Again Vergere looked severe. "What did I say about impossible wishes?"

Jacen hugged himself, and rubbed his upper arms for warmth. His teeth chattered.

"Can you help me stay warm?" he asked.

Amus.e.m.e.nt glittered in Vergere's eyes. "My abilities in this state are necessarily limited. I suggest you call upon your other friends."

Mara felt the tension go out of her as Sien Sow delivered his report from Bel Iblis's flagship. "Master Skywalker reports that all the Jedi trapped on the moon have survived. In fact, no Jedi casualties have been reported at all."

Sow looked as pleased as his heavy-jowled face permitted. His step was lighter, and his b.u.t.ton eyes glittered. He turned to Ackbar.

"Your plan was brilliant, sir," he said. "It worked perfectly."

Ackbar made an agitated movement of his hands. "I should have foreseen the occupation of Ebaq." His words were slurred, and his skin had turned gray. "I should have insisted on ground troops defending that moon."

The Supreme Commander wasn't about to let second thoughts spoil his victory. "It all worked out for the best!" Sow said. He gestured at the holo representation of Ebaq's system. "Look, sir! No surviving enemy craft-the board's nothing but blue!"

Ackbar's whiskered chin fell on his chest. "I should have foreseen it," he mumbled.

Winter looked at Mara. "We should get Ackbar home. Will you help me?"

Mara and Winter each took one of Ackbar's arms and helped him rise.

As they made their way out of the command center, Ayddar Nylykerka ran up to Mara.

"Now we can roll up their spy networks!" he said. "The Vong will never believe any of these networks now."

"I've been thinking about that," Mara said. "Maybe we should let one of them stay in place."

Nylykerka c.o.c.ked his head. "Really?" he said. "Can you explain your reasoning?"

"If we roll up two of the networks and leave the third alone, that will give the third more credence."

"Hmm. Very intriguing."

Mara and Nylykerka debated the matter all the way to the shuttle gate.

Luke was eager to mount a rescue mission immediately, but the central shaft of Ebaq 9 was too hot and too radioactive for living beings to enter. Droids were sent instead, bringing food, water, heaters, bedding, and vacuumproof tents in which the survivors could live while waiting for the moon to cool down. Cybot load-lifters were used, on the theory that their unsophisticated brains would be less subject to being scrambled by radiation. MD-series medical droids were sent in as well.

One of them froze partway in, slagged by radiation, but the others got through intact.

Jacen was found keeping warm with energy sent to him by the Jedi meld. He set up the tent, ballooned it with air, set up the heater, and consumed several warm drinks. The medical droid p.r.o.nounced him well.

The loadlifters found Jaina as well, but were unable to ascend the vertical shaft to her hiding place. She, Tesar, and Lowbacca dropped easily through the shaft, and for the first time, in the load-lifters'

powerful lights, Jaina saw the piles of Yuuzhan Vong corpses that choked the tunnel. She turned away and hoped she wouldn't be sick in her vac suit.

The MD droid's voice came through the headset of Jaina's vac suit.

"I would like to examine you. And your companions."

"We're all right," Jaina answered. If I don't throw up. "I have a wounded pilot whom you should see first. Walk back the way you came, and take the first left facing out. Keep hailing on these frequencies and they should answer."

"Very well."

"Take one of the loadlifters with you. They'll need supplies as well. And there's a body that will have to be taken out." Maybe thousands of bodies.

The MD droid turned to go.

Then Jaina was surprised to see the droid's head fly off and strike the mineshaft wall.

Tsavong Lah pa.s.sed out seconds after the tunnel was depressurized, and had survived only because his aides fought off the other Yuuzhan Vong who would have trampled him just long enough for one of them to deploy the gnullith that fed him air, and the ooglith cloaker that masked him against vacuum and cold.

When the warmaster woke, with the gnullith's tube down his throat, he was buried under an insulating pile of Yuuzhan Vong dead, mostly his own subalterns. At first despair consumed him, the knowledge that he had failed utterly, that his fleet had been broken and forced to flee, and even his personal revenge against the Jedi twins had come to nothing. He considered tearing the gnullith from his face and dying along with the brave warriors he had led to destruction.

But then he recalled that Jaina and her comrades were near. If they had moved while he was unconscious, then his revenge would still be thwarted, but there had been no reason for them to move-Jaina was still probably at the head of the vertical shaft just overhead. Animated by sudden hope, he clutched his baton of rank and worked his way to the top of the pile of corpses, where he gathered a stock of weapons. His baton and the amphistaffs were all dead, but had frozen into useful positions.

