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“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.”

CHAPTER TWO

At the control shed’s other end, a shapely young Ryn female sat near the middle of a wall of mostly dark displays, cradling a child in her lap. The colony’s resident Hutt—Randa Besadii Diori—lay snoozing along the near wall. His long tan-colored tail twitched.

“Piani.” Han Solo stepped into the main room right behind Jacen. “We need a line out.”

The smile faded below Piani’s chitinous beak. Ryn were such sensitive body-language readers that she was probably closing in on what had them worried. “Outsystem?” she asked.

“Yes,” Jacen said. “Can you raise the relay repeater? We need to get a message to my sister, with Rogue Squadron.”

Piani eased her sleeping child away from her shoulder, then laid him in a padded cargo crate on the floor.

“I’ll try,” she promised. “But you know Admiral Dizzlewit. Sit down, have a bedjie.”

She motioned toward a sideboard, where several small, dark fungi steamed beside a hefty pot of caf. Bedjies were easy to raise—seed a shallow tank with spores, wait a week, and come back with a net. They were becoming standard refugee fare.

Jacen wasn’t even slightly hungry, but Han grasped one between thumb and forefinger and nibbled. Steamed, unspiced bedjies were unspeakably bland, but the Ryn matriarchs had taken to hoarding their herbs.

“Solo!” Randa awoke from his nap. He rolled over and ponderously pulled his upper body into the air. “Why are you here?”

Jacen had tried to get along with Randa. Raised as a spice merchant, sent by the Hutts to run slaves for the Yuuzhan Vong, Randa had defected at Fondor—supposedly.

“Getting a message out,” Jacen said numbly. A Jedi knows no fear, he’d been taught. Fear is of the dark side.

Fear for himself, he could thrust aside. But for Jaina? He couldn’t help being afraid for his sister. They were linked at an uncanny depth.

Still young, relatively light, and lithe enough to move under his own power, Randa slithered closer.

“What are you doing here?” Han demanded.

Randa puffed out his sloping chest. “I told you. With my parent Borga defending Nal Hutta with only half the clans’ support—and pregnant with my sibling, at that—where am I? Stranded, as shipless as one of these idiot Vors. I am willing to stand communication watch day and night.