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Tarth continued, “But where are you going to begin your search? It’s a big forest … and the Skywalkers never checked in by comm.”

Leia pointed. “North. They’re somewhere north.”

“Ah. Well, that’s not exact, but at least it’s an answer.”

GALACTIC EMPIRE EMBASSY COMPLEX, CORUSCANT

THE DOOR SLID SHUT BEHIND JAGGED FEL, SEALING THE GALACTIC Empire’s Head of State into his embassy quarters, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

Alone. After a day of negotiations with representatives of the Galactic Alliance, appearances at public events, carefully managed interviews with the press, hypercomm exchanges with ministers and functionaries back home in what most people referred to as the Imperial Remnant, he could use some time alone. It was almost as relaxing, as energizing, as time with Jaina … but sadly, they could not spend every waking hour together.

He tugged at his dress uniform, popping the seal of the tunic all down the right side of his chest, and felt trapped heat ebb away from him. It was also good not to be in perfect form for the holocams. A well-muscled man of just under average height, he knew he was good looking; the press here and back home often said so. His dark hair and close-trimmed mustache and beard helped give him a brooding look, though he seldom brooded. A lock of white hair emerging at his hairline, just where he’d picked up a scar in years past, gave him a touch of distinction. His choice of dark, militaristic dress clothes added to the impression of a vital leader with valuable wartime experience.

But it was all for show. He mostly wanted to be in a pilot’s jumpsuit, flying against an enemy he could shoot. Sadly, that was no longer his life.

He stood there for a moment, eyes closed, breathing slowly to settle and center himself, and reminded himself of the biggest single word in his life: duty.

His sense of duty, instilled in him by his father and every facet of the Chiss society in which he’d grown to adulthood, was with him always, but it was sometimes so devoid of a sense of accomplishment, of any sense of reward, that he felt hollow.

He was the most powerful individual in the Galactic Empire, and yet so often he merely … negotiated, taking, in turn, hundreds of people and trying to persuade each one to tilt his own individual balance a little away from self-interest and a little toward the needs of the Empire. It was often like trying to herd hundreds of greased mouse droids, each one programmed by a different maladjusted child. And at the end of the typical day, he usually felt as accomplished and successful as if he had, in fact, spent hours wallowing with those greased mouse droids.

He heaved a sigh, expelling the last of the day’s frustrations, and moved through his quarters—through the receiving room with its comfortable furniture, then into the antechamber that gave access to most of the rooms of his suite. He bypassed the door into his bedchamber and moved on to a smaller, narrower portal, one that only his voice could open. He addressed the hidden voice sensor at the top of the door. “Nek and nek.”

The door slid up, revealing a small chamber almost fully occupied by a black, ball-shaped apparatus the height of a human male: a starfighter simulator. A ladder was affixed to the side facing the door, and it led to an open hatch on top. Energy restored, Jag trotted up the ladder, his heels clanging on its durasteel steps, and dropped through the hatch into the pilot’s chair beneath.

This simulator was able to duplicate any model of TIE starfighter or similar craft produced since the original TIE fighter, but its default setting was one of Jag’s favorites, the Chiss clawcraft, and as he settled in place the front screens lit up, arranging their view into an accurate simulation of the clawcraft’s forward viewports.

“We’ll start with a mixed-squadron attack, give me sixty percent Y-wings, twenty percent X’s, twenty percent A’s …” Jag strapped on the helmet and reached for the face mask. “Range of pilot skills