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Jacen was about to add something else when the Force blindsided him with agony. He must have cried out, because both of his parents looked at him at once.

“What is it, Jacen?” Leia asked.

“It’s Aunt Mara,” he replied shakily. “Something bad is happening to Aunt Mara.”

Aunt Mara! Jaina felt the pain and despair hit her like the heavy end of a hammer. She shook her head, not sure where she was. Had she blacked out?

Stars tumbled by, and her astromech chirped frantically.

Oh, right. She’d been flying into the Yuuzhan Vong superweapon, when it exploded.

Aunt Mara! The spike in the Force was fading, but the impression remained of Mara unraveling like a rotten philfiber.

Jaina balled her fists in frustration. Mara was hundreds of parsecs away, and here she was in a dead ship.

I can’t help her now, Jaina thought. Got to help myself first.

She and her astromech managed to kill the tumble, but they were still without engines. Far behind her she could make out the wink of laserfire through a cloud of gas that must be the debris of the Yuuzhan Vong weapon.

We did it!

She was drifting sunward, but was outside of the asteroid field and in no obvious or immediate danger. At least she didn’t think so until she noticed, ahead of her, a heart-shaped chunk of yorik coral. A big hunk.

After a few missed beats of her own heart, however, she saw it wasn’t under power. In fact, what it looked like more than anything was a dovin basal. Alone, unattached to a ship.

“You think it’s flotsam?” she asked the droid.

It whistled a noncommittal reply. It was too busy to care about space junk.

Curious, Jaina adjusted her sensors, and noticed something else strange. The dovin basal had a twin, about a hundred klicks away, in the same orbit. Inward, toward the primary, another pair—and another, and another. It was a sort of corridor of dovin basals stretching from the Yuuzhan Vong superweapon almost to the star in the center of the Sernpidal system.

“Oh, no,” she said. “No, Kyp, you didn’t. Not even you would …”

No, of course he would. And he had made her part of it. And she had brought in Rogue Squadron.

She wanted to throw up. If she hadn’t been in a sealed cockpit with limited room to do so, she probably would have.

The astromech informed her that it had managed to rig a new antenna. Jaina opened a channel.

“Rogue Leader, you out there?”

Static, and then Gavin Darklighter’s voice. “Jaina? Jaina, thank goodness you’re alive.”

“Copy, Rogue Leader. Can you send somebody to pick me up?”

“Absolutely. We’re finished here.”

“Colonel Darklighter, you might want to come yourself. There’s something here I think you should see.”

FORTY-THREE

Luke.

Luke awoke to his name and found Mara’s hand on his arm. Her eyes were clear, and her lips were quivering as if she were trying to speak.

“Mara,” he murmured. “Mara.” He had more to say, but he couldn’t get it out. I love you. Don’t die.

Her head inclined, very slightly. He took her hand and felt the pulse there, stronger than it had been in days, but irregular.

Now. We have to do it now.

“Do what? Mara, I don’t understand.”

Now. Her eyes closed again, and her pulse dropped away.

“No! Mara!”

When Darth Vader had suddenly realized that he had a daughter as well as a son, Luke had felt a desperation that was the palest reflection of this. He’d hurled himself at the black-armored figure that was his father, battering him with his lightsaber until he cut Vader’s arm off. In doing so Luke had taken a decisive step toward the dark side.

Now, though his body did not move, he hurled himself at Mara’s disease with the same blind, desperate fury, battering against it with the Force, trying to shatter the slippery, mutable compounds of which it was made. The electrifying strength of anguish drove him on, and the fact that he was trying to do the impossible meant nothing. He clenched his fists until the veins stood out on his arms, attacking something he couldn’t see.

That wasn