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It was a disembodied eye with double—well, wings on each side. There was no other word to describe them. Membranes stretched between jointed fingers of vanes like webbing. The dull amber surface seemed covered in a tracery of veins. For a brief moment Jacen thought it was precisely that, an organic ship—a living vessel and ecosystem in its own right, the kind that only the hated Yuuzhan Vong invaders had created. But it was somehow too regular, too constructed. Clustered spires of spiked projections rose from the hull like a compass, giving it a stylized crosslike appearance.

Somewhere in his mind, Lumiya had become very alert and still.

“I knew the Vong well,” said Jacen. “And that’s not quite their style.”

The audio link made a fizzing sound and then popped into life.

“This is Ben Skywalker. Anakin Solo, this is Ben Skywalker of the Galactic Alliance Guard. Hold your fire…please.”

There was a collective sigh of amused relief on the bridge. Jacen thought that the fewer personnel who saw the ship—and the sooner it docked in the hangar to be hidden from curious eyes with sheeting—the better.

“You’re alone, Skywalker?” Technically, Ben was a junior lieutenant, but Skywalker would do: Ben wouldn’t, not now that he had the duties of a grown man. “No passengers?”

“Only the ship…sir.”

“Permission to dock.” Jacen glanced around at the bridge crew and nodded to Tebut. “Kill the visual feed. Treat this craft as classified. Nobody discusses it, nobody saw it, and we never took it onboard. Understood?”

“Yes, sir. I’ll clear all personnel from hangar deck area six. Just routine safety procedure.” Tebut was just like Captain Shevu and Corporal Lekauf: utterly reliable.

“Good thinking,” Jacen said. “I’ll see Skywalker safely docked. Give me access to the bay hatches.”

Jacen made his way down to the deck, resisting the urge to break into a run as he took the shortest route through passages and down durasteel ladders into the lower section of the hull, well away from the busy starfighter hangars. Droids and crew going about their duty seemed surprised to see him. When he reached area six, the speckled void of space was visible through the gaping hatch that normally admitted supply shuttles; and the reflection he caught sight of in the transparisteel airlock barrier was that of a man slightly disheveled from anxious haste. He needed a haircut.

He could also sense Lumiya.

“So what brings you down here?” he asked, and deactivated the deck security holocam. “Hero’s homecoming?”

She emerged from the shadow of an engineering access shaft, face half-veiled. Her eyes betrayed a little fatigue: the faintest of blue circles ringed them. The fight with Luke must have taken it out of her.

“The ship,” she said. “Look.”

A veined sphere ten meters across filled the aperture of the hatch, its winglike panels folded back. It hovered silently for a moment and then settled gently in the center of the deck. The hatch doors closed behind it. It was a few moments before the hangar repressurized and an opening appeared in the sphere’s casing to eject a ramp.

“Ben did very well to pilot it,” Lumiya said.

“He did well to locate me.”

She melted back into the shadow, but Jacen knew she was still there watching as he walked up to the ramp. Ben emerged from the opening in grubby civilian clothing. He didn’t look pleased with himself: if anything, he looked wary and sullen, as if expecting trouble. He also looked suddenly older.

Jacen reached out and squeezed his cousin’s shoulder, feeling suppressed energy in him. “Well, you certainly know how to make an entrance, Ben. Where did you get this?”

“Hi Jacen.” Ben reached into his tunic and when he withdrew his hand, a silver chain dangled from his fist: the Amulet of Kalara. It exuded dark energy almost like a pungent perfume that clung and wouldn’t go away. “You asked me to get this, and I did.”

Jacen held out his hand. Ben placed the gem-inlaid Amulet in his palm, coiling the chain on top of it. Physically,