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The silhouette looked familiar, but he couldn’t be sure. It might not even still be functioning, but at the moment it was his only hope. He changed course toward the object.

A skip whirled in from below starboard, and from sheer curiosity, he tried the other weapon the ship seemed to have, but nothing happened. The skip, on a wrong vector to keep up with him, missed its own shot and went on, banking to come after him but losing kilometers in the process.

“Fine,” he muttered. Obviously, whatever the weapon was, it didn’t work.

Six or seven skips were going to have a shot at him in about a minute, but the satellite he’d seen at long range was pretty close now. Basically a five-meter-diameter sphere bristling with knoblike protrusions, it hung quietly in its orbit.

As Tahiri had said earlier, there must have been millions or billions of satellites around Coruscant when the Yuuzhan Vong took it. The new tenants had been working to clear them out, but that was a huge job. Some had fallen of their own accord, but some …

He fired his single laser at the sphere, and whooped when the blue sheen of a shield went up.

Laser light was suddenly everywhere as the sphere began to whirl in complex maneuvers, firing at every ship it saw. Corran ignored those shots directed at him and just punched the drive as hard as it would go, which was hard. The skips went wild, spinning around the satellite, firing at it. Only one or two recovered from the surprise quickly enough to follow his new vector, and by the time they were even thinking about catching him he’d laid in his calculations and was watching the stars sleet away.

“Whew,” he said, finally able to relax.

“What was that, some sort of war machine?”

With a start, Corran realized the Prophet was standing just next to him.

“No,” he said. “It’s a training device for star pilots. Once fired on, it goes into offensive mode. Of course, the lasers are so weak they can’t do any damage, so most of the power goes to its shields. But with their voids gobbling the first few shots, the Yuuzhan Vong pilots would take a while to figure that out.”

“Clever,” the Prophet said.

“Thank you,” Corran said. “Now I want to see Tahiri.”

Tahiri came to with Nen Yim bending over her.

“She will be weak,” she was telling someone. “Perhaps for some time. The arm might be useless. It is too soon to say.”

“Corran?” Tahiri mumbled. She turned to see him.

But Nen Yim wasn’t talking to Corran. She was talking to a Yuuzhan Vong, a thin man with a headwrap. A priest!

Tahiri reached for her lightsaber, but didn’t find it there. “Corran!” she shouted.

“I’m here,” the familiar voice said. “Calm down. We seem to be among friends.” He didn’t sound convinced.

“Who are you?” Tahiri asked the priest.

“I am Harrar.”

“Another of our merry band of pilgrims,” Corran grunted.

“The shapers and the Shamed are not the only ones with curiosity about this new world,” the priest explained. “I arranged to meet Nen Yim at the same place as the Prophet.”

“Then you embrace our heresy?” the Prophet asked.

“I embrace nothing,” Harrar replied. “I reject nothing. But Shimrra has gone to great lengths to keep this planet from our knowledge. I want to know why.”

“Where are we?” Tahiri asked.

“Hyperspace,” Corran replied. “You missed our exciting exit. This really is some ship.”

Tahiri was taking in the rest of their surroundings, now. Like a Yuuzhan Vong vessel, Nen Yim’s vessel looked grown, organic. In no other way did it resemble a yorik coral craft.

“What sort of ship is this?” she asked.

“The ship is from Zonama Sekot,” the Prophet replied. “It was badly damaged. The shaper healed it. It is good—we arrive at Zonama Sekot returning one of its own.”

Tahiri was about to ask more, but Corran spoke up.

“Oh, yes, that,” he said. “We’re not going to Zonama Sekot.”

THIRTEEN

All eyes turned to Corran.

Yu’shaa was the first to speak. “Blessed One, what can you mean? After all we’ve done? My followers died so that we might make this voyage. They put their faith in you.”

“And I put my faith