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“Do not do this, Akanah.” It was said with sadness rather than threat.

“What choice have you left me?” Closing her eyes, she threw her head back and drew a sharp breath.

The air trembled. The bodies, the ruins, began to shimmer and dissolve. Akanah let out a little cry of pain, or surprise. Standing beside her, Luke felt her anger drawing on the Force—controlling, not merging, hurling it against something he could scarcely perceive.

Then, in an eyeblink, everything before him, everything surrounding him, was transformed. The burned bodies vanished. The scorching was bleached from the cutstone, the shattered stones healed, the toppled walls and towers restored, the scarred hills painted and smoothed. The tragedy of the ruins was transformed into a glorious work in progress, filling the valley in every direction and filled with the vitality of thousands of solemnly industrious H’kig.

Akanah gazed defiantly at Wialu, whose answering look mixed gentle reproof and regret.

“My stars,” Luke breathed. “It wasn’t destroyed? You’ve been hiding this from the Yevetha—”

“Yes,” said Wialu. “Akanah must have thought this important for you to know.”

Luke shook his head in disbelief. “The Fleet memorandum called this a cult colony—they have no idea—look at what they’ve done! How long have the H’kig been here?”

“Not even fifty years,” said Wialu. “Just in the time since we arrived, we have seen it grow almost beyond belief. It is a constant wonder.”

A quartet of H’kig dragging a heavily laden sledge passed between Wialu and Luke. “They’re doing this work by hand?” he asked. “No fusion cutters, no droids?”

“That is the meaning of it—the purpose in it. The building of it is a way of giving honor. That work cannot be given to a machine,” Wialu said. “The temple embodies their vision of the universe, of the mystical essences—the immanent, the transcendent, the eternal, the conscious.”

“How long until they finish?”

“They may never finish,” she said. “It is the life’s work of a community united by the purpose that defines them.”

“Is this why you’re here?”

“Yes,” she said. “And it is why you must leave.”

“You’re protecting them. Protecting this.”

She nodded. “It became necessary.”

“How long are you prepared to keep doing it?”

“Until it is no longer necessary.” Wialu stepped closer. “Please—your ship is resting in what will be the Inner Court of the Transcendent. It is distracting the H’kig, and disrupting the work. It is time for you to go.”

“Wait,” Luke said. “The day of the attack. The bombardment, the planetary blasters—those weren’t illusions.”

“No.”

“Then what happened here?”

“As I have already said. We protected ourselves, and these people, and the others where we could. I will not say more.”

“Protected them with illusions,” Luke said. “Wialu, you know that this isn’t the only construction project under way on this planet. There’s a Yevethan colony ship in sync orbit on the other side of this planet and a colony city being built on the surface. Akanah knew that, so I’m sure you do, too. The Yevetha think this is their world now.”

“They are mistaken,” said Wialu.

“Not necessarily,” Luke said. “They claim all the stars in their sky, and all the worlds of those stars. What you were able to prevent from happening here happened on a dozen other planets where there was no Fallanassi Circle to provide a shield and deceive the Yevetha. The bodies on those worlds were real.”

“We know what happened there,” said Wialu.

“Then let me ask you what you know about what’s about to happen,” said Luke, a harder edge coming into his voice. “What the Yevetha did here has been challenged by my sister. Their claim to this planet and all the others will be contested—with force. Two opposing fleets are gathering up there—hundreds of ships, tens of thousands of soldiers. If this war comes, it will be long, brutal, and bloody. And it will come here.”

He saw that his words had reached her fears. “I have seen it coming.”

“Will you help me try to stop it?”

“We cannot allow ourselves to be used that