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Is that it? he cried toward the infinite distance.

Again, Jacen perceived the words in a voice that was utterly familiar but too deep to be Luke’s. Stand firm, Jacen.

One of the Yuuzhan Vong leapt toward him. Jacen gasped and flung out both arms—

And grabbed a flimsy bedsheet. He lay on his back, on a cot under a corrugated blue synthplas roof. The room was bigger than a refugee shelter. It had to be the medical end of the dome’s hardened control shed.

“Junior,” another familiar voice drawled. “Hey, there. Glad you could join us.”

Jacen looked up into his father’s wry half smile. Worry lines crowded Han’s eyes. Behind him, the Ryn named Droma clutched and twisted his soft red and blue cap, and his long mustachios drooped. In recent months, Droma had become his dad’s … what? His friend, his assistant? Certainly not a partner or copilot, but a real presence.

The settlement’s most valuable droid, a 2-1B medical unit that Han pirated no-one-knew-where, lingered on Jacen’s other side, retracting a flexible breath mask.

“What happened?” Han looked befuddled. “Hit your head on the way down? Skinny, here—”

Droma pointed at the droid and finished Han’s sentence. “—wants to dump you into the bacta tank.” Ryn were shrewd observers, perceptive enough to lock into other people’s thought patterns and finish their sentences.

Han swung toward his friend. “Listen, bristle-face. When I want to say something, I’ll say it—”

“Jaina,” Jacen managed. The back of his skull throbbed in rhythm with his pulse. Evidently he had hit it as he fell. He almost opened his mouth to describe what he’d seen, but he hesitated. Han was already confused by Jacen’s emotional paralysis, and the way he’d begged out of the other Jedis’ rescue and fact-finding missions. As hard as Jacen had tried to pull back from Jedi concerns, the Force wouldn’t leave him alone. It was his heritage, his destiny.

And if the fate of billions rested on a balance point so narrow that one misstep could doom everyone, did he dare even mention his vision until his own path seemed clear? He’d almost gotten himself enslaved once, following a vision into danger. The Yuuzhan Vong had gone so far as to plant one of their deadly coral seeds against his cheekbone. Maybe this time, he’d been given a private warning to steer clear of some dangerous course. Would he know it when it opened up in front of him?

This vision hadn’t eased his confusion at all.

“What?” his father demanded. “What about Jaina?”

Jacen squeezed his eyes shut, refusing to trivialize the Force by using it to ease a headache. What is it, he begged the unseen Force, that you want me to do?

Or would he cause the next galactic catastrophe by trying to prevent it?

“We’ve got to contact Rogue Squadron,” Jacen blurted. “I think she’s been hurt.”

THE OLD REPUBLIC

(5,000–33 YEARS BEFORE STAR WARS: A NEW HOPE)

Long—long—ago in a galaxy far, far away … some twenty-five thousand years before Luke Skywalker destroyed the first Death Star at the Battle of Yavin in Star Wars: A New Hope … a large number of star systems and species in the center of the galaxy came together to form the Galactic Republic, governed by a Chancellor and a Senate from the capital city-world of Coruscant. As the Republic expanded via the hyperspace lanes, it absorbed new member worlds from newly discovered star systems; it also expanded its military to deal with the hostile civilizations, slavers, pirates, and gangster-species such as the slug-like Hutts that were encountered in the outward exploration. But the most vital defenders of the Republic were the Jedi Knights. Originally a reclusive order dedicated to studying the mysteries of the life energy known as the Force, the Jedi became the Republic’s guardians, charged by the Senate with keeping the peace—with wise words if possible; with lightsabers if not.

But the Jedi weren’t the only Force-users in the galaxy. An ancient civil war had pitted those Jedi who used the Force selflessly against those who allowed themselves to be ruled by their ambitions—which the Jedi warned led to the