Destiny's Way Read online

  “It’s life, Jaina,” Jacen said. “The Force is life.”

  Jaina looked down at him. Anger smoldered in her eyes. “Life isn’t what I do anymore,” she said. “What I do is death. I kill, and I try not to get killed myself. Anything else—” She waved her hand. “—is a luxury.”

  “Jaina—” Jacen began.

  “Every second I spend floating around the ocean,” Jaina said, “I’m getting weaker and the Vong are getting stronger. So what I’m going to do—” She opened the door. “—is take a shower, get into my uniform, and go to headquarters to see if Admiral Sovv has a message for me. And if he doesn’t, I’m going to find some pilots and talk tactics, so that maybe I can learn a trick or two that will keep my squadron alive through another fight. I’ll see you later, maybe.”

  “It’s all about balance, Jaina,” Jacen said, but she was gone, and the refresher door shut behind her.

  Jacen rose and sadly began to change into his clothes. Later, after breakfast, he told his mother what Jaina had said. Leia sighed.

  “Jaina and I already had this argument at Hapes,” she said. “I begged her to get some leave, get away, get some perspective. But she wouldn’t, and I know how far I’d get if I repeated my arguments now.”

  “Uncle Luke said that despair was access for the dark,” Jacen said.

  Leia shook her head. “Jaina’s learned about the dark now,” she said. “She’s been there, and I can’t believe she’d go again. What I fear now is that she’ll set herself one impossible task after another until she breaks.”

  Jacen looked at his mother. “No one in the family’s like that, I’m sure.”

  She laughed. “Of all the things Jaina could have inherited from me, she had to pick my work ethic.” She reached out and took Jacen’s hand. “Jaina’s tough, you know. She’ll get through this—and it will help that she has one less brother to mourn.”

  Jacen tried to smile. “At least I’ve given her that,” he said.

  Four days into his term of office, Cal Omas summoned Admiral Ackbar and Winter to the former resort hotel that now housed the executive branch of government. The meeting was small; the only other guests were Luke, Ayddar Nylykerka of Fleet Intelligence, New Republic Intelligence chief Dif Scaur, and Supreme Commander Sien Sovv.

  YVH droids patrolled the corridor outside. Scaur’s people had thoroughly swept the room for listening devices, and so had Nylykerka’s, who sneaked in later without Scaur’s knowledge. The room was small, with no viewports; a small white marble table, scalloped like a seashell, held indentations for each of the guests. On one wall, a little fountain tinkled and chimed, emitting a mild scent of brine.

  Ackbar wore his old uniform. His skin was gray and his hands trembled, and Winter had to help him to his feet as Cal entered the room. But his voice was firm as he congratulated Cal on his appointment, with none of the slurring that Luke had heard before.

  “I would like to thank you all for agreeing to meet with me,” Ackbar said. “I know that you’re all very busy trying to put the new government together.”

  “We’re never too busy to meet with one of the greatest heroes of the Rebellion,” Cal Omas said. “You were my commander for many years, so please don’t think I’m going to start pulling rank on you now.”

  “It was Borsk Fey’lya who insisted on your retirement,” Sien Sovv said. “Please understand that no one in the Defense Force wished you to go—and least of all myself.”

  “That’s very kind,” Ackbar said. His trembling hands keyed a datapad on the table before him. “Though the retirement was welcome in one sense. I now possess a great deal of time to think. And I have been thinking a great deal about the Yuuzhan Vong, the greatest menace to the security of the galaxy since Palpatine.” He splayed his huge hands on the marble table. “My speculations aren’t completely uninformed because I have … friends … within the government who have provided data.” He looked up at the others. “Nothing secret has come my way, but some analyses have found their way to me.”

  Luke glanced into the polished tabletop and viewed the reflections of Nylykerka and Dif Scaur, both of whom were being careful to maintain innocent expressions. Admiral Sovv’s jowled face was likewise bland.

  “And of course I’ve been in the service a great many years, all at the highest level,” Ackbar continued. “And I understand how the service works. Even the service under Borsk Fey’lya.” He nodded his huge head. “So let’s open the survey with our military.

