Jacen glanced up. "Something Vergere once said. Implying that I had much to learn."

"Vergere," Luke said, "thought knowledge was the answer to everything."

"Was she wrong?"

Luke considered the question. "I value compa.s.sion over knowledge,"

he said. "But I hope never to have to choose between the two."

"I chose compa.s.sion as well," Jacen said. "Compa.s.sion for Jaina over the knowledge that my attempt to rescue her was almost certainly useless."

Luke listened carefully to Jacen's tone for a hint of bitterness.

He didn't hear it. Jacen seemed to have accepted what had happened, accepted it somehow and dealt with it.

He reflected that Jacen was remarkable in his capacity for acceptance.

"And then Vergere chose compa.s.sion as well," Jacen went on.

"Compa.s.sion for me. And she gave her life for mine."

"She thought your life was worth saving," Luke said. "And so do I."

Jacen looked up sharply. "I hope you won't have to sacrifice yourself for me," he said.

Luke smiled. "Let's just say that's another choice I hope never to have to make."

Jacen looked away. "Vergere said the old must give way to the new."

"You're the future of the Jedi order," Luke said. "You and Jaina and Tahiri and the others. In my time, I must make way for you as well."

Jacen looked thoughtful. "In your time . . ." he said. He scratched his brown beard, then looked in annoyance at his hand and returned it to his lap. He looked at Luke. "Do you think it's possible that the issues of this war are completely different from-from your war, from the war against the Empire?"

"How do you mean?"

A repair crew of droids clattered by outside the door, and Jacen waited for their sound to fade before continuing. "Your war was about light and dark. You and my mom versus Vader and the Emperor. But this war-" He hesitated. "For all the evil they do, the enemy aren't dark, exactly-the enemy are outside the Force entirely. So to fight them we need to ... to make the Force bigger. Bigger than light and dark, bigger than human and Yuuzhan Vong . . ." He shook his head, then gave a laugh.

"I'm talking nonsense, aren't I? Make the Force bigger. The Force is already all living things."

"Perhaps it's not the Force that needs to be bigger," Luke said.

"Maybe what needs to be bigger are our ideas about the Force."

Jacen made as if to laugh again, then stopped. His face turned serious. "Bigger ideas about the Force. How do we manage that?"

Luke rose from the chair, and on his way out of the cabin put his hand on Jacen's shoulder. "If anyone can do it, Jacen," he said, "it would be you."

Jaina left Ebaq 9 eight days after the battle. The interior of the moon was still hot, but she was saved from the radiation by being carried by a loadlifter in a lead-lined container box.

She insisted on being the last one out. She had reunited after the battle with the pilots she'd sent away down the side pa.s.sage, and they'd spent the week in their oxygen tents.

In the tents there had been nothing to do but talk, play sabacc, and sleep. Occasionally the MD droid changed Lowbacca's bacta patches.

Jaina rebelled at first against this unstructured life-she was used to long days of drill, study, and instruction. She wanted to do something.

But no meaningful work was possible, and eventually the tension began to ebb and she began to relax. She joined the other Jedi in meditation, at first to help Lowie heal, and then because it became her only connection to the universe that lay beyond the tents. Through the Force and the Jedi meld, she bade farewell to her friends as they left Ebaq's system-Kre'fey's fleet had been recalled to the defense of Kashyyyk, and Bel Iblis returned to Fondor. Soon the only friendly force remaining in the system was the Smugglers' Alliance squadron led by her father, the squadron that had lost half its ships turning the enemy squadron from her.

From her. So many had died to keep her safe. Her father's friends, Vale and three other Twin Suns pilots, Vergere . . . She didn't know how to think about them now.

And so she meditated, and slowly relaxed, and opened herself to the universe. To its glories and pleasures, and its griefs and sorrows as well. Sometimes, when she was laughing with the others, she felt a wave of heartache strike her, and she had to turn away, gulping tears.

There were so many to mourn. A whole war's worth.

The final indignity came when she was carried out in the lead-lined box, like a package to be delivered to her friends. When she emerged, she was in the Millennium Falcon's cargo bay, and the room was filled with applause.

The light dazzled her eyes. She stepped out of the box and wrestled the vac suit helmet off her head. Standing before her were her parents, Jacen, the eight surviving Twin Suns pilots, Kyp Durron, and old friends like Talon Karrde, Booster Terrik, and Lando Calrissian.

