Star Wars - [New Jedi Order 03] - [Dark Tide 02] - Ruin (by Michael Stackpole)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book could not have been completed without the efforts of a legion of people. The author wishes to

thank the

following people without whose effort this book would not exist:

Sue Rostoni, Lucy Autry Wilson, and Allan Kausch of Lucas Licensing Ltd.

Shelly Shapiro of Del Rey.

Ricia Mainhardt, my agent.

R. A. Salvatore, Kathy Tyers, Jim Luceno—Nice handoff, Bob; here’s the baton for you, Jim.

Peet Janes, Timothy Zahn, Tish Pahl, and Jennifer Roberson.

And always, Liz Danforth, who tolerates my vanishing into the galaxy far, far away for months at a time.

Also by Michael A. Stackpole

WARRIOR: EN GARDE

WARRIOR: RIPOSTE

WARRIOR: COUPE

LETHAL HERITAGE

BLOOD LEGACY

LOST DESTINY

NATURAL SELECTION

ASSUMPTION OF RISK

BRED FOR WAR

MALICIOUS INTENT

GRAVE COVENANT

PRINCE OF HAVOC

DEMENTIA

A GATHERING EVIL

EVIL ASCENDING

EVIL TRIUMPHANT

ONCE A HERO

TALION: REVENANT

EYES OF SILVER

THE DARK GLORY WAR

A HERO BORN

AN ENEMY REBORN

WOLF AND RAVEN

STAR WARS: ROGUE SQUADRON

STAR WARS: WEDGE’S GAMBLE

STAR WARS: THE KRYTOS TRAP

STAR WARS: THE BACTA WAR

STAR WARS: ISARD’S REVENGE

STAR WARS: I, JEDI

STAR WARS: THE NEW JEDI ORDER: DARK TIDE I: ONSLAUGHT

CHAPTER ONE

Shedao Shai stood in his chamber, deep within the living shipLegacy of Torment . Tall and lean,

long-limbed with hooks and barbs at wrist, elbow, knee, and heel, the Yuuzhan Vong warrior had pulled

himself up to his full height and held his open hands out away from his sides. A slender, fleshy umbilical

connected his ship to the cognition hood he wore. The tiny cable snaked up and out through the cabin’s

yorick coral wall where it was grafted into the ship’s neural tissue.

Shedao Shai saw what the ship saw and knew what it knew, there, orbiting Dubrillion. Only the void of

space surrounded him, with Dubrillion being a blue and green ball slowly spinning beneath his feet. The

system’s asteroid belt stretched over him in a mobile arch, and the distant brown world Destrillion

hovered away in the near-empty darkness like a cowardly suitor.

This is what it feels like to be a god.Shedao Shai hesitated for a second, barely a heartbeat, letting

fear of having blasphemed run through him. He smothered the fear, knowing that Yun-Yammka, the god

known as the Slayer, would allow him his conceit as a reward for having successfully taken so many

worlds from the infidels. The priests had told the Yuuzhan Vong that their new home was here, in what

the infidels called the New Republic; and to Shedao Shai fell the hideous responsibility of leading the

attack that would make the priests’ prophecy a reality.

Using the ship’s senses as his own, Shedao allowed himself to slip the bonds and concerns of his body

and spread his intellect over all he saw. The Yuuzhan Vong had traveled far, in great worldships, seeking

this new home. Scouts had located this galaxy over fifty years before, and the report of the survivors had

brought reality to the Supreme Overlord’s prophecy: a new home was at hand at last. Later, agents had

been infiltrated into it. Intelligence had flowed back to the worldships, and a whole generation had been

trained to cleanse the galaxy of the infidels.

Shedao Shai smiled as he gazed down at Dubrillion. One truism of war was that even the most careful

plan could shatter against the opposition; and so it had here. Nom Anor, a Yuuzhan Vong agent

provocateur, had conspired with his brethren in the intendant caste to usurp the role of the warriors. A

premature attack had been launched and repulsed by the New Republic, though not without losses to the

infidels. Shedao Shai’s initial assaults had to be shifted to the worlds where the Yuuzhan Vong had been

driven off, so their conquest could be completed and the shame of defeat effaced from Yuuzhan Vong

honor.

