• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

“They might listen to me,” she allowed.

“Or your mother.”

“What do you need, Kyp?” Jaina asked wearily.

He looked at her as if for the first time. “It can wait a few hours,” he said. “Why don’t you get cleaned up? We sank an old cargo tank to use as a warm room. There’s a hot tub of water calling your name.”

“That sounds really, really good,” Jaina said. “That’s not a proposition I’m prepared to refuse, anyway.”

The rogue Jedi’s eyes twinkled mischievously. “When you’re done, we’ll discuss what other propositions you might find interesting.”

That did something tickly to Jaina’s stomach. She tried to ignore it.

Clean and in a change of clothes, Jaina spent half an hour limbering up, enjoying the luxury of motion. Then she rejoined Kyp in the tactical room. A few more of his Dozen—plus however many now—were in evidence. They nodded at her when she entered.

“That better?” Kyp asked.

“A lot better,” Jaina told him. “Solar diameters better. Parsecs better. So. What’s up?”

“I like that,” Kyp said. “You get to the point.” He gestured for her to take a seat.

“Like I said earlier,” he began, as she settled into the reinforced flimsiplast chair, “we’ve been mostly taking things day by day. Harassing Yuuzhan Vong convoys, providing aid to resistance movements, keeping our receivers tuned. The problem was, nothing we could ever do was enough. We were no more than ore mites, irritating the Vong. The other thing I realized was how little we really know about them. How many are there? Where do they come from? Are they still coming? So a few months ago I decided to spend some time on an extended recon. We began at the Rim, where they first entered, then visited Belkadan and Helska. It wasn’t easy, but it wasn’t as hard as I expected, either. I found a few answers. I found a lot more questions. But Sernpidal—Gavin Darklighter took Rogue Squadron to Sernpidal. After.”

Jaina stiffened.

“Right,” Kyp said. “You were with him, weren’t you? What you saw was confidential, not something for crazy Kyp Durron to know. But when people see strange things, Jaina, they talk.” He leaned forward on his elbows. “I’ve been known to accuse the New Republic and the Jedi of being slow to act, of having their priorities confused. Sometimes I’ve been right; maybe other times I’ve misstated the case. This time …”

He tapped on a holo display, and the Sernpidal system appeared. An adjustment, and a small section of it came into tight focus—a crescent of debris.

“The remains of Sernpidal.”

Jaina suddenly felt her throat closing and tears welling behind her eyes. She’d thought she had a handle on this, on Chewbacca’s death, but seeing the wreck of an entire planet, knowing somewhere in that jumble of rocks were the molecules that had once knit together into a person who had lived and loved, had held her when she was young—it stung. In some ways, Chewie had been a bigger part of her life than her own mother.

Kyp felt her grief and gave her the space of a few moments to adjust. Then he pointed to the holo.

“They did it to make ships,” he said softly. “They grow the ships as they grow all of their tools. They feed the young ones on broken planets.” He looked significantly at Jaina. “You knew this, right?”

She nodded.

“Right. Coralskippers, bigger ships, all of the things we’ve seen already. But then there’s this.”

He magnified yet again.

As they looked at the image, Kyp continued. “Gavin Darklighter saw the Yuuzhan Vong growing a ship the size of the Death Star. Why didn’t anyone think that was a serious thing?”

The … thing … portrayed in the holograph was clearly a Yuuzhan Vong ship. It had the same organic look to it, and in color and alternating textures rough and smooth was much like the larger ships Jaina had already seen. But in form it was quite different.

It spidered across the sky, a huge, multilegged monster with each leg—or arm, or whatever—curving in the same direction, so the whole thing looked like a mad sculptor’s attempt to portray a galaxy. It was beautiful and terrible,