They all seemed inexpressibly dear to her. Jaina went along the room and embraced them one by one. As she touched Jacen she felt the twin bond roaring in her head, the memories and comradeship and love all singing in her heart like a chorus of concern.

Her father, himself blinking back tears, reached into a pocket and held out a pair of gleaming insignia. "Admiral Kre'fey's decided to promote you," he said. "Congratulations, Lieutenant Colonel!"

"Thank you." She focused on the insignia Han wore on his civilian vest, and snapped him a salute. "Thank you, General!"

Han returned the salute with a shamefaced grin. Then Jaina turned to her mother, who stood by Han's side with her arms open, and Jaina threw herself at Leia and buried her face in her mother's neck.

This is going to be really bad for discipline, she thought.

Leia stroked her hair. "Will you take a vacation now?" she demanded.

Jaina laughed, but the tears burned in her eyes. "You know what?"

she mumbled. "Being the Sword of the Jedi really stinks."

His body twitched to remembered pain. Images of needles and knifelike claws floated through his mind. He remembered the shriek of severed nerves, the grind of bone against bone, the way blood oozed slowly from a wound.

He shivered. Why had this happened? Why? He had never harmed anyone.

He opened his eyes at a sound, and there before him was the withered one, a sneer drawn across his crooked slash of a mouth.

"Your guests have arrived, Supreme One."

At the words Shimrra felt his power flow into him, his majesty and command and presence. He sat on his spiked throne in the Hall of Confluence with its white bone pillars, and his subjects waited outside the huge doors-he could detect them there, feel the subdued fluttering of their busy minds.

Shimrra looked at the disfigured being before him. Onimi. "Let the doors open," he said.

The four doors trembled open, and the four castes and their leaders entered and filed in silence to their places. Onimi sat on the lowest step of Shimrra's dais and adopted a sullen expression.

Shimrra could sense the deep foreboding in his inferiors, the sense that the great defeat at Ebaq had been a disaster from which the Yuuzhan Vong might not recover. Cowards, he thought. These fools must be strengthened.

He rose ma.s.sively from his throne, stood before them in the flayed skin of Steng. He sent his presence out among his listeners and began to work on their emotions, to drive them into a frenzy.

"The G.o.ds test their servants!" he shouted. "They have permitted enemy treachery' to betray one of our fleets!"

One of the warriors flung himself to the ground. "Command us, Supreme One!"

"We must thank the G.o.ds for this chance to test our purity and resolve!" Shimrra roared. "Let the sacrifices be doubled! Let heretics be sought and punished! Let prayers rise to the G.o.ds from every temple!"

"So shall it be!" High Priest Jakan was on his feet, shaking a fist.

"Let the warriors redouble their vigilance! Any step backward is a betrayal! Let the commanders plan new offensives and new victories! Let them spill the blood of the infidels!"

The warriors bayed their approval, raising their amphistaffs.

"The traitor Nom Anor must be found!" Shimrra proclaimed. "Let him be slaughtered and his bones ground to powder!"

Afterward, after his audience filed out, Shimrra collapsed onto his throne. Onimi rose from his crouch and gave a sneering look at the far end of the hall.

"Fools," he said. "But what choice is there but to use them?"

Shimrra made no reply. His eyes were closed.

Onimi's voice was thoughtful. "We began this war, and now we must fight on and hope for the best." He gave a little shiver. "You've betrayed and used the G.o.ds-perhaps they now betray you in return."

Shimrra said nothing.

"Yet Nen Yim may yet fill the eighth cortex," Onimi mused. "She needs time. Perhaps her resources should be increased."

Shimrra remained silent, his torn nostrils flaring with each ma.s.sive breath. Onimi c.o.c.ked his swollen, misshapen head. "Do you not find it amusing, Supreme One?" he said. "We gambled and lost. And now we must double the stakes and gamble again, with the odds against us even greater than before. Is that not cause for laughter, Lord Shimrra?"

Onimi threw his head back and laughed, a full-throated shriek of amus.e.m.e.nt that rang from the room's high ceiling.

Shimrra drew in air and laughed, a huge deep booming that rattled his throne's coral spikes.

Their laughter redoubled, treble and ba.s.s, twining among the chitin walls, the bone pillars, the arching roof. The room built like the mouth of a great carnivorous beast, a beast that devours all who enter.