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Going in, they’d expected the Yuuzhan Vong to wreak havoc with the droids that were used to do all the farming on the world. The harvester droids of various shapes and sizes had been uniformly reduced to amorphous blobs of melted durasteel that stained the ferrocrete thoroughfares around the facilities. The crops themselves were close to time for harvest, but without the huge machines, there would be no way to get it all in. This worked to the team’s advantage, since it made living off the land much easier.

Corran found it in himself to grudgingly admire the Yuuzhan Vong’s stand on machines. The world of Garqi was not terribly important in the overall scheme of things, but it did manage to produce a lot more food than the local population could use. Assuming the Yuuzhan Vong could actually eat the same food as the people of the galaxy they were invading, Garqi was one huge welcoming fruit basket waiting to be devoured. If I were the commander here, I would have harvested the food, then destroyed the machines because, barring machines of my own, there is no way all this can be gotten in. But he obviously decided it was better to let the food rot than to use hated machines to harvest it. Interesting stand on principle.

This left open the question of what the Yuuzhan Vong were doing on Garqi. The survey team had seen no people as they slowly made their way in toward the capital. At the appropriate local times, they set their comlinks for the frequencies and scramble codes the New Republic had set up in the event an attack from the Remnant had overrun Garqi. For the first several nights they heard nothing, and then, four days in, they caught a quick burst of sound that, when fed into a datapad and decompressed, became a long text message to anyone who had survived the crash down south of Pesktda. The message included a list of times and places to meet, with several of the sites within easy range for the team.

Ganner and Jacen had both argued that the message was a trap, but Corran had disagreed. “If the Vong aren’t going to use machines to harvest crops, which have obvious value, they aren’t going to use one on a task with little chance of return. Besides, the Vong haven’t shown a skill for guile. We stake out one site, watch it, see what happens, then make a meeting at the next site.”

The Noghri offered no opinion one way or another about whether or not they were going to be walking into a trap. Corran suspected that because a Noghri had been killed by a Yuuzhan Vong who was trying to murder Leia Organa Solo, all Noghri saw themselves honor-bound to avenge that death. The reputation of the Noghri as being very lethal was quite well known, and Corran was more than happy to have them angry with the Yuuzhan Vong.

At least I know they’re not going to let themselves get out of control. He had no similar assurances concerning Jacen and Ganner. Ganner’s enmity toward the Yuuzhan Vong stemmed from acts he’d witnessed on Bimmiel. While Corran didn’t think Ganner would be stupid and precipitate trouble, he did figure him for doing his utmost to take the fight to the Yuuzhan Vong. That desire to engage the Yuuzhan Vong could get Ganner in a lot of trouble.

Jacen was another case altogether. On Belkadan he’d been defeated and captured by a Yuuzhan Vong warrior. While he had engaged and defeated warriors on Dantooine, and killed a lot of Yuuzhan Vong slave soldiers there, as well, he still hadn’t the distinction his younger brother did of having fought and possibly slain upwards of a dozen of the warriors on Dantooine. Corran didn’t think Jacen would go on a killing spree just to even up the score, but that put him a long way from being able to predict the younger man’s actions.

A sense of determination tinged with apprehension came to Corran through the Force. He looked to the south where a solitary young man ambled up the trail through the rain forest. Because of the Force, Corran had no trouble spotting him, yet the way the man moved through the forest would have made tracking