"I gave no orders," Luke said. He felt helpless under this kind of suspicion; there was no way to prove himself innocent. He looked at Cal.

"I hadn't given up trying to talk you out of it."

"Sir." Dif Scaur spoke to Cal. "If she goes back to the Vong with Alpha Red, then the New Republic is in jeopardy. The enemy will know our capabilities, and they'll have to do whatever they can to destroy us before we can revive the Alpha Red project."

"The Skywalkers think she won't go to the Yuuzhan Vong," Cal said.

"They've been wrong up until now," Scaur said. "And in any case we can't afford to take the chance."

"True." Cal's eyes moved restlessly over his desk. "All right then." He looked at Scaur. "You need to reestablish Alpha Red at... a safer location . . . and have the team duplicate their original work.

That will take how long?"

"At least three months. Probably four."

Cal nodded. He turned to Luke. "We'll move on Ackbar's plan immediately. If the Vong are responding to Ackbar's moves, then maybe they won't have time to kill the rest of us."

"Yes, sir," Luke said. His mind buzzed with calculation.

It would be three or four months before Alpha Red was unleashed.

That meant Luke had three months to win the war.

If the enemy were on the edge of defeat, then perhaps Cal wouldn't feel it necessary to wipe the Yuuzhan Vong from existence.

The Jedi were his eyes and ears. Formations hovered in Jacen's mind: lumbering transports, weapon-studded capital ships, racing squadrons of starfighters.

It was a fleet exercise, featuring a force aided by the Jedi meld against a superior force unaided by the Jedi. The Force glowed in Jacen like a flame, and he maneuvered the friendly squadrons like elements in a gigantic puzzle, trying to sense what would happen many moves in advance...

The opposing fleet made its move. As the fleets clashed, powered-down lasers flashing as computers launched simulated missiles, the picture in Jacen's head seemed to expand, information arriving in larger and larger bundles until he strained to keep up with it all. He felt sweat trickle down the bridge of his nose. The picture deteriorated into frantic, busy hash, punctuated only rarely by moments of clarity.

The meld always broke down when the situation grew too complex.

Jacen could contain and control a large number of Jedi, like those engaged on the raid at Duro, but beyond that his abilities faded. This was frustrating, because he always sensed that comprehension was possible, if just beyond his reach. If only there were more Jedi in the link. If only he were more clever.

Still, his preliminary maneuvering had put the fleet in good shape, and as the battle went on he was able to achieve some flashes of insight that made sense out of the chaos. When the exercise ended, the opposition's advantage in numbers had been annulled, and the exchange of simulated "casualties" had favored Jacen's force.

"Try not to get me killed next time, Solo." Corran Horn, whose commitment to the fight had been mistimed, sent a dour message over the comlink.

Jacen sent an apology. He had to get better at this. Next time the missiles wouldn't be simulated.

"Splendid work, Jacen!" Out of the Force and on Ralroost's tactical command center, Admiral Kre'fey's cream-colored body bounced on the b.a.l.l.s of its feet. "Next battle, we're going to hammer diem!" The Bothan punched his palm by way of emphasis.

"I hope so," Jacen said.

He had to get better at this. Too many people were counting on him.

It had become a custom for the Jedi to dine together after the exercise. They reviewed the maneuvers, the way the meld had worked or failed to work, and suggested improvements. After the group broke up, Jacen sought out Tahiri Veila.

"You're doing well?" he asked.

She frowned. "I'm working hard."

It was the truth. Since Anakin's death she had grown serious, almost grim in the way that she pursued her goals, a considerable change from the impetuous, fiery girl Jacen remembered from the Jedi academy.

"I wonder if I might ask you a question," Jacen said.

"Of course."

"I wonder if-since you came back from capture-whether you've ever felt the ability to, ah. sense the Yuuzhan Vong."

Tahiri was startled. "No. Why do you ask?" She brushed the blond hair from her face.

Jacen explained about his own capture, and how the implanted slave seed had given him the ability to connect telepathically with the Yuuzhan Vong.

