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“Who would I tell?” she retorted. “Uncle Luke?”

He lowered his head in a slow nod, holding her gaze. “All right, then. Let’s get this done.”

Two hours later, Jaina stood behind Lowbacca, much as she had when they last parted. The Wookiee shook his head as if to clear it, then began to study the terminal as if he were just getting acquainted with the system. The time he’d spent carefully erasing all evidence of Jaina’s passing was forgotten.

She turned to the technician who stood behind them. “I need to speak with Sinsor Khal. Can you show me where I might find him?”

The woman responded to this request with the same bemused expression that had characterized her first reaction. Thanks to Kyp, she had no recollection of any previous conversation.

She gave orders through a comlink, and several armed guards came to escort Jaina to the scientist’s lair. They set a slower pace than they had the first time, however. Jaina suspected they’d be puzzled by the bruises they’d discover come morning.

Again they left her before the door. For the third time that day, Jaina let herself into the scientist’s lair.

A tall, sandy-bearded man in a red lab coat strode forward to meet her, beaming in welcome. “Lieutenant Solo! The subject is ready. Come along. We’ll get started at once.”

She followed Sinsor Khal through a seemingly random maze of tables and computer consoles to a gleaming expanse of metal, a large table surrounded by a narrow ditch that led into a drain. The captured pirate had already been strapped to the table, facedown.

Jaina fiercely willed herself not to think about the transfer, or what it had cost. As Kyp had observed, this was something of which they could never speak.

“I can’t tell you how delighted I am to finally get my hands on this new biotechnology. Let’s see what we have here.”

He moved quickly to the pirate and picked up a small laser tool. With a deft flick, he removed the coral device and dropped it into a small vial.

“We’ll run tests on the creature itself, and also on the subject. Blood tests, tissue samples, brain waves—you’ll have it all in short order.”

The scientist started work at once, apparently having forgotten her presence. Jaina stood by, watching without protest as Sinsor gathered samples and downloaded the information to his central computer.

“Interesting,” he mused, staring at the screen. “Most interesting.”

Jaina came up behind him. The computer showed several columns of numbers and a moving image that resembled a swarm of Dagobian frog tadpoles within an ovoid enclosure.

“This is a single cell, taken from the adrenal gland. See these small, mobile black dots? They are genetically related to the coral creature.”

“It spawns?”

“In a manner of speaking. Coral reefs are communities of living organisms. The Yuuzhan Vong have refined these communities, organizing them into something that functions as a single creature. Apparently the coral can reproduce, sending microscopic offspring through the bloodstream and into every cell.”

“But how does the implant communicate with these offspring?”

The scientist tapped the screen. The image disappeared, and a stream of symbols flowed. “This is the genetic sequence of the spawn found in the bloodstream. I’ll compare it to spawn taken from other parts of the subject’s body. If my assumptions prove correct, these creatures will be subtly different, depending upon their chosen location—blood, neurons, spleen, and so forth. Yet they are all part of the same organism, even when scattered. And I suspect that as they spread, they incorporate their host into what might be termed a compound organism. Any impulse sent to the central coral unit is communicated throughout the host subject. At this point, where one organism ends and the other picks up is largely a matter of philosophy.”

Jaina nodded slowly as she took this in. “If you wanted to alter one of these implants, how would you go about it?”

“We’ll examine the genetic code of these spawn, and then determine which elements occur naturally, and which