The Yuuzhan Vong commander closed his right hand, his smile broadening.Were your throat in my

grasp, Nom Anor, my pleasure would be boundless. Though the warrior did not deign to imagine how

the priests or other intendants would explain away Nom Anor’s action, Shedao felt certain the gods

would punish him.When next you come to Changing, Nom Anor, you will find your perfidy

rewarded.

Shedao Shai reached his mind into the memories stored withinLegacy of Torment . He plucked one

from a slave that had been employed as a soldier in the ongoing pacification of Dubrillion. The short,

stocky, reptilian humanoid Chazrach had served the Yuuzhan Vong well in their wars, with some of them

being celebrated enough to be allowed into the warrior caste at its most basic levels. As Shedao Shai

pulled the memory to himself and donned it like an ooglith masquer, it felt odd, since the creature was

much smaller than he was. It took him a moment to accept the discomfort of wearing the creature’s flesh,

then he pushed through and began to live the Chazrach’s mission on the planet below.

As missions went, it was not very challenging. This Chazrach and his squad had been assigned to clean

out one of the warrens the infidels had created amid the rubble of Dubrillion’s main city. The Chazrach

each carried a coufee—a large, double-edged knife—and a breed of amphistaff that was shorter than

that employed by Yuuzhan Vong warriors. Not only was it more suited to the Chazrach’s shorter stature,

but it remained largely inflexible, since the slaves seemed genetically incapable of mastering the whip skills

needed to use an amphistaff to its full capabilities.

Shedao Shai shifted his shoulders, still poorly suited to the alien flesh he wore, but allowed his mind to

plunge into the memory. Through Chazrach eyes he saw the soldiers move into narrow, dark recesses. A

sour scent assaulted his nostrils and the Chazrach’s heart quickened. Two of his compatriots jostled and

moved forward as their passage broadened. The Chazrach fingered his amphistaff and raised it out of the

way as another slave slipped past him.

A red energy bolt exploded from the darkness, momentarily dispelling shadows, then burned into the

Chazrach formation. Clutching hands to its blistered and smoking face, a screaming slave spun away.

With his amphistaff still raised, the Chazrach Shedao wore sidestepped his wounded companion, then

looked up as the scrape of metal against stone and a spark alerted him to new danger.

On a ledge above the passage’s mouth an infidel had hidden himself. He swung a heavy metal bar, which

sparked against the chamber’s ceiling. The bar whistled down toward the Chazrach’s head, but the slave

parried it with the amphistaff, then lunged up with the amphistaff’s sharpened tail. The staff punctured the

meaty part of the man’s leg, allowing salty blood to spurt out when the slave yanked the amphistaff free.

The man came with it, spinning through the air and landing hard on his back. Bones cracked and the

lower half of the infidel’s body went limp. Blood still pulsed from the hole in his leg, and his hands

grabbed for it. The infidel looked up into the slave’s eyes, fear widening his own orbs until the white balls

looked as if they would rattle around in the skull. The mouth formed words that came with piteous tones,

but a quick whirl of the amphistaff brought the flattened tip down to slash through the man’s neck,

silencing his voice and ending his life in one stroke.

All around Shedao’s Chazrach other soldier-slaves attacked and fought. More energy bolts lit the further

recesses of the warren. Slaves went down, writhing, hands clawing at leaking wounds. Infidels, shrieking

out their last moments, collapsed in bloody heaps. Slaves stepped over bodies—both those of other

Chazrach and of infidels—pushing themselves to get at more of the enemy. The ambush had become a

rout, with the infidels seeking escape, but the flood of Chazrach made that impossible.

