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Corran gathered the Force and projected the image of someone moving swiftly through the brush off to the man’s left. The man turned quickly, bringing a blaster carbine around to cover the movement. Corran slipped from his hiding place and closed with the youth. The young man’s hand came up to press against his right ear—Corran assumed he was comlinked to someone else who’d seen the Jedi move—then the man spun and leveled the blaster at him.

A jolt of fear rolled out of the man, but he quickly shut it down. “Green.”

Corran nodded. “Yellow.”

The youth smiled, straightened up, and lowered his blaster. The agreed-upon challenge had been a color in the visible light spectrum, and the countersign the color immediately contiguous with it. “I’m Rade Dromath.”

Drawing closer, Corran found something familiar in the man’s face. The name likewise tickled at his memory. “Dromath, the name’s familiar.”

“My father was with the New Republic. He died during the Thrawn war.”

Things slowly trickled back into Corran’s brain. “Your mother, she was from Garqi.”

The tall, blond man nodded. “Dynba Tesc. She fled the Empire, met my father, and married him. She came back after he died.”

A shiver ran down Corran’s spine. “I met her once, here. How is she?”

The young man shook his head. “She’s dead. The Yuuzhan Vong got her in the first wave. Because of the stories she told of the old days here, of fighting against the Empire, and being so close to the Remnant, she’d prepared things. Wasn’t like she was a nut about it, but just hid some things away. Her foresight is why we’re alive—the Resistance, that is.”

“Sorry to hear she died.” Corran sighed. He remembered Dynba Tesc as a naive but enthusiastic woman who’d been brave enough to oppose the Empire on a world where no rebellion was really necessary. Her stand on principle, though it made trouble for her, had enabled him to escape the same world and eventually join Rogue Squadron. “She was very special, your mother.”

Rade squinted his blue eyes and nodded. “Okay, now I know you. Horn, the one who got her off Garqi.”

“She got herself away. I was just along for the ride.”

Rade smiled. “My father was her hero and the love of her life, but she remembered you fondly and was proud of your successes.”

A pang of regret arced through Corran. I should have gotten in touch with her, should have known to do something when her husband died. He shook his head. “If we have time, you’ll have to tell me more about her. This isn’t the time or place, I suspect. I’ll call my people in, you call yours. You have a safe place nearby?”

“Right, a klick east of here. The Yuuzhan Vong haven’t been anywhere near it.”

Corran quickly contacted his team. Jacen and Ganner arrived first, followed by three of the Noghri. Corran didn’t mention that three more Noghri were out there, knowing they would act as a rear guard. Rade brought in four people: two women, another man, and a female Trandoshan. Together they headed east and found a half-buried, overgrown bunker that appeared to predate even the Empire.

Once inside, Rade explained. “In the early days of the colony they practiced slash-and-burn agriculture. They’d clear whole areas, overplant, exhaust the land, then move on and allow the forest to reclaim everything. This bunker once housed the agridroids working this area.”

Jacen Solo leaned against a rusted girder that curved up to support the arched ferrocrete structure. “We saw what the Yuuzhan Vong did to the current crop of droids. We’ve not seen any signs of their setting up villip paddies or anything else I saw on Belkadan.”

Ganner nodded. “This is such a fertile planet, I assumed they would be growing things here.”

“They are.” Rade shivered. “Tomorrow, we’ll show you. They’re growing an army.”

Before dawn they set off on a long trek west and then south, to the outskirts of the capital. There, just west of the Pesktda Xenobotanical Garden, Rade led them to a hillside from which they