Thud and razor bugs were no more than rocks. But the blorash jelly was in suspended animation and would live long enough when triggered to do what he intended. When Tsavong Lah had prepared his a.r.s.enal, he returned to the corpses, draping enough arms and legs over himself to remain inconspicuous.

It was a pity that it wouldn't be Jacen Solo he confronted at the end. But he comforted himself with the thought that to kill Jaina would be to hurt Jacen-to give him a lifelong sorrow that might be more damaging than if Jacen himself were killed.

Cold triumph sang through his nerves as he began to detect the powerful lights of the loadlifters approaching down the tunnel. He narrowed his eyes, keeping his focus on the vertical shaft just a few meters over his head.

Soon he would strike, and take his vengeance.

Jaina twisted as she drew her lightsaber, intending to spin away from any attacker, but her feet had somehow gotten stuck to the mineshaft floor, and instead of spinning she sprawled to one side-luckily, because at that moment Tsavong Lah hurled his baton of rank like a spear.

The baton missed Jaina entirely and impaled Lowbacca, piercing him clean through the shoulder. The Wookiee roared and wobbled-like Jaina, blorash jelly had pinned him to the floor-and he fell into Tesar, who was in the act of drawing his blaster.

Little jets of air began to spurt from Lowbacca's wounds, crystallizing immediately in the vacuum and drifting to the floor as glittering snow.

Half deafened by the Wookiee roar she heard over her headset, Jaina hauled herself upright, aided by muscle and low gravity, her lightsaber glowing a soft violet off the cavern walls. Tsavong Lah seized an amphistaff from the weapons he'd strewn nearby and slashed the weapon at Jaina's head.

Jaina was frozen to the floor by blorash jelly, and Tsavong Lah was behind her. Her helmet cut oft" her peripheral vision, and the only way she knew she was being attacked was that she saw Tsavong Lah's madly dancing shadow cast by the powerful lights of the load-lifters. She dropped the point of her lightsaber behind her back to guard against Tsavong Lah's swing, and the impact almost wrenched her arm out of its socket.

Her heart thundered in her cars. She twisted as far to her right as possible in order to see her attacker and managed to parry the next furious series of strikes. Tsavong Lah shifted to her left, and Jaina twisted toward him and swung her lightsaber in a sweeping parry from high to low to catch any possible strike. Again the impact was ma.s.sive, and nearly tore the weapon from her grasp. The warrior kept chopping at her, the amphistaff held in both hands, and she parried furiously. She had no chance to counterattack, and the impacts were numbing her arm. If something didn't happen soon, her weapon would be knocked from her hand.

The fight in the vacuum was in utter silence. Jaina could hear only her own rasping breath and the throbbing of her heart, and then the silence was broken, over the comm, by Lowbacca's bellow as Tesar yanked the baton out of his shoulder.

"It'z Tsavong Lah!" Jaina was startled by Tesar's words coming through her helmet phones. The warmaster's face was well known in the New Republic.

"Shoot him!" Jaina said. She didn't much care who he was; she only wanted him dead and her friends safe.

Tesar obliged by firing at the warmaster, the brilliant blaster bolts glancing off the rock walls, but the Yuuzhan Vong danced to Jaina's right again to put Jaina between himself and Tesar's blaster.

"This one must patch up Lowie!" Tesar said. "He'z losing air!

You've got to hold off the Vong!"

"Thanks," Jaina muttered. She twisted to the right again, turning the movement into a cut. She chopped a chunk oat of the frozen amphistaff, and Tsavong Lah stepped out of range to pick up another weapon. When he came on again he lunged rather than slashed, and Jaina was able to slide her blade into a circular parry and bind. But in her twisted position she lacked the leverage of wrist and arm to force the disarm that followed the bind; instead her blade grated on the amphistaff and locked.

Only a meter away she could see Tsavong Lah's silent snarl of triumph. He kicked and drove his heel into Jaina's thigh.

An overwhelming jolt of pain shot through her thigh and knee. With a cry she lost her grip on her lightsaber and pitched forward.

In front of her Lowbacca crouched before Tesar, both nailed to the ground by blorash jelly. Lowie's hand pressed on his shoulder, trying to hold in his air, while Tesar worked frantically to apply a patch to the wound on the Wookiee's back.

Jaina s.n.a.t.c.hed Lowie's lightsaber from his belt and triggered it as she pulled herself to her feet. Tsavong Lah had cleared Jaina's lightsaber from his weapon and lunged forward again, and his eyes widened in surprise as Jaina slashed two clawed toes from the radank leg he had implanted as an arm.

