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“Bad enough,” Leia said as she produced the hold-out. In the faint light that spilled out into the tunnel, she could see wave after wave of the rock creatures crowding toward the cavern. “Time to fight.”

Han turned, blaster ready. “I don’t think we’re getting out of this one.”

“Trust in the Force, Han.”

“You trust the Force,” he said. “I’ll trust my blaster.”

Leia frowned down at the hold-out’s power indicator. “The Force never runs out of ammo.”

“No? Then how come it’s not shooting?”

“What happened to never tell me the odds?”

“That’s for when there are odds. When you fall off a cliff, what are the odds you’ll hit the ground?”

“Depends,” she said. “How close are you and the Falcon?”

“Very funny.”

Han’s comlink crackled. He grabbed it and shouted, “Yeah, come in! Come in! We’re in a little trouble here. Do you copy? Do you copy?” but the comlink replied only with a burst of static.

He shook it one more time, then made a face and jammed it back in his pocket. “Had me going there for a second. Come on. If we can hold the doorway, we’ll slow ’em down, anyway.”

But as they moved toward the cavern’s mouth, the creatures started melting out of the walls.

IN THE DEEP GLOOM OF HIS LIFE-SUPPORT CHAMBER, Cronal withdrew his consciousness from the realm of Darksight, and found himself well pleased. Anyone unfamiliar with the true power of Darksight might have been astonished to find that Skywalker indeed had a sibling who had never trained as a Jedi; this hypothetical anyone would no doubt have been amazed to discover that this sibling had—seemingly of her own accord—presented herself precisely where Cronal needed her to be exactly when he needed her to be there. For Cronal, this was only what he had learned to expect. Left to its own devices, the galaxy and everything in it—from the stars themselves to the tiniest virus—served the Dark.

At least up until some blasted meddler started tricking around with the Force, upsetting the natural order of things.

This was the real problem with Jedi: the Force. Their whole concept of the Force. Always prattling about life and light and justice, as if those silly words actually meant something. He would have found those Jedi fools entirely humorous were it not for their inexplicable ability to occasionally actually interfere with the Way of the Dark.

Palpatine had done a fair job of thinning the Force-user herd, and Skywalker himself had nearly finished the job when he’d tricked Vader and the Emperor into killing each other—because, after all, the Sith could be as troublesome as Jedi if they set their minds to it. And then that Skywalker boy himself had already been more trouble than he was worth.

This problem, however, was on the verge of solving itself, as all such problems were wont to do, when one truly adhered to the Way. He didn’t need the Skywalker Jedi anymore; his sister would be an even better fit—not only had she no actual Force skills to defend her from his dominance, she also had tremendous political potential. Hero of Endor? Sole survivor of the last royal family of Alderaan?

The only difficulty he had left was to retrieve the Skywalker girl from the wild Melters and get her Darkening under way, which task was decidedly complicated by the fact that all his best Pawns were lying dead on the floor of the Election Center. Yet even this difficulty turned out to be another example of how the Dark anticipated and provided for the every need of its most assiduous servant.

He still had the prototype, the test subject upon whom he had experimented to perfect the Darkening process. This subject hadn’t been entirely analogous to Skywalker—his connection to the Force, though astonishingly powerful, was innately of a far darker shade than the boy’s, not to mention that he had never received Jedi training. Or any training, really, which was probably why Cronal had failed to anticipate just how large an obstacle Skywalker’s training would prove to be. He was, however, enormous and physically powerful, and his very arteries pulsed