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had doubtless been old when her great-great-great-grandsires were newborn, but which, to her everlasting gratitude, held in its still-functioning computer the navigational secrets of the mass of black holes that was the Maw, she wasfree. And the impossible weight of her reality and her responsibility were settling upon her.
    Lady Rhea was dead. Vestara was alone, and her pride at Lady Rhea’s accomplishment, at her own near success in the duel with the Jedi, was not enough to wash away the sense of loss.
    Then there was the question of what to do next, of where to go. She needed to be able to communicate with her people, to report on the incidents in the Maw. But this creaking, slowly deteriorating SoroSuub StarTracker space yacht did not carry a hypercomm unit. She’d have to put in to some civilized planet to make contact. That meant arriving unseen, or arriving and departing so swiftly that the Jedi could not detect her in time to catch her. It also meant acquiring sufficient credits to fund a secret, no-way-to-trace-it hypercomm message. All of these plans would take time to bring to reality.
    Vestara knew, deep in her heart, and within the warning currents of the Force, that Luke Skywalker intended to track her to her homeworld of Kesh. How he planned to do it, she didn’t know, but her sense of paranoia, trained at the hands of Lady Rhea, burned within her as though her blood itself were acid. She had to find some way to outwit a Force user several times her age, renowned for his skills.
    She needed to go someplace where Force users were relatively commonplace. Otherwise, any use by her of the Force would stand out like a signal beacon to experienced Jedi in the vicinity. There weren’t many such places. Coruscant was the logical answer. But if her trail began to lead toward the government seat of the Galactic Alliance, Skywalker could warn the Jedi there and Vestara would face a nearly impossible-to-bypass network of Force users between her and her destination.
    The current location of the Jedi school was not known. Hapes was ruled by an ex-Jedi and was rumored to harbor more Force sensitives, but it was such a security-conscious civilization that Vestara doubted she could accomplish her mission there in secrecy.
    Then the answer came to her, so obvious and so perfect that she laughed out loud.
    But the destination she’d thought of wouldn’t be on a galactic map as old as the one in the antique yacht she commanded. She’d have to go somewhere and get a map update. She nodded, her pride, sense of loss, and paranoia all fading as she focused on her new task.
TRANSITORY MISTS
    Jedi Knight Leia Organa Solo sat at the
Millennium Falcon
’s communications console. She frowned, her lips pursed as though she were solving an elaborate mathematical equation, as she read and re-read the text message the
Falcon
had just received via hypercomm.
    The silence that had settled around her eventually drew her husband, Han Solo, to her side; his boyish, often insensitive persona was in part a fabrication, and he well knew and could sense his wife’s moods. The chill and silence of her complete concentration usually meant trouble. He waved a hand between her eyes and the console monitor. “Hey.”
    She barely reacted to his presence. “Hm.”
    “New message?”
    “From Ben.”
    “Another letter filled with teenage talk, I assume. Girls, speeders, allowance woes—”
    Leia ignored his joking. “Sith,” she said.
    “And Sith, of course.” Han sat in the chair next tohers but did not assume his customary slouch; the news kept his spine rigid. “They found a new Sith Lord?”
    “Worse, I think.” Finally some animation returned to Leia’s voice. “They’ve found an ancient installation at the Maw and were attacked by a gang of Sith. A whole strike team. With the possibility of more out there.”
    “I thought Sith ran in packs of two. Vape both of ’em and their menace is ended for all time, at least for a few years,