Quarren whose watertight flight suit sloshed because it was filled with salt water kept in constant circulation by a backpack processor. Beside him sat Rhysati Ynr, a human woman living on Coruscant; her husband was Nawara Ven, currently Coruscant's best-publicized advocate. She seemed a little uncomfortable sitting beside Maarek Stele, who was still brooding and vital despite the complete loss of his hair; he was an Imperial retiree who had served, among other roles, as an officer on Kessel's garrison moon and later as a TIE fighter pilot in the famous 181st Imperial fighter group.

And, Leia reflected, the pilots sitting with her and Tendra at the head of the table-Han, Lando, and Nien Nunb-weren't exactly slouches themselves.

Lando rapped a shot gla.s.s on the table to divert everyone from catching-up talk and bring them back to the subject at hand. "So we have a mixed bag of starfighters-X-wings, A-wings, a Blade-Thirty-six, an Eta-Five acquired under circ.u.mstances I won't discuss, and a TIE bomber whose owner wants it kept in the exquisite condition it now enjoys, so don't even think about scratching the paint.

"The next two crews of pilots I'll be briefing in here are the rescue vehicle crews and the subsonics crews-those are the airspeeders you saw lined up outside. Each of you will be paired with one of them. Their job is to precede you into the cavern, activate the monstrous sonic systems we've mounted on their speeders, and drive out the animal life. Sometimes they'll be doing it at the same time as your missile pa.s.s, or after, if you're firing detonators on timer. If your detonator's supposed to go off on impact, they'll be preceding you."

Wedge took another sip of his drink. "Who's acting as mission control?"

"Tendra-"

Tendra looked at her husband and shook her head.

Lando continued smoothly, "-or someone else. I'll make sure it's someone with plenty of experience. n.o.body's going to be forgotten."

Han stepped in. "The subsonics pilots are going to be doing more flying than the rest of us. They'll fly several pa.s.ses in each cavern, driving the animal life in one direction. They'll be notifying mission control when each cavern is done."

Cheriss raised a hand. "What if the bogeys knock down a subsonics speeder?"

"That's bound to happen," Leia confirmed. "We have a whole net of sensors set up down there. If any vehicle goes down, it shows as being offline on our computer. We send in a rescue transport. Since the detonators are on mechanical timers we can't abort, we're trying to make sure there's plenty of time between the end of a subsonics run and the scheduled detonation-time to get any stranded pilots out. We're trying to preserve the lives of as many of the animals as we can, but the overriding goal is to save Kessel and keep our pilots alive."

Wedge offered Lando a slightly malicious smile. "A hundred to one says you weren't able to secure insurance for this little operation."

"True." Lando looked regretful. "I knew better. I didn't even try."

"So if a starfighter goes down and gets blown up, you're paying for it out of pocket, correct?"

Lando's expression went from regretful to mournful. "Dodging the bogeys is better for all of us. I can't stress that enough."

Tendra leaned forward. "Each of you will be responsible for hitting between twenty and thirty of the munitions devices. In most cases, you'll be targeting a spot near the device and your warhead will not be set to explode on contact. It will go off on timer. Sometimes, though, it will be on impact. We'll try to remember to tell you which is which."

"Considerate of you," Hobbie said.

"Also, if one of you goes down," Lando continued, "that is, one of us us goes down, as I'll be doing what you are in goes down, as I'll be doing what you are in Lady Luck Lady Luck, and Han in the Falcon Falcon, then the uncompleted targets on your list will be a.s.signed to other pilots-the pilots with the nearest routes. Launch time is still holding at oh six hundred local time tomorrow."

Though these veteran pilots were twenty, thirty, or forty years older than green recruits, they groaned just like newly commissioned fliers.

Lando offered them a bright smile. "Suffer. I have a toddler. I'll be up then anyway. We'll see you in the morning. And, again, really: Thanks."

"No," said Allana.

Leia remained firm, at least on the outside. Looking down into Allana's anxious face, she didn't feel anywhere near as decisive. "It'll just be for a few hours. Chance is going to be there. He'll be with Nanna."

Han, standing behind Leia's chair, gave his wife's shoulder a rea.s.suring squeeze. "Leia and I can't keep you safe while we're firing off bombs in the caverns. You need to be on the garrison moon. Especially if there are more groundquakes."

"No."

Leia took a deep breath. Arguing with Allana was so much like arguing with Jacen had been. The child was very bright and she intellectualized, rationalized like someone far beyond her seven years. Sometimes the only thing Leia could use to win was pure willpower. "Allana, this isn't open for discussion. Han and I have decided."

"The garrison moon is up in s.p.a.ce. There's something waiting for me up in s.p.a.ce."

Leia looked up at Han, but he seemed as baffled as she was. She turned back to Allana. "Something what what?"

"Something scary."

"Allana." Han's voice was not harsh, but there was a warning tone to it. "You shouldn't try to get out of things you don't want to do by fibbing."

Leia schooled herself to remain absolutely impa.s.sive. The number of times Han had gotten out of things he didn't want to do by lying ... well, not to Leia, but to just about everyone else ...

"I'm not fibbing! There really is something up there. It talked to me."

Leia frowned. "When?"

"When I-when I was outside the main building the other day. While you were underground."

"What did it say?"

"It wanted to know who I was. It was sad but scary."

"Did anyone else hear this?"

Allana shook her head. She lowered her voice to a whisper. "It talked through the Force." Searching her grandparents' eyes, she continued, more desperately, "I know the difference between what's real and what's not. This was real."

"Give us a minute." Han gestured for Leia to accompany him outside Allana's temporary bedroom.

Once they were in the hallway with the door shut, Han whispered, "What do you think?"

"She's telling the truth as she understands it. Which means there may actually be something out there." At a loss, Leia shrugged. "With the time we have available, we have three choices, none good. Leave her here in the main building, which means danger if the ground-quakes get bad during our operation, which they very well may. Take her on the Falcon Falcon, where we'll be dealing with high explosives, potentially dangerous animal life, bogeys, and perhaps collapsing caverns. Or send her to the garrison moon, where, if she's right, something may come after her."

Looking unhappy, Han considered. "If we have to choose one of those, I'd choose the one where we can watch after her ourselves."

"Me, too."

Han punched the door b.u.t.ton. The door slid aside.