Then Shedao Shai felt the soothing sting of pain. It entered his back just above his right hip and cut

toward his belly. He felt the Chazrach try to suppress the pain as he spun away from it, to the left. This

allowed the weapon that had stabbed him to slip free of the wound, minimizing the pain a bit, but doing

nothing to stem the panic rising as the Chazrach realized he’d been seriously wounded.

Coming around, the Chazrach brought his amphistaff up and almost missed killing his foe. The infidel that

had stabbed him was female and certainly juvenile. The stroke that would have taken an adult across the

throat slashed her face at eye height. The weapon crushed bone and ripped through the braincase. The

infidel jerked as the weapon came free, spraying blood against the broken ferrocrete of the warren’s

walls. She fell to the ground like a discarded wet cloak, yet the vibroblade she’d used to open the slave’s

side remained clutched in her hand, buzzing in an abominable imitation of life.

Shedao Shai arched his back and tore the cognition hood from his head. He did not fear the Chazrach’s

reaction to the wound, his going into shock and collapsing. Shedao Shai had lived through that sort of

thing many times before. This time, though, he would not have himself sullied by the impressions of a

coward.I will not be tainted.

The Yuuzhan Vong commander opened his arms and breathed deeply there in the cavity at the heart of

Legacy of Torment . He knew others would find his fastidious rejection of the Chazrach’s final

impressions to be an affectation. Deign Lian, his immediate subordinate, certainly would, but then Domain

Lian had a more glorious history than Domain Shai, at least until recently.A history of successes allowed

them to become sloppy and weak. Lian has been given over to me so I may instill in him the

proper passions of a warrior.

Shedao Shai knew that what he had sensed in the Chazrach would be seen as a minor thing by many,

but it was not the Shai way to allow himself to be tainted. The pain the slave had felt when the

vibroblade—a blasphemous weapon that corrupted an innocent and injected her into the war—had been

met with rejection. The Chazrach had been given a clear path to salvation, yet had turned from it.

Pain was not to be rejected, but embraced. As Shedao Shai saw it, the only true constant in reality was

pain. Birth was pain, death was pain, all change required pain. To reject pain was to deny the very nature

of the universe. Personal weakness distanced people from pain, which was not to be worked past, but

woven through one so a being could become transcendent and be transfigured into the very likeness of

the gods themselves.

Shedao Shai walked to one of the pitted chamber walls and caressed a pearlescent orb embedded in it.

As if it were black beach sand being washed away, color drained from the wall, rendering it transparent.

Behind it, arranged in a pyramidal hierarchy, lay relics of Domain Shai. Only a fraction of them had been

stored here. By no means would so valuable a collection be entrusted to one person, and certainly not

placed on a vessel likeLegacy of Torment . The relics had been chosen by the domain’s elders

specifically to inspire this one of their scions.

Shedao Shai played a hand over the barrier between him and the bones therein encased, pausing only at

the open spot in the lower left corner. He intended to enshrine there the relics of Mongei Shai, his

grandfather, a valiant warrior who had perished on a scouting mission to a world known to the infidels as

Bimmiel. Mongei had arrived there as part of a scouting mission preparatory to the invasion. He had

courageously remained behind to send information to those of his party who were flying back to the

waiting fleet. His sacrificial death resulting from his attention to his duty had brought great honor to

Domain Shai and had, in very large part, made it possible—no,vital —that Shedao be chosen to lead the

invasion.

Shedao had dispatched two of his kin to recover the relics, but they failed in their mission. Neira and

Dranae Shai had been slain byjeedai —the most perplexing of the infidels that Nom Anor had sent

information back about.These jeedai,they claim kinship with and mastery over life, yet their emblem

is a lightsaber—a weapon that can destroy both life and abominable mechanicals with ease. They

set themselves as above and outside life, using this mythical Force to hide their wallowing in

mechanistic blasphemy.

The Yuuzhan Vong commander shook off a shiver, then turned away from the relic wall and crossed the

chamber. There he stroked a red bar on a wall. That end of the chamber began to transform itself, with

the yorik coral wall flowing down into a platform. Triple-jointed appendages, six of them, unfolded from

the wall. Turning again to face the relics, he held his arms up and out.

