Star Wars.

The New Jedi Order.

Destiny's way.

by Walter Jon Williams.

For Kathleen Hedges

And with thanks to so many who helped: Daniel Abraham, Terry Boren, George R.R. Martin, Sh.e.l.ly Shapiro, Steve and Jan Stirling, Sue Rostoni, Sally Gwylan, Melinda Snodgra.s.s, Terry England, Yvonne Coats, and Trent Zelazny. And special thanks to Spenser Ruppert for his encyclopedic knowledge of the Star Wars universe.

Chapter 1.

As she sat in the chair that was hers by right of death, she raised her eyes to the cold faraway stars. Checklists buzzed distantly in her mind and her hands moved over the controls, but her thoughts flew elsewhere, amid the chill infinitude. Searching . . .

Nothing.

Her gaze fell and there she saw, on the controls at the adjacent pilot's seat, her husband's hands. She drew comfort from the sight, from the sureness and power she knew was there, in those strong hands.

Her heart leapt. Something, somewhere in all those stars, had touched her.

She thought: Jacen!

Her husband's hands touched controls and the stars streamed away, turned to bleeding smears of light as if seen through beaten rain, and the distant touch vanished.

"Jacen," she said, and then, at her husband's startled look, at the surprise and pain in his brown eyes, "Jacen."

"And you're sure?" Han Solo said. "You're sure it was Jacen?"

"Yes. Reaching out to me. I felt him. It could have been no one else."

"And he's alive."

"Yes."

Leia Organa Solo could read him so well. She knew that Han believed their son dead, but that he tried, for her sake, to pretend otherwise.

She knew that, fierce with grief and with guilt for having withdrawn from his family, he would support her in anything now, even if he believed it was delusional. And she knew the strength it took for him to suppress his own pain and doubt.

She could read all that in him, in the flicker of his eye, the twitch of his cheek. She could read him, read the bravery and the uncertainty, and she loved him for both.

"It was Jacen," she said. She put as much confidence in her tone as she could, all her a.s.surance. "He was reaching out to me through the Force. I felt him. He wanted to tell me he was alive and with friends."

She reached over and took his hand. "There's no doubt, now. Not at all."

Han's fingers tightened on hers, and she sensed the struggle in him, desire for hope warring with his own bitter experience.

His brown eyes softened. "Yes," he said. "Of course. I believe you."

There was a hint of reserve there, of caution, but that was reflex, the result of a long and uncertain life that had taught him to believe nothing until he'd seen it with his own eyes.

Leia reached for him, embraced him awkwardly from the copilot's seat. His arms went around her. She felt the bristle of his cheek against hers, inhaled the scent of his body, his hair.

A bubble of happiness grew in her, burst into speech. "Yes, Han,"

she said. "Our son is alive. And so are we. Be joyful. Be at peace.

Everything changes from now on."

The idyll lasted until Han and Leia walked hand in hand into the Millennium Falcon's main hold. Through the touch, Leia felt the slight tension of Han's muscles as he came in sight of their guest-an Imperial commander in immaculate dress grays.

Han, Leia knew, had hoped that this mission would provide a chance for the two of them to be alone. Through the many months since the war with the Yuuzhan Vong had begun, they had either been apart or dealing with a bewildering succession of crises. Even though their current mission was no less urgent than the others, they would have treasured this time alone in hypers.p.a.ce.

They had even left Leia's Noghri bodyguards behind. Neither of them had wanted any pa.s.sengers at all, let alone an Imperial officer. Thus far Han had managed to be civil about it, but only just.

The commander rose politely to her feet. "An exceptionally smooth transition into hypers.p.a.ce, Captain Solo," she said. "For a ship with such-such heterogeneous components, such a transition speaks well of the ship's captain and his skills."

"Thanks," Han said.

"The Myomar shields are superb, are they not?" she said. "One of our finer designs."

The problem with Commander Vana Dorja, Leia thought, was that she was simply too observant. She was a woman of about thirty, the daughter of the captain of a Star Destroyer, with bobbed dark hair tucked neatly into her uniform cap, and the bland, pleasant face of a professional diplomat. She had been on Coruscant during its fall, allegedly negotiating some kind of commercial treaty, purchasing Ulban droid brains for use in Imperial hydroponics farms. The negotiations were complicated by the fact that the droid brains in question could equally well be used for military purposes.

