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By Root 1479 0

turned heads—was half perched on the com-scan integrator console of the Soothfast’s cramped bridge, one high-booted leg extended to the floor. His captive audience, slouched at sundry duty stations, were the half dozen who made up the light cruiser’s bridge crew. The stations chirped and chimed intermittently, and the ship’s Damorian power plant thrummed. The sloping viewports of the ingot-shaped vessel looked out on cloud-blanketed Exodo II and its poor excuse for a moon, and some light-years distant, the luminous dust clouds of the Spangled Veil Nebula.

“He’s stationed aboard the Corbantis, out of Durren Orbital, when the ship’s tasked to investigate reports of a pirate attack on Ampliquen. Actually, nobody knew for sure whether it was pirates or forces from Budpock violating a truce accord, but in fact the whole thing turned out to be a ruse engineered by Loronar Corp, a contingent of Imperials, and a guy named Ashgad, who was trying to spread a plague through this entire sector.”

“The Death Seed plague,” the young female Sullustan at the navicomputer said.

“Give the lady a glitterstim spliff,” Graff said good-naturedly. “She knows her history. Anyway, the Corbantis never makes it to Ampliquen. It’s quilled by a flock of Loronar’s smart missiles and left for dead in an ice chasm on Damonite Yors-B—not too far from here as the mynock flies. But then along comes Han Solo and his Wookiee pal—”

“Who just happened to be in the neighborhood?” the communications officer asked.

“Actually they were searching for Chief of State Leia Organa Solo, who’d gone missing, but that’s beside the point.” Graff rested his elbow on a deactivated R series droid fastened to the bulkhead. “Solo and the Wookiee investigate the Corbantis and find seventeen severely rad-burned survivors—one of which was my father—and they take them to the sector medical facility at Bagsho on Nim Drovis. At the time the place was being run by some well-known Ho’Din physician—I can’t remember his name, Oolups or Ooploss, something like that—and Ooploss does everything he can for his patients. The problem was that the med facility was so overcrowded that some of the survivors had to be relocated to bacta wards in the annex. And what do you think happens?”

“They come down with the Death Seed plague,” the navigator ventured.

Graff nodded. “They come down with the Death Seed plague. Which just goes to show you that even when you figure you’ve cheated the odds, you’re still a statistic waiting to happen.”

“And now here you are, all these years later,” the navigator said, “right back where your father was, making local space safe for Drovis’s zwil packers.”

“Zwil?” the Twi’lek enlisted-rating at the threat-assessment station said.

“Some sort of narcotic,” Graff said.

The navigator’s recurved mouth quirked a smile. “For those with membrane-lined breathing tubes wide enough to—”

“Captain,” the comm officer interrupted. “Durren reports that their hyperspace orbiter has picked up a Cronau radiation event in our sector. Confidence is high that a large ship has reverted to realspace. Interrogators are awaiting a telesponder return.”

Graff leapt to his feet and hurried to his swivel-mounted chair. “Do we have visual contact?”

“Not yet, sir. The event is well outside our sensor range.”

Graff turned to the comsec officer. “Scramble Gauntlet squadron and go to general quarters.”

Sirens blared throughout the ship, and garnet light began to suffuse the bridge.

The comsec officer looked over his shoulder at Graff. “Sir, forward tech station reports countermeasures enabled, shields up and fully charged.”

“Data on the event coming in,” the enlisted-rating said. “Ship is an unknown quantity. Radar and laser-imaging computers are compiling a portrait.”

Graff swung to face the holo-imager, where the ghostly likeness of an enormous, faceted polyhedron, black as onyx, was already taking shape.

“Yuuzhan Vong?”

“Unknown, sir,” the enlisted-rating said. “It doesn’t match anything in our data banks.”

“Move us out of stationary orbit.”

“Sir, drive profiles of the intruder