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“Well, no one was going to rescue Kelbis,” Anakin pointed out.

“Including you.”

“But we might have. We had to try.”

Corran looked at them both tiredly.

“This isn’t over,” he said. “When we get back to the Errant Venture, we’re going to have this talk again, with Kam and Tionne and anyone else I think of who might be able to get a word past this youthful, idiotic self-confidence of yours. But for the moment—you say Kelbis said something about Yag’Dhul?”

“His last word,” Anakin said. “It took a lot out of him to say even that. He really wanted me to know something. I think Yag’Dhul may be in danger.”

Corran’s eyes narrowed, reflecting a sudden, plunging-stomach suspicion. “Anakin, where is this jump taking us?”

“You said Coreward,” Anakin replied innocently.

“Tell me we aren’t going to pop out in the Yag’Dhul system.”

“We aren’t going to pop out in the Yag’Dhul system,” Anakin told him.

“Good,” Corran said, relieved.

“We’re going to come out really near it, though,” Anakin added.

“Why you—” Corran held back a series of specifically Corellian words he that really wanted to use. But Tahiri was only fourteen. Would he make it through Valin’s and Jysella’s teenage years without turning to the dark side? Probably not. “How close?” he said, trying to sound not quite as irritated as he was.

“One jump. I thought you’d at least like to check it out.”

“Anakin! Supplies! We were just supposed to get supplies, not mount a search-and-rescue–recon mission!” He buried his face in his hands. “Now I understand those pitying looks Solusar was giving me before we left.”

Corran wished Mirax were here. She knew how to deal with this kind of thing. “How long before realspace?”

“Another five minutes.”

“Terrific. Now listen to me very carefully. I am the captain of this vessel. From now on you don’t even visit the ’fresher without my say-so, either of you. You will follow my orders. That means, by the way, that you do not imagine or guess at my orders, but actually wait until you hear them.”

“I was following orders,” Anakin protested. “You said to jump Coreward.”

“Don’t insult us both, Anakin. You’re better than that.”

“Yes, Captain.”

“Good.” Corran settled himself before the controls and awaited the reversion to sublight speeds.

They reentered realspace with a pockmarked asteroid nearly filling their field of vision. Corran swore and decelerated, cutting hard toward the nearest horizon of the rock. A jagged crater edge loomed, and he knew they weren’t going to make the angle. Desperately he switched on the repulsorlift.

The Lucre squealed a metallic protest as the field bounced them none too gently away from the asteroid. Corran let out his breath and killed their motion relative to the planetoid until he could get his bearings.

A good thing, too, because in the surrounding space he made out hundreds of asteroids, densely packed. It would take a good deal of care to fly out of it unscathed.

“You could have warned me about the asteroid field,” Corran told Anakin.

“I would have if there had been one,” Anakin said in a strange voice.

“It wasn’t on the charts?”

“It’s still not,” Anakin said. “Look at the sensor readings.”

Corran did, and swore again as everything snapped into focus. Aside from the cratered stone he’d nearly hit coming out of hyperspace, the rest of the objects near enough to see had the organic but all-too-familiar lines of ships grown from yorik coral.

“This is a Yuuzhan Vong fleet,” Anakin said.

SEVENTEEN

“I’ve located the Errant Venture,” Luke said. “Not far from Clak’dor. We’ll be there in a day or so.”

Mara nodded. “Good,” she said shortly.

“How are you feeling?”

Mara shot him a dirty look. “Skywalker, why do you ask questions you know the answer to? I feel overweight. My ankles feel as if I have stun cuffs permanently fastened to them. I’m always nauseated. Nobody told me I would get nauseated again. I thought that part was over early on.”

“So did I,” Luke replied. He pressed his lips together. He sensed