The warmaster stepped back as dark blood oozed from the wound and fell with a graceful lack of haste to the floor. Jaina kept the lightsaber on guard, pointed at his face. He glared at her, red murder glowing in his eyes.

"How's Streak?" she asked.

"He'z pa.s.sed out. This one has patched the exit wound, but the wound at the front iz still venting."

Jaina watched Tsavong Lah take a grip on his weapon and dig his feet into the ground.

"Hurry," she said, "I think I just made him mad."

Tsavong Lah charged, the amphistaff a blur. He attacked to Jaina's right side, drawing her lightsaber out of line, then shifted to a vicious overhead cut coming in from the left. Jaina managed to block in time, but the impact bent her far over, the air going from her lungs in a whuff.

Her head low, she could sec the soft violet radiance of her own lightsaber lying on the floor past the war-master's legs.

She sliced madly at the amphistaff as she straightened again, engaging the furious warrior in a long series of attacks and parries.

And then Jaina reached out with the force, picked up her lightsaber from the ground behind Tsavong Lah, and drove the violet blade point-first through his throat.

The warmaster fell. Jaina didn't spare him another glance, but turned to Tesar and Lowbacca. Tesar was just finishing the patch on the front of Lowie's vac suit. She could see the suit begin to reinflate, the Wookiee's muzzle snarling open as he drew in a breath.

Tesar looked up at her. "The suit is patched. But the shoulder is not."

"Force-meld," Jaina gasped. "Tell Uncle Luke we need another MD droid. And blood to replace what Lowie's lost."

"That is wise."

Tesar straightened, then looked down at his feet. He tried to move one foot, and the blorash jelly shattered like fine gla.s.s.

Apparently it didn't deal with vacuum well.

"'Now we can move," Jaina said. "Great timing, as usual."

Chapter 27.

Five days after the Battle of Ebaq, Luke Skywalker met with Gal Omas. Cal had spent the weeks prior to the battle in isolation on the Super Star Destroyer Guardian, cruising safely between the stars. Now Guardian had joined Kre'fey's fleet at Kashyyyk.

"My heart was in my mouth," Cal said. "I was sitting there watching the battle and-I wanted to do something. I wanted to give an order!"

"Thank you for your restraint." Luke smiled. "That's been one of our problems-too many voices giving orders."

"Don't I know it." Gal frowned. "Will you sit?"

The Star Destroyer possessed an admiral's lounge that seemed half the size of a hoverbail field, filled with tasteful furniture and scented by the blossoms the ship's gardener cultivated and set in beautiful vases.

Cal and Luke sat in plush armchairs, and Gal rang for a steward to bring drinks.

"I've been thinking about the government and how to fix it," Cal said. "The war's sense of urgency has resulted in unity right now, but once the Senate decides we're going to win, they're going to want to figure out how to get their hands on the spoils."

Luke nodded. "What's your solution?"

"Persuade the worlds to elect more responsible Senators?" Cal suggested weakly, and then laughed at his own absurdity.

"You've got other ideas."

Cal nodded. "Confine the Senate to its proper sphere, for one thing. It should legislate and supervise, not try to run the administration from day to day. A truly independent judiciary would curb their more ambitious maneuvers. A new federalism that properly defines the boundaries between the Senate and the regimes on the various planets."

"You're talking a new const.i.tution."

Cal gave a tight-lipped little smile. "I'm even thinking of names.

federal Galactic Republic. Galactic Federation of Free Alliances." He frowned. "Do you think it's possible?"

"I think a Chief of State who's just won a war against an implacable enemy might have a lot of currency with the Senate and the people."

Cal's smile faded. "Guess I'd better get busy and win it, then."

Which brought them to the point of the meeting. Luke looked at Cal and said, "Win it with Alpha Red?"

Cal's look turned grim. "No," he said. "Not now. It's a last resort only."

Luke nodded. "Thank you, sir."

Luke was able to a.s.sure Jacen that Alpha Red had been put on hold as soon as he and his nephew could find time to be alone. Jacen had been rescued mere hours after the end of the battle, but he had spent the intervening time with his parents, and Luke had been too busy to question him.

Now Jacen had returned to his quarters on Ralroost, a ship filled with the sound of clattering pneumatic cutters and hissing welders, all busy repairing battle damage. Jacen seemed rested and fit-he had put on weight since his escape from the Yuuzhan Vong, and his eyes were bright and his short beard neatly trimmed.

"But Alpha Red will still exist," Jacen said. He had courteously given Luke his only chair and sat cross-legged on his narrow bunk.

"We can't put the knowledge back in its box," Luke said.

Jacen shook his head, frowned down at the floor. "Insufficient experience of depravity," he murmured.

"Beg pardon?"