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Han crossed his arms over his vest, wearing a look of fatherly pride. "A Solo at the helm, huh? Good choice."

Jaina sighed in relief at her father's response. "And Lowie's going to be my copilot," she said. Chewbacca pounded a hairy fist on his nephew's shoulder.

'I'm all ready,' Jacen said. He tossed his duffel into a storage net, plopped down in one of the passenger's seats, and buckled his crash webbing.

"I am also prepared," Tenel Ka said, seating herself beside Jacen.

'Jaina, you may depart when ready."

Lowie took the copilot's seat with an enthusiastic bellow, and Jaina strapped herself in at the pilot's station.

"Three days now,' Han Solo called after them. 'I have your word on it."

Jaina looked at her father and rolled her eyes. "We'll be fine, Dad.

We're just going to get a piece of rock. If we're not back in three days, you have my personal permission to send out a search party."

"Hey, if I can't trust my own kids, who can I trust?" Han shrugged, a lopsided smile glued to his face, but Jaina could tell her father was struggling to look nonchalant. Then he and Chewie left the ship and stood outside on the landing field.

As the Rock Dragon took off, Jaina risked a glance away from her piloting tasks to watch her father and Chewie waving goodbye. Something felt strange, she thought.

Maybe she just wasn't used to being on this side of the cockpit viewports, looking out at her father.

WHEN THE ROCK Dragon reached the graveyard of Alderaan, Jaina stared out the front windowport, sensing the forevermagnified instant of despair that had accompanied the destruction of an entire planet.

Only this jagged, broken rubble remained of her mother's homeworld.

Princess Leia had grown up here, living in a sparkling white city on an island in the middle of a crater lake, soaring in giant repulsorfreighters across the peaceful grasslands, resting in solitude in the ancient organic structures built by a long-extinct insect race...

Sitting in the pilot's seat of the Hapan passenger cruiser, Jaina surveyed the countless flying splinters of rock scattered in space before her: huge boulders, small pebbles, congealed lumps of pitted metal.

Each piece of debris was like a tombstone for the dead of Alderaan.

In the copilot's chair, Lowie chuffed and growled, pointing at the dangerous swarms of rocks. Their navigation console displayed a thickly interwoven web of projected orbital paths.

With her rudimentary understanding of his Wookiee dialect, Jaina was able to decipher some of the words Lowie spoke, but Em Teedee translated anyway. "Master Lowbacca feels this asteroid field will be most challenging to his navigational and piloting abilities. Personally, I feel it my duty to point out the potential hazards, should you choose to proceed. Asteroid fields can be extremely dangerous."

Jaina pressed her lips together, her expression grim. "This isn't just any asteroid field, Em Teedee-this isn't natural. This used to be a planet, but it was blown to bits by the Death Star. It was my mother's planet."

The other young Jedi Knights fell silent, feeling the intangible grief that surrounded the place, mourning those peaceful millions who had died here because of the Empire's brutality.

Jaina stared at the crumbling shards, knowing that the bones ofalderaan's population drifted out there somewhere, as well, now little more than cosmic dust. All the great buildings and cities: the revered Alderaan University; Crevasse City, built light into canyon walls; Terrarium City, famed as a metropolis under glass....

Jaina had seen images of Alderaan in its glory. Her mother kept a gallery of paintings that showed her beloved homeworld.

Han Solo had given them to Leia around the time of their wedding.

She had heard her mother tell the story many times of how she had been a prisoner aboard the Death Star, forced to watch as Grand Moll Tarkin used the deadly battle station to obliterate the peaceful planet.

Tarkin had given no warning, allowed none of the population to escape.

Now only this rubble field remained.

As far as she knew,