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Leia smiled coldly at the two men. “Your intelligence forces must already know that my daughter, my sixteen-year-old daughter, has joined Rogue Squadron. She did so at Dubrillion, and your sources would have told you that the squadron has just replaced over half its personnel. If I did not think the Yuuzhan Vong were a grave threat, do you think I would allow my child to have joined the military?”

Colonel Harrak ran a finger around between his neck and the uniform’s collar. “Your children are Jedi.”

“And as I said, the Jedi have little edge against the Yuuzhan Vong.”

Pellaeon raised a finger, cutting off Harrak’s reply. “All right, Consul. I will review the material you have brought. I am not unsympathetic to your plight, and I, as well as many others in the Empire, do feel a responsibility for the people of the New Republic. They may have rejected us, but we have not rejected them. If we are able, we will help.”

Leia nodded. “I can’t ask for more than that.”

“You could, Consul, you could.” Pellaeon returned her nod. “Let’s hope this will be enough.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

Luke Skywalker reached out and tapped the Force to refresh himself. Energy pulsed into him, sending a tingle over his flesh. He smiled, luxuriating in the warmth flooding him. He did not often use the Force in this manner these days, preferring passive acceptance of its gifts, but exhaustion had seized him. With no time to sleep, he needed the boost.

He glanced down at the datapad on his desk. Compiling the assignments for all the Jedi had not been as simple a task as he had hoped it would be. It seemed those Jedi given solo missions wondered why they were being sent out alone. Those who were traveling in pairs or larger groups wondered if Luke doubted their abilities, or they resented the extra burden of nursemaiding another Jedi. Protests arose over the nature of the missions themselves, or the nature of the solutions to be used on them—the philosophical split among the Jedi raising the smallest of conflicts to a whole new level.

He massaged the back of his neck with his mechanical hand. “Well, Artoo, I thought saving the galaxy was hard work. Being a bureaucrat is even worse.”

The little droid’s head swiveled around, and R2-D2 tootled at him. The droid had plugged its interface into a computer connection and had been helping Luke track the Jedi as they headed out on their transports. As news of their making their connections came in, R2-D2 updated their files, letting Luke know if his people were getting where they needed to be.

Mara appeared in the office doorway. “Luke, we may have a problem.”

“What?”

She entered the office and waved Anakin in after her. “Anakin found the initial stuff. I’ll let him explain.”

The brown-haired youth smiled. “To help plan missions in the future, I created a computer program to analyze the usage of our data library. By tracking the files accessed after assignments were made, we’d learn what kind of information the Jedi needed to complete their missions. In the future we could add those files to the mission assignments, saving some time. It would be on the data cards, and their only need from that point on would be for updates.”

The Jedi Master smiled broadly. “That’s very good thinking.”

“Thank you.” Anakin beamed. “The program just peeled off requests for data. No one knew it was running. When I did a breakdown of the requests for information and cross-checked my data against the computer system’s control log, I found a problem.”

Luke arched an eyebrow. “And the problem is?”

“My program caught fifteen more requests than the official control file had listed in it.” The youth shrugged. “The fifteen that aren’t recorded could be trouble. Artoo, if you can, pull up the anomaly file and send it to Uncle Luke’s datapad.”

The droid whistled a low tone. Luke glanced down at the screen and saw a list of fifteen files scroll past, with descriptions for each appended. “Maw Installation, Death Star, Sun Crusher,