The negotiations regarding the brains' end-use certificates had gone nowhere in particular, but perhaps they had been intended to go nowhere. What Commander Dorja's extended stay on Coruscant had done was to make her a close observer in the Yuuzhan Vong a.s.sault that had resulted in the planet's fall.

Vana Dorja had gotten off Coruscant somehow-Leia had no doubt that her escape had been planned long in advance-and she had then turned up at Mon Calamari, the new provisional capital, blandly asking for help in returning to Imperial s.p.a.ce just at the moment at which Leia had been a.s.signed a diplomatic mission to that selfsame Empire.

Of course it wasn't a coincidence. Dorja was clearly a spy operating under commercial cover. But what could Leia do? The New Republic might need the help of the Empire, and the Empire might be offended if its commercial representative were needlessly delayed in her return.

What Leia could do was establish some ground rules concerning where on the Falcon Commander Dorja could go, and where was strictly off limits. Dorja had agreed immediately to the restrictions, and agreed as well to be scanned for any technological or other secrets she might be smuggling out.

Nothing had turned up on the scan. Of course. If Vana Dorja was carrying any vital secrets to her masters in the Empire, she was carrying them locked in her all-too-inquisitive brain.

"Please sit down," Leia said.

"Your Highness is kind," Dorja said, and lowered her stocky body into a chair. Leia sat across the table from her, and observed the half-empty gla.s.s of juri juice set before the commander.

"Threepio is providing sufficient refreshment?" Leia asked.

"Yes. He is very efficient, though a trifle talkative."

Talkative'? Leia thought. What's Threepio been telling the woman'?

Blast it anyway. Dorja was all too skilled at creating these unsettling moments.

"Shall we dine?" Leia asked.

Dorja nodded, bland as always. "As Your Highness wishes."

But then she proved useful in the galley, a.s.sisting Han and Leia as they transferred to plates the meal that had been cooking in the Falcon's automatic ovens. As Han sat down with his plates, C-3PO contemplated the table.

"Sir," he said. "A Princess and former Chief of State takes precedence, of course, over both a captain and an Imperial commander. But a commander-forgive me-does not take precedence over a New Republic general, even one on the inactive list. General Solo, if you would be so kind as to sit above Commander Dorja?"

Han gave C-3PO a baleful look. "I like it fine where I am," he said. Which was, of course, as far away from the Imperial commander as the small table permitted.

C-3PO looked as distressed as it was possible for a droid with an immobile face to look. "But sir-the rules of precedence-"

"I like it where I am," Han said, more firmly.

"But sir-"

Leia slid into her accustomed role as Han's interpreter to the world. "We'll dine informally, Threepio," she told the droid.

C-3PO's tone allowed his disappointment to show. "Very well, Your Highness," he said.

Poor 3PO, Leia thought. Here he was designed for working out rules of protocol for state banquets involving dozens of species and hundreds of governments, interpreting and smoothing disputes, and instead she persisted in getting him into situations where he kept getting shot at.

And now the galaxy was being invaded by beings who had marked for extermination every droid in existence-and they were winning. Whatever C-3PO had for nerves must be shot.

Lots of formal dinner parties when this is over, Leia decided.

Nice, soothing dinner parties, without a.s.sa.s.sins, quarrels, or light-saberfights.

"I thank you again for your offer of transit to the Empire," Dorja said later, after the soup course. "It was fortunate that you have business there."

"Very fortunate," Leia agreed.

"Your mission to the Empire must be critical," Dorja probed, "to take you from the government at such a crucial time."

"I'm doing what I do best."

"But you were Chief of State-surely you must be considering a return to power."

Leia shook her head. "I served my term."

"To voluntarily relinquish power-I confess I don't understand it."

Dorja shook her head. "In the Empire, we are taught not to decline responsibility once it is given to us."

Leia sensed Han's head lifting as he prepared to speak. She knew him well enough to antic.i.p.ate the sense of any remarks. No, he would say, Imperial leaders generally stay in their seats of power until they're blasted out by laser cannons. Before Han could speak, she phrased a more diplomatic answer.

"Wisdom is knowing when you've given all you can," she said, and turned her attention to her dinner, a fragrant breast of hibbas with a sauce of bofa fruit. Dorja picked up her fork, held it over her plate.

