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Leia placed her fingers on her temples to pantomime dizziness. “That was a rather abrupt change of topic.”

“Mom,” Jaina said wearily. “Just spill it.”

“All right. Prince Isolder came to see me.” She related his concerns in a few terse words.

“The Yuuzhan Vong are trying to round up all the Jedi,” Jaina reminded her. “My situation hasn’t gotten much worse than it was. Frankly, I’m more worried about you.”

“Me?” Leia looked startled, then her face cleared. “I see. You must have heard about my initial reaction to Anakin’s death. I felt him go, and something in me shattered. Without your father, I might not have found my way back. He has been a rock.”

“Like you were for him after Chewbacca died. It sounds like the two of you are even.”

Leia smiled faintly. “Depends who’s counting. Let’s get back to you.”

“Not exactly the usual graceful segue, Mom.”

“You want blunt?” Leia demanded. “Then how about this: I can’t feel you through the Force. I can sense when you’re nearby, but not much more.”

Jaina blew out a sigh. “Don’t take it personally. I’m shielding. A lot of things have happened recently that I wouldn’t share with anyone I liked, and half the people I despise.”

“That’s a lot to carry alone,” she said, gentle invitation in her tone.

The young woman shrugged.

Leia started to put a hand on her daughter’s shoulder, then thought better of it. “So. Tell me about this ship.”

Jaina looked relieved at the change of topic. “We’re just starting to figure out the Yuuzhan Vong technology. I’ve been gathering all the information I can get about the blocking device Danni Quee used over Coruscant.”

“As I understand it, the block is a transmitter of sorts that effectively scrambles the signals sent by their yammosk.”

“That’s right. The yammosk communicates mind-to-mind. It’s hard to block that. The scrambler is a device that makes it difficult for the yammosk to think. A small but extremely powerful comm unit is affixed to a projectile weapon and embedded into the hull of the ship containing the yammosk. I hear Danni’s team prepared scores of these to make sure that one of them got through the shielding singularities and managed to adhere. The comm units were designed to receive an extremely high-frequency signal, one that would set up a vibration throughout the ship and prove impossible for the yammosk to ignore.”

“And that’s how you blocked the tracking capability of this ship?”

“No, there’s an important difference,” Jaina said. “The Yuuzhan Vong ships communicate mind-to-mind with their pilots, who in turn communicate with their commanders through villips. It’s the yammosk that coordinates everything. Although the yammosk communicates through mental projection, much of the incoming information comes in other forms. The yammosk tracks individual ships by their gravitic signatures.”

“Go on,” Leia urged.

“Gravitic signatures,” Jaina repeated. “The Yuuzhan Vong space technology is based on their manipulation of gravity. Small gravitic fluctuations provide motive force. The ships not only move through the use of gravity, but shield and even navigate. It’s incredibly sophisticated, how a ship gathers information about its surroundings. And each Yuuzhan Vong ship can be identified by other ships through subtle variations in its pattern of gravitic fluctuations. I call that the gravitic signature. Since these ships are living things, I suspect that their signatures are like fingerprints, with no two alike. I haven’t had a chance to test that yet, but I will.”

“That sounds like a dangerous project.”

“Sure, but think how useful that information would be! Right now we can block their yammosk signals—at least, we can until the shapers figure out how to get around the high-frequency distraction. But consider how much more we could do if we could not only block their signals, but send them misinformation?”

“Enter the Trickster,” Leia murmured.

Jaina’s eyes turned feral. “You’ve got it.”

She regarded her daughter thoughtfully. “How do you