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Jaina was different, too, somehow at ease. She did not burn any less brightly for the loss of her brothers, she did not fight any less fiercely against the Yuuzhan Vong, but she was in balance, no longer leaning toward the dark side. She smiled easily and often.

His family, recently torn apart and flung in all directions, not yet reassembled, was healing.

It was the biotics building’s mess hall, but was not being used for that purpose now, and would never be used for that purpose again. Its tables were all arrayed with chairs only on one side so they could face the head of the room, the seats occupied by General Wedge Antilles, Colonel Tycho Celchu, and Luke Skywalker. Now those tables were filled with divisional heads, squadron commanders, ship captains, spies, Jedi.

“The Starlancer project,” Wedge said, “is a laser-based superweapon roughly analogous to a Death Star main gun, with two important differences. The first difference is that it distorts space and time to accelerate its destructive force through hyperspace, allowing it to be used as a first-strike weapon against enemy star systems light-years away.” Muttering from those who were not in on the Starlancer secret filled the air, but could not compete with distant detonations—the Yuuzhan Vong bombardment was now nearly continuous, the New Republic forces not numerous or rested enough to beat it back as in weeks past. Even now, squadrons of tired pilots were defending the biotics facility from that pounding, but could not defend it completely.

Wedge pointed to an area of empty air and a hologram image filled it. It was a trifling bit of sleight of hand, Tycho standing by to activate the holoprojector at the right moment, but there was, Wedge thought, a certain amount of dash to it. And he could see Iella at the back of the room, smiling at his display.

The hologram showed star-filled space. Then four irregular vehicles zoomed into view. Three were identical; they looked like Y-wing cockpits merged to the join of sixty-degree angles made of wide pipe, with a third pipe splitting the angle into two thirty-degree angles. The fourth vehicle was similar, but had three pipes radiating from a central hub at the cockpit’s stern. A fourth pipe emerged from the hub at a ninety-degree angle to the plane they suggested.

In the image, the three identical vehicles separated to form the points of an imaginary triangle. The fourth took up position at the center of the formation.

“This is not to scale,” Wedge continued. “It’s an animation. These vehicles separate to distances of several light-seconds. Then they go through their activation sequence.” In the display, light flared from the outer two pipes on each of the identical vehicles. The light beams streaked from one vehicle to the next, joining them together as a triangle of light. Then, from each of the three vehicles, the central pipe fired, its light hitting the central vehicle. Finally, the fourth pipe of the central vehicle fired. Its laser beam, brighter than all the others, leapt forth into space … and disappeared.

“The Starlancer weapon uses a giant lambent crystal, a Yuuzhan Vong–engineered living crystal, to focus this power and perform the hyperacceleration I spoke of. And now it’s ready for its final use.

“Oh, the second point of difference between this weapon and the Death Star main gun is this: the Starlancer beam doesn’t work. It’s a fake.”

The murmurs rose. Wedge saw Luke grin.

Wedge raised his voice to carry over the babble, to quiet it. “The purpose of the Starlancer project is to dictate exactly when the Yuuzhan Vong in this system begin their all-out push against us. They ‘know’ that the weapon threatens them; they have the example of Anakin Solo’s lambent-based lightsaber to compare it to, and to be offended by. They ‘know’ that we’ve appropriated their technology, and this galls them. They ‘know’ that once it’s ready to fly, we can destroy their worldship in orbit around Coruscant; we faked up a low-power