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“And, to answer your question,” he said, “no, I didn’t have the faintest idea what I was doing.” He chuckled briefly, shook his head, and vanished into the corridor.

Kenth Hamner did indeed have a long face. He also had a firm handshake, and an office so spare it might have been a storeroom. The view was interesting, though. His window looked down upon a landscape of bloodred and black swirled together, laced over with silver coils and meanders of tide creeks and pools. Beyond that, jagged black mountains sawed at a sky the same metallic color as the water.

Land was scarce on Mon Calamari, but often dramatic.

“Salts,” Hamner said, noticing her interest. “When this island was forming, there was a lot of volcanic activity—and geysers the size of volcanoes. Those deposits are millions of years old.”

Tahiri nodded, preoccupied. What would the old Tahiri have thought of this view? Or Riina? She found it beautiful, but where did beauty come from? Not from the Force, because the Yuuzhan Vong didn’t know the Force, and yet had concepts of beautiful and ugly.

It occurred to Tahiri that she had seen many things she thought of as beautiful since her integration, but nothing she considered truly ugly. Was that strange? Probably. But maybe ugly was a smaller concept than beautiful, and the overlapping tastes of her dual origin had virtually canceled it out.

Kenth had turned his attention to Han and Leia, so she continued her regard of the landscape.

“It’s going to be a big push,” Kenth was saying. “Exactly how big I’m not at liberty to say.”

“So soon after Fondor?” Han asked.

“The Yuuzhan Vong are off balance. It’s a good time.”

“Yeah,” Han said doubtfully, “they’re trying to defend too many worlds with too few forces. I hope the Alliance isn’t about to make the same mistake.”

“Don’t worry. This goal is doable.”

“It’s not an attack on Coruscant itself?” Leia asked.

“Nothing so ambitious,” Kenth said.

Tahiri felt Leia’s relief in the Force, and Han’s, too. An attack on Yuuzhan’tar would exact a horrific cost in ships and personnel, and whatever was going on at the moment, Twin Suns—and Jaina—were sure to be in the thick of it. After her “vacation” from the military, Jaina had insisted on rejoining the fight. Tahiri had heard from her only once since she left, right after the Battle of Fondor.

She missed Jaina. Han and Leia’s relief was her own.

“Well, looks like the rest of the gang is here,” a new voice interposed.

Tahiri spun from the window. A shortish, neatly goateed man stood there.

“Corran!”

“In the aging flesh,” he said. “It’s nice to meet you, Tahiri.”

The surge of joy she’d felt at seeing the former CorSec officer faded a little at the odd turn of phrase. So he knew she had changed, of course—and he had that guarded look in his eyes. That was Corran—suspicion was as natural a part of him as it was her. Still, it felt bad.

He’s wondering if I’m friend or foe, she realized. That felt worse.

“I do remember you, Corran,” she said, trying not to let the hurt and anger show in her voice. “I’m just happy you’re still talking to me after the mess I got you into at Eriadu.” She hoped the shared reference would set him more at ease.

“There was plenty of blame to go around,” Corran said. “Anyway, I turned out okay. The Givin have written a poetic theorem about you, did you know that?”

“I shudder to think what that even means,” Tahiri said.

Hamner cleared his throat. “I hate to break up the reunion, but—”

“Yeah,” Han said. “What’s this about, exactly?”

Hamner set something on the desk.

Tahiri recognized it immediately. “A Yuuzhan Vong qahsa,” she said.

Hamner nodded, and stroked the cilia-covered knobs in the back. A face suddenly extruded from the front, a Yuuzhan Vong visage in miniature. Though the detail wasn’t that of a holograph, it was still clear that the face was horribly disfigured—and not in the way the Yuuzhan Vong preferred.

“A Shamed One,” she murmured.

“We got this from a Yuuzhan Vong courier two days ago,” he said.

“Intercepted?” Corran asked.

“No,” Hamner replied. “It was sent to us.”