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“Good point,” Luke said. “It was actually named in memory of Tatooine, but they don’t know that.”

Wedge nodded. “Jaina could use some command experience, and I know something she doesn’t—which is that Corran Horn has rejoined Rogue Squadron. Meaning that we’d have two starfighter squadrons with Jedi in them. That might allow us some even more extravagant experiments in tactics.”

“I brought in a fighter squadron from Hapes,” Jag said. “But the notion of learning tactics involving Force coordination—and playing with the minds of our enemies—is an intriguing one. I think I’d like to join your Twin Suns Squadron.”

“I would, too.” That was Kyp Durron. Han saw a momentary flash of surprise in Luke’s eyes.

Wedge didn’t bother to conceal his own surprise. “You’re both sure? About taking orders from a squadron leader with a lot less command experience than you have?”

“Yes,” Jag said. “I know how to take orders as well as give them. And my second-in-command, Shawnkyr Nuruodo, is certainly qualified to lead the squadron I brought.”

Kyp nodded. “I suspect I’d benefit from analyzing and advising for a while instead of leading. If I start to chafe, I can always transfer out.”

Han felt Leia’s breath on his ear, heard her whisper, “It looks like Jaina’s not the only one who went through changes.”

“Obviously a fake Kyp,” he whispered back. “You distract him. I’ll shoot him under the table.”

Wedge turned a smile, tinged just slightly with amused malice, on Jaina. “There you go. An instant squadron for you to reconfigure as the honor guard of the manifestation of a Yuuzhan Vong goddess. This means that the very first thing you get is bureaucratic personnel matters to deal with. I’ll see if I can round up an Ewok pilot candidate to throw your way just to make things more difficult. You’ll be my age in no time.”

Yuuzhan Vong Worldship, Coruscant Orbit

Nen Yim stood over the warmaster as he lay on the table. She was uneasy, for her life hung in the balance, and everything, including the simple fact that she stood while Tsavong Lah lay before her, was wrong.

She was a woman of the Yuuzhan Vong. A member of the shaper caste, she wore the living headdress of the shapers, and among her living decorations and mutilations was her right hand, not the one she was born with. It was an eight-fingered shaper’s hand, each of the digits acting as a tool useful to her profession. Her teacher, Mezhan Kwaad, had been a heretic, disobedient to the rulers of the Yuuzhan Vong, contemptuous of the gods, but Nen Yim had learned many secrets of the shapers’ craft. She was soon called by Supreme Overlord Shimrra himself, as his personal shaper, who had temporarily released her to the warlord.

Under a curved lens—a living creature that adjusted its shape and therefore magnification at its operator’s touch—was Tsavong Lah’s left arm. Nen Yim carefully studied it, noting the appearance of the flesh at the join of Yuuzhan Vong arm and radank claw, observing the behavior of the carrion-eaters upon it. They were huge in this view, the size of a thumbnail, possessed of spiky hairs, sharp angular legs, and pincers adept at digging through flesh.

“Well?” the warmaster said.

Nen Yim considered her reply, but she had little to lose by presenting him with the naked truth, so her delay was not long. “There is little I can tell you after one brief examination. But I can give you these facts.

“First, what is happening here is not like any implant rejection I have ever seen.”

“Why?”

“These creatures are bred to consume dead flesh. They are useful for cleansing wounds. They are attacking the necrotic flesh of your join. But there should be little or no necrotic flesh there, because both your natural arm and the radank claw are regenerating. In a normal rejection, such as we see with the Shamed Ones, one part or the other begins to fail to regenerate, and carrion-eaters spread through that portion of the unfortunate’s body until the connection between original flesh and new flesh is gone.”

The warmaster did