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Jaina asked, “How are you going to decorate your fighter, Jag?”

“Black ball,” he answered immediately. “The claws the color of silver metal, with bloodred splashes on them. As though the whole thing were some sort of claw weapon. The metal, of course, is to annoy the Vong; otherwise I might use a more naturalistic claw color.”

“You came up with that just in the time since I decided everyone should decorate their starfighter?”

“No. I decided on this design days ago, when I calculated that you’d be issuing that directive.”

Days ago? Jaina felt a flash of surprise and irritation. How dare he attempt to predict her this way?

How dare he do it successfully?

But she tamped down on the feeling. Jedi Knights needed to be serene. Squadron leaders shouldn’t let their pilots get to them. She needed not to be caught off guard, even when caught off guard. She just smiled. “Well, it’s a good design. I approve.”

“Thank you.” There was the slightest touch of mockery to his reply, and Jaina felt her mood sour slightly. It wasn’t true, as some of the New Republic pilots thought, that Jag Fel always acted as though he were superior. What was true was that he always seemed to see through deceptions, always seemed to know the truth behind what was being said to him. No one liked to have their falsehoods ignored, their images pierced.

On the other hand, this meant Jag would have a harder time behaving as though he were serving a goddess made flesh. Jaina smiled to herself. She’d be able to find some way to make him uncomfortable, to penetrate his unflappable manner.

“Record Time coming on-station.” The announcement blaring through her comlink jolted Jaina out of her reverie.

“Deploy targets,” Jaina said. “All right, Kyp, let’s show Jag how Force-users do it.”

From one of Record Time’s bays streamed a series of cargo containers. They were the most-damaged of the containers that had been used to bring garrison supplies into the Pyria system, too badly crushed or corroded to stand up to further use. Now each had two red target zones painted on each long side; sensors were attached to the targets. They tumbled through space at Record Time’s arrival velocity.

Jaina led her flight in a loop that would bring them up at a ninety-degree course to the containers’ path.

“I’m open, Goddess.”

Jaina suppressed a grimace. She should have known that Kyp would be ready for the Force link they were trying. She should have felt it.

But she had been keeping herself a little closed off. It was better that way. She didn’t want to be so closely tied to Kyp that he would feel it through the Force, be tortured by it, when and if she followed her brothers into death.

When, not if.

So, though she let him help her back from the dark side path she had recently followed, though she even acknowledged him as a second Jedi Master—though no one would ever replace Mara as her true Master—it was best to keep him at a certain distance.

But she couldn’t do so all the time, so, feeling a touch of unease, she extended her Force perceptions toward Kyp, found him, merged with him in a sense.

It was neither as close nor as effective a bond as the one between Luke and Mara. But then, she didn’t want it to be. That sort of closeness led to no good.

She frowned at that thought, wondering where it had come from, wondering if Kyp had picked it up. But there had been no flicker of emotion from him. Doubtless he hadn’t. “All right, Jag. Kyp and I are going to pick and hit a target. The sensors will tell us how close together our strikes are, how well we’re coordinating through the Force. For fun, I want you to see how long it takes you to punch a hole in the target directly between our two strikes.”

“Consider it done.”

They angled in toward one target, Jaina and Kyp moving together with a precision possible only through the Force. Jag stayed with them, tucked between and slightly behind them, his maneuvers as fast and precise as it was possible for them to be without Force coordination.

Jaina picked her target—a container both tumbling and spinning on its