The upper two appendages each exuded a leathery tentacle that encircled his wrists and snugged tight.

The lower four similarly produced straps that trapped his ankles and thighs. He felt himself lifted by his

wrists, with the lower arms resisting. Joints popped and little explosions of pain shot down his arms,

making his fingers tingle. His feet then left the floor. They came up above the height of his head, forcing

him to crane his neck back so he could study the relics in the golden glow from above.

The light rendered the uppermost skull’s eye sockets into black pits. Shedao Shai stared at the left one,

the more irregular one, his gaze tracing the concave edge of the orbit. Though he had never seen this

female alive, and could barely keep straight the number of generations back she had lived, he could

imagine her cold gaze being as merciless in life as her shadowed stare was now.

Firmly settled in the Embrace of Pain, Shedao Shai began to struggle against his restraints. The

creature’s limbs contracted, twisting Shedao’s arms and arching his spine. The pain slowly began to

build, so Shedao Shai fought harder, pulling and pushing, trying to tug his arms free. The creature that

was the Embrace of Pain wrenched his limbs and shifted so his shoulders turned one way and his pelvis

another. Glancing back over his left shoulder, he could see his right heel.But I cannot see enough of it.

He wrestled with the Embrace more and harder, letting silver agonies replace the red traces of pain

working up and down his body. He sought the pain, tasting it, savoring it, trying to quantify it and

describe it, yet secretly luxuriating in the fact that it was too much, too great for him to possibly ever do.

Even knowing that this task was beyond him, he forced himself to push against the Embrace, mustering

himself for one more explosive act of resistance.

The Embrace shifted again, cranking his wrists up to where they all but rested on the back of his neck.

Stretching his fingers out, he caught at the fringes of his hair and tugged his head back so he could stare at

the relics. Sheer torment raced through him, igniting every nerve fiber in his body. He could not begin to

catalog everything he felt. It came too much, too quickly, overwhelming him with pain until . . .

. . . until all I am is pain.

His true goal achieved, he let his lips peel back from jagged teeth. The infidels did everything they could

to save themselves from this sort of pain.They divorce themselves from all reality. This is why they

are an abomination that must be cleansed from this galaxy. It did not matter to him that the infidels

had been here first; it mattered only that the gods had given the Yuuzhan Vong the galaxy and the mission

of ridding it of these unbelievers.

Wrapped in agonies all but unimaginable, Shedao Shai again dedicated himself to the sacred mission

given the Yuuzhan Vong.We have come to give them the Truth. Shriven in the crucible of pain, the

fortunate will know salvation before they die. The others— He paused as a hot jolt curved up his

spine to burst in his skull.—The others will become as lifeless as the machines they embrace, and the

gods will rejoice at the fulfillment of our destiny.

CHAPTER TWO

The hiss-crack of lightsaber smashing against lightsaber drowned out the sharp intake of Luke

Skywalker’s breath. He watched as the blow that had been struck drove Mara Jade Skywalker back

and had her stumbling. Luke could feel the way the Force flowed around her and through her. Jagged,

precipitous lines seemed to attack her, to trip her up. He reached out with a hand, ready to smooth sharp

lines into gentle curves.

Yet even before he could do that, Mara used the physical momentum of her retreat. She rolled down

onto her right hip, then came around, slashing wide and level with her blue lightsaber. Her red hair shone

with reflected highlights as it lashed from one shoulder to another. Her green eyes blazed with another

sort of light, one that matched the feral snarl on her face, betraying no sense of weakness from her

debilitating illness.

The foe leapt above the slash, though not as high or as gracefully as other Jedi might have. Corran Horn

landed and shifted his silver lightsaber to his left hand and stabbed it toward the ground. It sparked as it

caught Mara’s return cut. Corran then pivoted on the ball of his left foot and snapped a side kick at

Mara’s head. She ducked back, rolling through a somersault, then came up on her feet.