Tahiri shivered. "No, I've never experienced that, and I'm glad.

That must be awful."

"It's ... all right. It's helped me understand them." He looked at her. "And it can be useful in detecting the enemy, and in controlling their bioweapons." Jacen hesitated. "The truth is, I was wondering if it might be possible to teach the Vongsense to someone else."

Tahiri took a step back, her eyes widening. "And you want to see if I can contact the Yuuzhan Vong through the Force?"

"No, not through the Force. It's a different sort of bond."

"Through their-" Her face twisted. "-slave implants."

"Yes."

"You know that I hate them." Her eyes burned fiercely into Jacen's.

"I hate them. I know I'm a Jedi and I'm not supposed to hate anyone, but I can't help it. Not after what they've done."

Jacen nodded. "I understand. I don't want to put you through anything that will make you uncomfortable, or that will bring back bad memories."

"All right, then." She nodded. "I'm sorry, Jacen."

"That's fine."

Tahiri began to walk away, and then she hesitated, and turned. "Is it important?" she asked.

"I can't say," Jacen said. "But it will help you understand the Yuuzhan Vong. And perhaps when you understand them you won't hate them so much."

"I want to hate them." Her lips pressed together in a firm, defiant line.

"It takes a lot of energy to hate," Jacen said. "You might have other uses for that energy, Tahiri."

Again she hesitated. "All right," she said finally. "I'll give it a try."

They went to Jacen's small cabin, sat in meditation posture on the floor, and touched hands. He sensed Tallin's expanding Force-awareness, and he said, "No, not the Force. This power comes from somewhere else."

Tahiri's mouth curled in annoyance. "What do I do, then?"

"Try to look into--into an empty place where the slave implants were. I'll try to guide you."

Jacen could find the empty place himself, and he could feel, at the edge of his awareness, the World Brain he had left behind on Coruscant.

He tried to build a bridge between Tahiri and the dhuryam, but he couldn't seem to bring the two closer together, and he could sense Tahiri's growing frustration.

The problem was that there weren't any Yuuzhan Vong nearby. If there were, perhaps Tahiri wouldn't have such a hard time.

"I'm sort of glad it didn't work," Tahiri said afterward.

"Would you mind trying again later?"

She grimaced. "I suppose we could try. But I'm not looking forward to it."

After she'd left, Jacen had begun to record a holovid letter to his parents when he realized he wasn't alone. Not even in his own mind.

Vergere? he probed.

In return Jacen received impressions, pictures of a green treetop landscape that he recognized as Kashyyyk, and a strong, nonverbal command to come to the planet.

And this was followed by an equally powerful compulsion to silence.

A secret meeting? Jacen sent. There was no reply.

Jacen received permission to leave Ralroost from the officer of the deck and took his X-wing to the surface, homing on Vergere's presence in the Force.

She had chosen a small, remote island for the meeting place. No Wookiees lived there, but the lower depths of the wroshyr forest was filled with the usual deadly native life-forms.

The meeting place was marked by an old four-pa.s.senger Trilon shuttle perched at a dangerous angle in the uppermost branches of one of the wroshyr trees. Jacen floated the X- wing toward it on his repulsorlifts and carefully dropped the starfighter onto an interwoven net of branches. As he shut off the repulsorlifts and let the branches take the fighter's weight, he was surprised by the sight of a four-meter-long, many-toothed serpent flying past his canopy.

"Their instinct is to eat birds," Vergere explained as Jacen climbed out of the c.o.c.kpit and lowered himself to one of the ma.s.sive wroshyr limbs. "I try to discourage them, but they are unintelligent and thus persistent."

As Vergere spoke, another, larger snake was torn free, in a shower of green foliage, from an overhanging limb and went whipping through the air and over the green horizon. "If I throw them into the sea," Vergere said, "it delays their return, but they do come back."

The branch swayed under Jacen's feet. It was wide as a highway, but the motion was unsettling. "Can't you make yourself small?" he asked.

"They don't detect me in the Force. I think they smell me."

