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So much for there being plenty of blame to go around, Tahiri thought.

“I’ve helped betray the Yuuzhan Vong once already,” she pointed out.

“You helped betray a military commander to save yourself and your friends. Tell me—if we discovered the only way to win this war was to kill every Yuuzhan Vong, would you do it?”

“No. Neither would Luke or Jacen.”

Corran nodded and stroked his beard. “Don’t dodge. What if it really came down to them or us?”

“There is no them or us, Corran. Do you really think the Shamed Ones want this war? Do you really think that malice is built into the Yuuzhan Vong at the hereditary level?”

“It’s built into their culture.”

“Exactly. And culture can change.”

“Sometimes,” he said. “If people want it to, and work at it.”

“And that’s what this mission is all about, right? If we let this door close, we may never see another one open.”

“Now wait,” Han said. “We’ve gotten a little off track here. We never settled that Tahiri can do this.”

“Yes, we did,” Leia said. Her voice was equal parts pride and sadness, and it sent a chill up Tahiri’s spine. For an instant, looking at Han in his frustration and Leia in her acceptance, she felt a love for them so powerful it nearly made her cry.

“Thank you,” she said.

Han crossed his arms and puffed out a breath of air. “Well, fine—then we’re going, too.”

“We’d rather have you here, in reserve, when we start the new action,” Kenth said.

Han’s brow wrinkled in consternation and Tahiri felt a sudden new ambivalence. Whatever was coming up, Jaina would probably be involved. Would Han want to be away, in unfamiliar territory, protecting her, when his own daughter might need him?

But he was Han, and he’d already started. “Hey,” he said to Kenth. “Don’t start thinking I’m regular military. If Corran won’t go—”

“Oh, space it,” Corran said. “I’ll go. Now, let’s see this ship we’re going to use.”

PART TWO

PASSAGE

TEN

“I’ve got blips on the horizon,” Corran muttered.

“I see them,” Tahiri said, her heart sinking slightly. Everything had gone fine, up until now. The holes in Yuuzhan’tar’s planetary defenses had been where they were supposed to be. They had come through the upper atmosphere fine. Corran hadn’t even complained about her flying. But now, just when they were almost there, trouble came hunting like a qhal.

“They haven’t seen us yet,” she told him. “They’re atmospheric fliers—they don’t have the legs we do.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Corran said. “The minute they figure out something is bogus, this mission is over. And you’re coming in way too steep.”

“I know,” Tahiri said. She could feel the yorik coral hull of the ship beginning to blister. She straightened out infinitesimally, but that sent them bouncing violently across a thermal boundary.

“I thought you knew how to fly these things,” Corran grunted.

“I do,” she said, feeling her irritation grow. “You want to avoid our blip friends, don’t you? That means coming to ground fast, before they come in range to scent us out.”

“They’re going to see us,” Corran said. “Because we’re going to burn like a meteor if you don’t slow up.”

“All the better,” Tahiri said. “You saw the system chart. There must have been half a billion satellites in orbit around Coruscant. Without anyone to maintain them, they must fall by the dozens every day.”

“Good point,” Corran conceded. “They won’t notice us as we disintegrate.”

“Right.”

“We’re only ten klicks from the ground now.”

Tahiri nodded. “Hang on, and hope the dovin basals in this thing are healthy.”

She nosed up ever so slightly, and now her goal came in sight—Coruscant’s single sea. It didn’t look like the holos she’d seen. There, it had been a sapphire in a silver setting, an artificial bathing pool on a planetary scale. Now it was a vast jade bezeled in a landscape of rust and verdigris.

The fliers were almost in range.

“This is going to be really, really close,” she told Corran.

“Great,” Corran said, teeth gritted.

“From what I’ve heard, you’ve done crazier things than this,” Tahiri said.