Her blade came up in a guard high by her right ear. Corran faced her, his blade held in two hands and

running from his belly toward a point beside his right instep. The light from their blades turned their sweat

into an iridescent sheen visible on Mara’s face and bare arms and on Corran’s dripping torso.

Mara attacked and Corran parried. They exchanged blows, each retreating and attacking in turn. Luke

marveled at the complexity of the Force flows around them. He had seen greater displays of the Force—

years ago before I understood the Force’s subtleties—and more fluid displays of swordsmanship, but

the fight he witnessed here was altogether different. Mara and Corran, longtime friends, each sought to

push the other to the limit, and relied on guile and skill and strength to do it. They shifted from defense to

attack, and through a myriad modes of each. The object was not to do damage, but to force the other

person to prevent damage.

What made it even more remarkable was that neither of them was in full, good health. Mara had been

battling a disease that sapped her strength and defied Luke’s best efforts to help her. He knew things

could have been worse: of a hundred people diagnosed with the ailment, only she had survived.Her

strength in the Force has sustained her, and in combat she lets the Force race through her.

Corran had only recently completed bacta therapy for life-threatening wounds he’d earned in a fight with

the Yuuzhan Vong on Bimmiel. While the injuries had healed, including the long-term effects of a

biotoxin, getting his conditioning back and regaining his combat edge was not easy. Luke could see

Corran’s chest heaving with the exercise and smiled.Neither of us is as young as we once were.

Mara crashed her blade against Corran’s, driving him back. Corran’s right ankle twisted, dumping him

to the workout room floor. He rolled back through a somersault and came up on his right knee, with his

left flank closer to Mara than his right. He held his lightsaber in toward his belly, then rotated his right

hand. The weapon’s internal assembly shifted, more than doubling the length of the lightsaber’s blade and

infusing it with a deep amethyst hue.

Mara laughed sharply and swung her blade at the slender purple energy rod opposing her. While

Corran’s weapon did give him reach on her, a simple beat attack would swing the blade wide, then she

could dart forward and spit Corran with a lunge. The surprise of Corran’s blade-lengthening tactic had

worked on enemies before, but Luke knew Mara must have been expecting it and had long since

worked out a strategy to deal with it.

She swung her blue blade to batter Corran’s blade aside, but got no spark and no hiss from a collision

of the blades. Her mighty swing spun her around, and as she completed the circle, the blue blade carved

an infinity symbol in the air before her. She dropped back two steps, then thumbed her blade off and

bowed in Corran’s direction, before slumping to her knees with sweat pasting locks of hair to her

cheeks.

Luke arched an eyebrow at Corran. “How long have you been waiting to use that tactic?”

Corran shut his blade off, then rotated the assembly back into its original position. He slid off his right

ankle and onto his butt, then sat cross-legged on the floor. “The Vong got me thinking about it. We can’t

feel them through the Force, so we can’tfeel where they are. That makes them difficult to defend

against.”

Mara snorted. “Turning your blade off in the middle of a fight like that is a foolish thing to do.”

“I know, but I could have just as easily switched blade lengths as you went to beat my blade aside. A

stop thrust is very effective against an incoming enemy, if you know the enemy is incoming. I figured

you’d have to press your attack. I doubled the blade, giving you a way to take my weapon out of play,

then killed the blade as you went to knock it aside. Another touch of the thumb and you get spitted.”

Luke felt a chill run down his spine. He recalled his teacher, Obi-Wan Kenobi, raising his lightsaber in a

salute, then killing the blade even as Darth Vader killed him.It worked that time as a tactic, too. The

ultimate in self-sacrifice for the ultimate in victories.

The Jedi Master smiled and opened his hands as he walked to the center of the training floor. Above

and around him, through a great transparisteel dome, he could see the orderly flow of airspeeders and

hovertrucks moving through Coruscant’s sky. Everything seemed so natural and normal when he looked

at the outside world, yet beneath the dome, in the Jedi headquarters on Coruscant, things boiled like

storm clouds on the horizon.

