
Chapter 1
Outside the medcenter viewport, a ragged crescent of white twinkles known as the Drall’s Hat drooped
across the violet sky, its lower tip slashing through the Ronto to touch a red star named the Eye of the
Pirate. The constellations above Corellia had not changed since Han Solo was a child, when he had spent
his nights contemplating the galactic depths and dreaming of life as a starship captain. He had believed
then that stars never changed, that they always kept the same company and migrated each year across
the same slice of sky. Now he knew better. Like everything in the galaxy, stars were born, grew old, and
died. They swelled into red giants or withered into white dwarfs, exploded into novas and supernovas,
vanished into black holes.
All too often, they changed hands.
It had been nearly three weeks since the fall of the Duro system, and Han still found it hard to believe
that the Yuuzhan Vong had a stronghold in the Core. From there, the invaders could strike at
Commenor, Balmorra, Kuat, and—first in line—Corellia. Even Coruscant was no longer safe, lying as it
did at the opposite end of the Corellian Trade Spine.
Harder to accept than Duro’s loss—though easier to believe—was the enthusiasm with which the
cowards of the galaxy had embraced the enemy’s offer of peace in exchange for Jedi. Already a lynch
mob on Ando had killed Dorsk 82, and on Cujicor the Peace Brigade had captured Swilja Fenn. Han’s
own son Jacen was the most hunted Jedi in the galaxy, and his wife and other children, Anakin and Jaina,
were sought almost as eagerly. If it were up to him, the Jedi would leave the collaborators to their fate
and go find a safe refuge somewhere in the Unknown Regions. But the decision was not his, and Luke
Skywalker was not listening.
A raspy murmur sounded from the lift station, shattering the electronic silence of the monitoring post
outside Leia’s door. Han opaqued the transparisteel viewport, then stepped around the bed where his
wife lay in a therapeutic coma, her eyelids rimmed by purple circles and her flesh as pallid as wampa fur.
Though he had been assured Leia would survive, his heart still ached whenever he looked at her. He had
almost lost her during the fall of Duro, and a stubborn series of necrotic infections continued to threaten
her mangled legs. Even more in doubt was their future together. She had greeted him warmly enough
after they found each other again, but Chewbacca’s death had changed too much for their marriage to
continue as before. Han felt brittle now, older and less sure of his place in the galaxy. And in the few
hours she had been coherent enough to talk, Leia had seemed hesitant, more tentative and reluctant to
speak her mind around him.
At the door, Han peered out of the darkened room to find four human orderlies outside flanking the MD
droid at the monitoring post. Though they had a covered repulsor gurney and fresh white scrubs, they
were not wearing the masks and sterile gloves standard for visitors to the isolation ward.
“. . . don’t look like orderlies to me,” the MD droid was saying. “Your fingernails are absolute bacterial
beds.”
“We’ve been cleaning disposal chutes,” said the group’s leader, a slash-eyed woman with black hair and
the jagged snarl of a hungry rancor. “But don’t worry, we came through decon.”
As she spoke, one of the men with her was sliding across the counter behind the droid. Han drew back