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One by one, the commanders answered his stare with grim acknowledgment.

“All right,” Luke said. “I want tactical readiness reports within the hour. We move in three.”

CHAPTER 3

AEONA CANTOR LAY FLAT ON THE JAGGED HILLTOP, squinting through electrobinoculars that had gone foggy, their front lenses scored by too much exposure to the clouds of windblown grit that passed for atmosphere here on Mindor. The hunks of broken lava around her masked her silhouette, and she didn’t have to worry about thermal imaging, because the rock around her was warmed by the noontime heat, and the jigsaw hunks of lava glued to her survival suit made perfect camouflage against visible-light sensors. All of which were necessary factors in her position, which was less than ten kilometers from a huge smoking volcanic dome.

The fact that this volcanic dome was huge and smoking was of no interest to her at all; she cared only about the double ring of planetary-defense turbolaser towers that surrounded it, and the gnat clouds of TIE fighters that streamed in and out of every visible cavern mouth on the mountainside.

Which was exactly how it had looked every time she’d gotten a glimpse.

She scowled, pushing a lock of burnt-orange hair off her forehead, and dialed the electrobinoculars up to a higher magnification. “I don’t get it,” she said. “Tripp, is he sure about the jammers?”

From a few meters below and behind her, a man who wore a similar outfit of lava-adorned survival suit answered with a shrug. “All I can tell you is what Boakie tells me. Subspace is clear. If we wanted, we could send a signal all the way to the Trigaskian Blur.”

“Why would Shadowspawn turn off his subspace jammers? Right after a raid. Doesn’t make sense.”

“How would I know? Better you should ask him.”

“If I ever get the chance,” she muttered through her teeth, “we’ll have other things to talk about.”

“I got something!” This shout came from farther down the hillside, within the mouth of the cave where the rest of her men waited. “Hey, Aeona! Hey, I got something!”

Aeona flattened herself into the rocks and hissed, “Tripp! Tell that idiot to keep his bloody voice down!”

“What for? It’s not like there’s anybody around to hear.”

“You’re gonna argue with me?”

“Aw, Aeona, come on—”

“The blackshells could have seeded these hills with sonic probes. There might be a ground patrol. Do you know how the Melters keep finding us? Me neither. Till we do, the next guy who speaks above a whisper gets my blaster barrel across the face.”

“Aeona—”

“And the next guy who argues with me is gonna get it up his—”

“All right, all right. Shee, relax, huh?” Tripp let himself half slide, half scramble down the hillside toward the cave.

Aeona jammed the electrobinoculars back against her face. She’d relax when she was long gone from this stinking ball of rock.

From behind her came the scrabble of boots on lava as Tripp worked his way back up the slope. “It was nothin’,” he said.

“What kind of nothing?”

Tripp waved a hand disgustedly. “A nothing kind of nothing. Just a couple pings.”

Aeona’s scowl deepened. “Pings?”

“Yeah—some kind of signal, and an echo, like a transponder response—”

“I know what a ping is,” she said through her teeth. “Where did the initializer come from?”

Tripp shrugged. “Outside the system, prob’ly. A HoloNet repeater or something.”

“And the response came from here?”

“Well, yeah. Um … how’d you know that?”

She was already backing herself out of her position. She scrambled down the slope. “Up! Everybody up!”

People in the lava-glued survival suits scrambled to their feet from all around the little cave.

“Lock and load, people.” Aeona started moving through them toward her scout bike. “I want every speeder, swoop, and skimmer in the air in five. No supplies except weapons, power cells, and medikits. Full alert.”

“Alert?” Tripp said as he scrambled after her. “What’s going on?”

“You think it’s a coincidence that after months, those jammers go down just now? Just in time to let through a transponder