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“Sometimes the simple answers are best,” Jacen agreed, and allowed himself to be turned toward the door.

But inside, worry tried to gnaw at him. Ben had faltered or died in eight out of ten of the simulations they’d run, suggesting that he should not, after all, be along on this mission…but Jacen’s own sense of the future, day after day, told him that the boy would be crucial to its success, if success were to be found at all. Perhaps both outcomes were correct. Perhaps the mission would succeed, but only if Ben fell during its accomplishment.

If that were so, how would Jacen face Luke?

“So what’s it like to be a spy?” Ben asked.

Jacen murmured, “Doctor Seyah is not a spy, Ben. Be nice.”

“Oh, of course I’m a spy. Scientist and spy. And it’s very nice. I get to study ancient technology and learn how the universe works. And every so often, I get to go on vacation to learn how to plant the newest listening comlinks, to subvert or seduce enemy spies, to use the latest blasters and fly the latest airspeeders—”

“Have you ever broken anyone’s neck?”

“Well, yes. But it was before I was technically a spy…”

Across a span of days, Han and Leia put together facts, numbers, disappearances, reappearances, ship movements, personnel reassignments, things said, and things not said into a complex computer projection, carefully maintained—though scarcely understood—by C-3PO.

Fact: elements of the Galactic Alliance Second Fleet were being diverted from their missions of record. As an example, the Mon Cal heavy carrier Blue Diver was supposed to be heading out to the Tingel Arm of the galaxy on an annual fleet mission to retrace the Yuuzhan Vong’s entry route into the galaxy in order to spot any lingering manifestations of their passage. Yet when it had reprovisioned, it had not taken on the sort of provisions appropriate to a months-long solo mission.

Fact: communications between Coruscant and Corellia continued to be problematic, in a fashion suggesting that comm traffic was being heavily monitored and analyzed—but no anticipated boycotts or economic sanctions had been put in place against the increasingly independent system.

Fact: civilian experts on Corellian government, military, and economics were increasingly unavailable. None had technically disappeared; all were “on vacation,” on leave of absence, on recent intergallactic assignment. The same was not true of experts on other worlds that had united with Corellia in agitating against the GA—Commenor or Fondor, for instance.

Fact: Corellian corporate properties belonging to Pefederan Lloyn, chair of the GA Finance Council, had recently been sold or traded in kind for properties in the Kuat system. In theory, because of the active role she played in GA government finances, Lloyn was not exerting any direct control over her business holdings, having assigned that control to business officers for the duration of her government service…but Han Solo put no faith in theories heavily involving the integrity of government officials.

These were only a representative sampling of the data Han and Leia found and loaded into C-3PO’s new analysis routine. But all the facts supported Han’s growing conviction that something very bad was about to happen in the planetary system where he’d grown up. His conviction wasn’t eased when C-3PO, during one of their analysis sessions in the Solos’ living chamber, said, “To all appearances, Corellia is about to experience a—a pasting, I believe the term is.”

Han snorted, an irritated noise that caused the protocol droid to lean back, away from him. “Does your newfound analytical skill give you any idea as to exactly what form this pasting is going to take?”

“Oh, no, sir. I’d have to be loaded with extensive military planning applications, not to mention extensive databases, in order to offer you a useful prediction on that matter. Which would, of course, interfere with my primary function as a protocol droid. Why, the memory demands alone would force me to remove millions of language translators and inflection interpreters. That would