"But surely-with the government in chaos, and driven into exile-a strong hand is needed."

"We have const.i.tutional means for choosing a new leader," Leia rea.s.sured. And thought, Not that they're working so far, with Pwoe proclaiming himself Chief of State with the Senate deadlocked on Mon Calamari.

"I wish you a smooth transition," Commander Dorja said. "Let's hope the hesitation and chaos with which the New Republic has met its current crisis was the fault of Borsk Fey'lya's government, and not symptomatic of the New Republic as a whole."

"I'll drink to that," Han proclaimed, and drained his gla.s.s.

"I can't help but wonder how the old Empire would have handled the crisis," Dorja continued. "I hope you will forgive my partisan att.i.tude, but it seems to me that the Emperor would have mobilized his entire armament at the first threat, and dealt with the Yuuzhan Vong in an efficient and expeditious manner, through the use of overwhelming force.

Certainly better than Borsk Fey'lya's policy-if I understood it correctly as a policy-of negotiating with the invaders at the same time as he was fighting them, sending signals of weakness to a ruthless enemy who used negotiation only as a cover for further conquests."

It was growing very hard, Leia thought, to maintain the diplomatic smile on her face. "The Emperor," she said, "was always alert to any threat to his power."

Leia sensed Han about to speak, and this time was too late to stop his words.

"That's not what the Empire would have done, Commander," Han said.

"What the Empire would have done was build a super-colossal Yuuzhan Vong-killing battle machine. They would have called it the Nova Colossus or the Galaxy Destructor or the Nostril of Palpatine or something equally grandiose. They would have spent billions of credits, employed thousands of contractors and subcontractors, and equipped it with the latest in death-dealing technology. And you know what would have happened? It wouldn't have worked. They'd forget to bolt down a metal plate over an access hatch leading to the main reactors, or some other mistake, and a hotshot enemy pilot would drop a bomb down there and blow the whole thing up. Now that's what the Empire would have done."

Leia, striving to contain her laughter, detected what might have been amus.e.m.e.nt in Vana Dorja's brown eyes.

"Perhaps you're right," Dorja conceded.

"You're right I'm right, Commander," Han said, and poured himself a gla.s.s of water.

His brief triumph was interrupted by a sudden shriek from the Falcon's hyperdrive units. The ship shuddered. Proximity alarms wailed.

Leia, her heart beating in synchrony to the blaring alarms, stared into Han's startled brown eyes. Han turned to Commander Dorja.

"Sorry to interrupt dinner just as it was getting interesting.," he said, "but I'm afraid we've got to blow some bad guys into small pieces."

The first thing Han Solo did when he scrambled into the pilot's seat was to shut off the blaring alarms that were rattling his brain around inside his skull. Then he looked out the c.o.c.kpit windows. The stars, he saw, had returned to their normal configuration-the Millennium Falcon had been yanked out of hypers.p.a.ce. And Han had a good idea why, an idea that a glance at the sensor displays served only to confirm. He turned to Leia as she scrambled into the copilot's chair.

"Either a black hole has materialized in this sector, or we've hit a Yuuzhan Vong mine." A dovin basal to be precise, an organic gravitic-anomaly generator that the Yuuzhan Vong used for both propelling their vessels and warping s.p.a.ce around them. The Yuuzhan Vong had been seeding dovin basal mines along New Republic trade routes in order to drag unsuspecting transports out of hypers.p.a.ce and into an ambush. But their mining efforts hadn't extended this far along the Hydian Way, at least not until now.

And there, Han saw in the displays, were the ambushers. Two nights of six coralskippers each, one positioned on either side of the dovin basal in order to intercept any unsuspecting transport.

He reached for the controls, then hesitated, wondering if Leia should pilot while he ran for the turbolaser turret. No, he thought, he knew the Millennium Falcon, her capabilities, and her crotchets better than anyone, and good piloting was going to get them out of this trouble more than good shooting.

"I'd better fly this one," he said. "You take one of the quad lasers." Regretting, as he spoke, that he wouldn't get to blow things up, something always good for taking his mind off his troubles.

Leia bent to give him a quick kiss on the cheek. "Good luck, Slick," she whispered, then squeezed his shoulder and slid silently out of the c.o.c.kpit.