“Both of you did very well, all things considered.”

Mara forced herself to her feet. “We can do better. We have to do better. C’mon.”

Corran shook his head, spraying sweat from his brown hair and beard. “I’ve got at least one more

go-around in me, I think.”

Luke frowned. “No, right now, this was enough for you both.”

Beyond the two of them, striding boldly through an archway, came a Jedi with a black cloak billowing

behind him. Slender and sharp featured, the Jedi had an incendiary gaze. His upper lip curled with a hint

of contempt, then he smiled carefully.And coldly. “Good afternoon, Master Skywalker.” The way he

spoke the wordMaster made it a simple title, draining it of any sense of respect.

“Good afternoon to you, Kyp Durron.” Luke kept his voice even, despite his dislike of Kyp’s tone. “I

thought you’d be here later.”

Kyp stopped on the other side of the sweating combatants. “I convinced the others to speed their

arrangements.” He waved a gloved hand back toward the archway. “We’re ready to convene the council

of war right now.”

Luke raised his chin slowly. “This is not a council of war. The Jedi do not go to war. We are protectors

and defenders, not aggressors.”

“With all due respect, Master Skywalker, the difference is a mere semantic one.” Kyp clasped his hands

together at the small of his back. “The Yuuzhan Vong are here and are intent on conquering at least

some, if not all, of our galaxy. As defenders we have already failed, and yet, as aggressors we knew

success. Ganner Rhysode and Corran attacked on Bimmiel and came away with their prize. We

defended at Dantooine and were driven away.”

Corran sighed. “Bimmiel belongs to the Vong now, too, Kyp, in case you hadn’t noticed. And Ganner

and I did what we did to protect some people taken prisoner. It was that simple.”

Kyp frowned at Corran, allowing annoyance to ripple off him. “Semantics again. You attacked the

Yuuzhan Vong and slew them, which is the only way you succeeded in getting your charges freed.

Regardless, I have the others here with me. They are waiting below in the auditorium. What shall I tell

them, Master?”

Luke closed his eyes for a moment, then nodded once, wearily. “Tell them I appreciate their coming

here so quickly. I wish them to relax. They should spend this evening in contemplation of the Force. Their

input will be treated with respect and considered fully. We will meet with them tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? I understand and obey, Master.” Kyp bowed once, quickly and shallow, then spun on his

heel and marched out very precisely. Luke noticed Corran watching the other man’s departure, his thumb

caressing the black ignition button on the lightsaber’s grip. Mara spared no glance for Kyp, but flashes of

fury came off her like bursts of radiation from a pulsar.

“I know you find him annoying . . .” Luke said.

Corran turned at the sound of Luke’s voice. “Annoying? Either I’m covering my feelings, or you’re being

kind. If I had any talent for telekinesis at all, I’d have strangled him with his own cloak.”

“Corran!” Mara frowned as she looked at him.

“Sorry, I suppose that would have been out of character for me—”

“Out of character to be so obvious.” Mara’s green eyes narrowed. “You need to be more subtle.

Locate a partially blocked artery in his brain, then just pinch it off. Bang, he’s down and it’s over.”

Corran smiled. “Now I’mreally sorry I don’t have TK.”

“Stop it, both of you.” Luke shook his head. “Even joking that way compounds the problem we have

with Kyp and his faction. They’ve all grown up in the post-Empire era. They’ve always had dreams of

being Jedi that could destroy the greatest evil we’ve ever known. What I did fighting the Empire, what I

had to do fighting the Empire—that’s how they think we should handleall evil. The slash of a lightsaber is

the last word in justice. They know better than that, but the Yuuzhan Vong, because they are outside the

Force, seem to leave us with only the lightsaber to deal with them.”

The Corellian Jedi flicked sweat out of his beard. “I suppose that killing two Vong at Bimmiel didn’t help

dispel that impression, did it?”

