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“I am, Warmaster.”

“Do not call me warmaster. My son is warmaster. And answer this: Why have you seized elements of Wyrpuuk Cha’s fleet, suborning those elements to mutiny against his designated successor?”

Charat Kraal stared back unblinking. “My goals and his diverged. His goal was to save the remnants of his crippled fleet. Mine was to improve the Yuuzhan Vong situation within this system. I believe that mine had precedence.”

“You had best establish that you have done considerable damage to the infidels’ warriors and machinery with the resources you commandeered, then.”

“I would say that I have done negligible damage to them. My intent was to do negligible damage to them.”

Czulkang Lah suppressed a smile. Charat Kraal was marching toward his execution with the plain speech and courage appropriate to a Yuuzhan Vong pilot. “Explain.”

“Both before and after the arrival of Wyrpuuk Cha’s fleet, I used my forces to harass the infidels—not because I imagined I could defeat them with the resources I had, but because this harassment revealed information about them, about their intentions.” Charat Kraal gestured toward the pilot who had accompanied him, the blameless pilot who would, if things went badly, conduct word of his death back to the Kraal. That pilot brought him the recording villip, a spongy creature nearly the size of a Yuuzhan Vong torso. “If I may.”

Czulkang Lah gave him a curt nod.

Charat Kraal lay the recording villip on the floor of the command chamber and gave it a stroke to awaken it. It flattened into a disk and then began to glow with a harsh yellow light. The light flowed up from it until it illuminated the air above it, then began coalescing into three-dimensional pictures.

Charat Kraal continued stroking and prodding the creature, and the pictures changed above it. First was an image of a grashal habitat, doubtless the primary home of Kraal on Borleias, then images of infidel spacecraft performing planetside attacks, images of nighttime spacecraft launches, images of infidel capital ships in orbit.

Finally the image settled on an aerial view of the infidels’ headquarters, a tall curved building with many outlying buildings and a burn zone that, close to the constructions, was thick with spacecraft. “This is their habitat,” Charat Kraal said. “Their general and his staff live here. He conducts all operations from here instead of from the comparative strength and safety of one of his triangle ships. Many Jeedai live here, and constantly patrol the jungles around the site.”

“How many Jeedai?”

“Unknown … perhaps a dozen. The numbers slowly increase. Two of them are Luke Skywalker and his mate Mara.”

“What of Jaina Solo?”

“She is here. I think perhaps there is some change in her stature. Before, Luke Skywalker seemed to be the preeminent Jeedai. Now it appears to be her.”

“Continue.”

“The infidels’ interest in this site initially puzzled me, but now I think I understand. When the Kraal first occupied this world, interrogation of prisoners who once defended it revealed that it was a site where secret medical projects were conducted. New life-forms were created. It was, in short, the infidels’ equivalent of a shaping facility, and they defend it so fiercely that I suspect they are doing some shaping now.”

“Of what?”

“I do not know. It seems to me that whatever they are doing would be safer on one of their triangle ships, so the project obviously must be done here. This suggests that either the equipment they are working with is too delicate to move, or the creature they are designing must be created upon a living world. And since they are masters at creating and operating equipment, the latter possibility seems more likely.”

Charat Kraal advanced the images above the villip through several sequences of spacecraft takeoffs, then slowed to show an odd-looking craft leaving the biotics facility. It did not have the smooth lines of most infidel machinery. It looked like a segment of metal pipe, tall as a human and twenty