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“Access Fleet Watch,” Luke said. The newspacket of the Alliance Veterans Victory Association, Fleet Watch was usually current enough and comprehensive enough that many senior staff members at Fleet HQ kept it on their browse lists as a supplement to official sources.

“Requested source is temporarily unavailable,” the comm pad reported.

“Why?”

“Access has been voluntarily suspended by the provider. Message available.”

“Let’s hear it.”

The recording contained a familiar face and voice—that of Brigadier Bren Derlin, NRDF, Ret. Derlin and Luke had been thrown together on Hoth, where Derlin had been one of the field commanders at the Rebels’ base. Derlin was more of a steadying influence than a leader, but he was a good soldier and a quiet but likable man. Luke had not seen him again until war’s end, and since then only once, at the ceremonies when more than a hundred Hoth survivors gathered to dedicate a memorial to the many more who had fallen there.

Now Derlin was commander of the AVVA, an organization with the status of a retirees’ club but the ambition to be something more akin to a militia or the Fleet’s ready reserve. The recording began with a spiral of unit insignias surrounding the AVVA logo, and a smart salute from a uniformed Derlin.

“Thank you for your inquiry. Due to the current military situation, the AVVA board of governors has placed the membership on a status two alert. For security reasons, access to past and current volumes of Fleet Watch has been restricted to members only. Please join us in supporting the soldiers and pilots who are even now risking their lives to guard our freedom.”

“How long has that lockout been in effect?” Luke asked the comm pad.

“Nine days.”

“I wonder what happened to bring that on,” Luke said, scratching his head. “What else do you have? Show me a list.”

After another half hour, Luke had satisfied himself that he had all the information he was likely to garner from public news sources. Unfortunately, it was not enough to settle his mind.

He was more reluctant to contact Coruscant directly than he had been the last time he needed information. If a contact watch had been set up for his authorization codes, even querying the impersonal, automated sources might throw him into the middle of a conversation he didn’t want to have—with Ackbar, or Behn-Kihl-Nahm, or Han, or possibly even Leia herself.

For the question gnawing at Luke was not whether Leia wanted his help, but whether she needed it. If his presence might mean the difference between triumph and defeat, then he would go to her—as she had come to him in his darkest moment, aboard the clone Emperor’s flagship.

Leia had pulled him back from the precipice of the dark power, and joined her power to his to defeat Palpatine. If she had not been willing to sacrifice herself and the child inside her in confronting the reborn Emperor, Luke would never have broken the grip of the dark side—and the history of the intervening years would have been written with the pen of tyranny. He could not have done it alone.

But having seen not only the great strength in her heart but also the Jedi power she could summon, Luke was all the more loath to volunteer himself as a rescuer. He knew that Leia had within her extraordinary resources of will and power—resources she had of late become reluctant to draw upon. Luke thought that he was much of the reason, with both his example and his presence creating disincentives. It was important that she find that strength again.

It seemed to Luke that Leia had neglected, even abandoned, her own training, and that her training of the children had become unbalanced, with the disciplines of warrior and weapon excised as if they were dispensable. Luke had not spoken of it with her, but from what he had seen, it was almost as though Leia hoped to delay, training the children as Jedi clerics rather than as Jedi Knights—as if the path before her, the path he had followed, promised to take her somewhere she did not want