"I'm good with animals. Let me try." He expanded his awareness of the Force to include the fauna of the treetops and detected the primitive, purposeful minds of several of the snakes, all of them stalking through the foliage toward Vergere. Jacen tried turning off the instinct to hunt, but the compulsion was hardwired into them, and he failed. Then he suggested to them that better, more appetizing food was to be found elsewhere, and they turned away in search of it.

"Nicely done," Vergere said. "And it is a tactic that can be applied to species other than snakes."

Jacen looked at her. "Why are you here?"

Vergere's feathery antennae crooked forward and back, as if scanning the air for invaders. "I sense no other presence," she said.

"Did you run away? Is Nylykerka after you?"

"Nylykerka and many others. Your Master Skywalker among them, I think."

Jacen took a deep breath. He squatted on his heels on the wide branch, and said, "You'd better tell me."

Vergere told her story. Jacen was horrified. Not simply because Alpha Red was a weapon for ma.s.s murder, but because, thanks to the slave seed tendrils coiled about his nerves, he now possessed an empathy for the Yuuzhan Vong. It was not only the human part of his mind that quailed at this revelation, but the part that understood the enemy.

Vergere looked at him. "I have given the Jedi only a few months to respond to this horror," she said.

"They can rebuild the weapon?"

"Of course."

He shrugged helplessly. "What should I do?"

"I can't advise you."

"Should I tell people? We could put pressure on the government, but that would tell the Yuuzhan Vong, and-" He shrank before the consequences of that decision, the Yuuzhan Vong realizing that they were in a war of extinction rather than a war of conquest.

Her dark, tilted eyes gazed into his. "Since I first met you, I have had an intuition that you were in some way bound up with the fate of the Yuuzhan Vong. Perhaps this is the moment I've been antic.i.p.ating."

Jacen looked at her in surprise. "The fate of the Yuuzhan Vong? Is that why you've taken such an interest in me?"

Her eyes narrowed. "Beyond any other interest I would have taken in a Jedi in distress, yes."

He rose to his feet. The huge branch swayed beneath him as a breeze ruffled the leaves. "What arc you going to do?" he asked.

Her wide mouth twisted in thought. "There isn't a general search for me, or you'd have heard. That means that only the Intelligence people will be looking for me, which will make it easier to evade them." She craned her long neck to look at her shuttle. "My craft came to Mon Calamari with a family of refugees who sold it to buy food. Sooner or later the dealer to whom they sold it will notice that it's missing from its...o...b..t, and then there'll be a search, but that won't matter-the hyperdrive engines are ready to give up the ghost, and I'll be lucky to get out of the Kashyyyk system." She turned to Jacen. "Can you give me a ride in your fighter?"

"Certainly. But to where?"

"To your ship, perhaps?"

He blinked at her. "It's an a.s.sault cruiser," he said. "It's got over a thousand crew."

"It's easy to pa.s.s as one among thousands, yes?" Vergere smiled.

"And I would be less conspicuous in a uniform, no?"

"No!" Jacen said. He decided to pa.s.s over the unlikely chance that he'd find a uniform that would fit Vergere. "Most of the crew are Bothans. The starfighter pilots are from all over, but there aren't that many of them, and-"

"No doubt there are supply vessels coming on and off the ship all the time," Vergere said. "Cargo coming on and off, and being placed in storage. And dispatch boats, and shuttles to other ships. Hundreds of escape pods. With all that confusion, surely one single individual could find a way off the ship and to safety." She smiled. "I am very good at being invisible."

Jacen sighed. He sensed an inevitability in the offing. "Let's hope there aren't any big snakes aboard," he said.

"I'm glad to know that creepy little bird is gone," Han said. "It was all I could do not to wring her neck for what she did to Jacen." He looked around. "Where did Vergere go to, anyway?"

"I'm not sure," Luke said. He quelled the uneasiness in his mind and asked Han and Leia to sit. The pair took the seats offered and then the drinks that Mara brought into the room. Mara took her own drink and sat on the sofa next to Luke. He put his arm around her.