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She pulled up and throttled forward into the battle above the convoy. As she inverted her fighter to climb, she saw other ground detonations of proton torpedoes. It looked to her as if they had also gone off prematurely, which killed a lot of troopers and toppled the little creatures. She was glad to know her strategy would have some effect, but she feared it would not be enough.

“Sparky, what’s the distance between the most forward and most distant ground explosions?”

The droid scrolled the answer up on her secondary monitor.

Jaina shivered. The distance made the Yuuzhan Vong column at least five kilometers long. It doesn’t matter how well we shoot. If we can’t knock out the ranges, there is no way we will stop the Yuuzhan Vong from reaching the camp. And, when they do . . .

Leia started as she felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned quickly and dropped a hand to the blaster she wore on her hip, but Mara bodied her back against the hull of the freighter in whose shadow they stood. Leia stared at her for a moment, then raised her free hand to her own throat. “You scared me.”

“Sorry. Luke sent me to find you, stay with you.”

“Are you sure? Shouldn’t you be—”

“Resting?” Mara shook her head. “Never did like being helpless, so here I am. What are you doing out here?”

Leia jerked a thumb toward the camp’s northeast perimeter. “People have been coming in to the center of the camp, but a couple of families from out here have not. I wanted to check on them . . . I was heading out, and then, I don’t know, I got a feeling . . .”

Mara’s head came up, and she peered off past the edge of the freighter. “Something wrong?”

“Nothing like that.”

Mara nodded, then unclipped her lightsaber from her belt. “You got nothing at all, right?”

“What?”

Mara pointed at one of the tents. Movement was plainly visible in it, but as Leia reached out with the Force, she could sense no life in it. “That’s impossible.”

“Not quite.” Mara darted forward, and her blue lightsaber extended itself in a sizzling line. She slashed at the guylines holding the tent up. It collapsed over three figures for a second, then they clawed their way free of the red fabric.

The trio of Yuuzhan Vong warriors stood there for a moment, looking tall but, because of what they wore, hardly like the lean figures others had described. A pale pseudoflesh covered them save for the claws that projected through it and where it hung like a hood back off their heads. They had also pulled on clothes. At their feet, revealed by the shredded folds of the tent, Leia saw three naked bodies, covered in blood.

In an instant she knew what had happened. Some of the Yuuzhan Vong had slipped into the camp, had killed refugees, and were using ooglith masquers to make themselves appear to be human. If others have mixed with the real refugees, innocent people might be slaughtered. The desire to run off and raise an alarm warred with her seeing the three warriors turn to face Mara and her lightsaber. I have to protect the people, but I can’t leave Mara. What am I going to do?

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Huddled in the rocks within sight of the Yuuzhan Vong camp, Corran glanced over at Jens. The student tech sat with her back to a big rock, her knees drawn up, with a blocky remote balanced on them. She flicked a couple of switches on the device, and a small spherical probe started to hum as it rose from the ground. An antenna telescoped up, and a small suite of sensors deployed themselves from the bottom.

Corran nodded to her, and she sent the probe arcing around to the left, to come in at the camp from the north. The little black ball floated gently down into the camp. It circled several of the smallest shells, then darted directly toward the midsize ones. In front of the one that housed the two Yuuzhan Vong warriors, Jens used a strobe to flash the area, then started the sphere retreating to the north.

The two warriors boiled out of their shells and pointed at the probe. One dashed back