“You had no choice, Corran, and you came very close to dying on Bimmiel.” Luke sighed heavily. “That

lesson was lost on Kyp’s faction, too. You got hurt; they see you as weak. They’re missing how good

the Yuuzhan Vong are. Since Kyp’s followers see themselves as better than you, your ability to defeat

the Yuuzhan Vong means they, too, can defeat them, and easily.”

Mara nodded. “And Anakin killing even more of them on Dantooine likely has encouraged some to

severely underestimate the Yuuzhan Vong. The lesson of Dantooine is a terrifying one. The Yuuzhan

Vong care more about doing their duty than worrying about death. Those Jedi who use fear or

intimidation to keep enemies in check should be terrified of an enemy that isn’t afraid to die.”

Luke pressed fingertips to his temples. “That’s what has me worried the most: fear and terror, pain,

envy, and contempt. They’re all of the dark side.”

“Yes, but, Master, we have to be realistic.” Corran clipped his lightsaber to his belt. “The Vong are

formidable and merciless. We can’t sense them with the Force. This takes away a lot of the abilities most

Jedi have come to rely on. The loss of our edge has got to bring fear.”

“No, Corran, you’re wrong.” Luke made his right hand into a fist and thumped it against his heart.

“Being Jedi is what we are. It’s not the power we wield and the weapons we carry. I don’t stop being a

Jedi when stripped of the Force by an ysalamiri. The others are letting fear distance themselves from this

basic truth. We serve the Force, whether our enemies are part of it or not.”

Corran frowned as he thought for a moment, then nodded. “I see your point, but I’m not sure they will.

Face it, a normal reaction to fear is to strike out at that which frightens us.”

“Or,” Mara added in ominous tones, “to curry favor with it in the hopes of being spared.”

Luke hissed. “I don’t like the sound of that, Mara.” On Belkadan he had seen beings that had been

enslaved by the Yuuzhan Vong, but he had wondered if some of them had accepted their role or

welcomed it.Fear can motivate people to do all manner of irrational things. Having to fight people

of the New Republic to fend off the Yuuzhan Vong was something Luke didn’t want to consider.

“Still, Corran’s point is good. Kyp’s calling this gathering a council of war is a clear sign that some want

to strike hard at the Yuuzhan Vong.” Luke rubbed a hand over his forehead. “The missions for us, as

Jedi, are simple. We go to the frontier worlds and help evacuate the helpless. We go and coordinate

defensive postures. Dantooine seems like a poor example of how that sort of thing can turn out, but we

did allow some people to escape who would not otherwise have made it.”

Mara looked up sharply. “What about scouting missions? That’s what you did on Belkadan and it was

useful. We learned a lot from your being there. Corran and Ganner brought back useful information from

Bimmiel, too, including those samples of biotech the Yuuzhan Vong use and that mummified Yuuzhan

Vong body. The more intelligence we can gather on the Yuuzhan Vong, the better off we’ll be in dealing

with them.”

“I agree, but with fewer than a hundred Jedi, and with hundreds of worlds as potential targets, how do

we allocate our people?”

Corran nodded. “Well, there is no winning the political battle here, I think we all know that. If no Jedi is

on a world the Vong hit, we’ll be blamed. If too few Jedi are there to stop them—and we know that’s a

given—we lose again. I’m not suggesting that we do nothing, but we have to know that we’re never

going to satisfy those that we can’t help.

“On the other hand, Mara’s point also carries with it a truism: the only place we know for certain that we

can find the Vong is on worlds they’ve taken. I can review data on the conquered worlds and see if there

is any way we could get a mission in. It won’t be easy.”

“None of this will be easy, Corran.” The Jedi Master reached out and took Mara’s left hand in his right.

“We’ll just have to make sure that the Jedi do everything we can to fulfill our mission. I’m less afraid of

criticism from outside than I am that failure on our part may shatter the Jedi from within. If that happens,

Star Wars - [New Jedi Order 03] - [Dark Tide 02] - Ruin (by Michael Stackpole)

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