  “We are growing stronger,” he began. “When the war started, contracts were awarded in order to increase in our force strength. More capital ships, more fighters, more transports, larger ground forces. The shipyards at Kuat, Talaan, Corellia, and here at Mon Calamari have been disrupted by the war but not fatally injured, and now they are delivering new capital ships, while many contractors dispersed throughout friendly space are delivering large numbers of smaller craft.”

  It took a while, Luke knew. First you built droids. And then the droids built a factory—not for warships, but for more droids. Then the first set of droids, plus the new droids built by the factory, built another factory, and that built ships, while the first factory continued to build new droids to build new factories to build new droids to build new factories to build ships. You could keep going forever building new factories, new droids, and new ships, provided supplies weren’t interrupted and someone was willing to pay for it all. Once the cascade started, it just kept growing, and the only way to stop it was to destroy all the factories, ships, and droids, because if just one droid survived, that droid could start the cascade all over again, by building another droid.

  What this meant was that new ships were coming into service, and they’d keep coming, in geometrically increasing numbers as the largely droid workforce brought new factories on-line.

  “We also have many new recruits,” Ackbar went on. “Despite the efforts of the Peace Brigade and others favoring surrender to the Yuuzhan Vong, many idealistic citizens have volunteered for the military. Many of these have been drawn from refugee populations who prefer the hazards of battle to the tedium of refugee camps—and the refugees, who have seen their homeworlds destroyed or occupied, provide a highly motivated brand of recruit, who wish to win back their homes and take vengeance on the enemy. The bottleneck in making use of their volunteers hasn’t so much been their numbers, but the necessity of building training camps in safe areas and staffing them with qualified instructors. But this has now been done.”

  Luke knew that building training camps and training recruits ran along the same lines as building ships and droids, except that military instructors couldn’t be built as easily as droids, or turned out in a factory. Still, in addition to the instructors the military possessed at the beginning of the war, there were a great many veterans of the Rebellion who had returned to the colors, and were busy training the next generation in every tactic they knew.

  “The drawback to so many new ships and personnel is that they are untried,” Ackbar continued. “Successful actions against the Yuuzhan Vong have been few, so there is no standard fleet doctrine based on consistent success in battle. Now that New Republic research groups have succeeded in at least temporarily canceling the advantages given the Yuuzhan Vong by their—” He glanced at the datapad. “—their ‘yammosks,’ ” his pink-whiskered lips working delicately at the alien word, “we may take greater risks with our new forces, but still we will be putting raw recruits up against seasoned enemy veterans, and in the normal course of events may expect to take heavy casualties.

  “Our problems have been compounded by failures in intelligence,” Ackbar continued. The two intelligence directors, Luke saw, received this judgment without surprise. “We were invaded by an unknown enemy of unknown force, of a species unknown to us, and impelled by unknown motives. We could not infiltrate them, we could not scout their homeworlds, we could not even speak their language. Even the famous and highly regarded Bothan secret services were able to acco
mplish nothing. Small wonder that we could not predict their actions. That lack has, to a degree, been remedied, with better knowledge of the enemy and with agents now in place on enemy worlds.

  “So much for our capabilities.” Ackbar paused, and one large hand loosened his collar. “I should like to continue with an analysis of the enemy.”

  He paused, perhaps waiting for a question, then went on. “The Yuuzhan Vong invasion of our galaxy has a religious justification,” he said. “Perhaps the leadership cynically uses religion to camouflage other, less noble reasons for the assault, but there is no doubt that most Yuuzhan Vong sincerely believe that their gods have given our worlds to them. Because they have no doubts on this score, they form a highly motivated, dedicated, tenacious, and ideologically unified corps of invaders. While the experience of Jacen and Anakin Solo suggests that the Yuuzhan Vong have divisions among themselves, and disagreements among their leadership, they nevertheless present a united front to all outsiders. Our attempts to divide or corrupt them have been fruitless. As far as I know—and my knowledge on this score is necessarily incomplete—we have been unable to turn a single Yuuzhan Vong into an informer or spy. While it is possible that Yuuzhan Vong religious faith and ideology may weaken as a result of contact with us, with occasional defeats, and with a galaxy more complex than their ideas can sustain, we can’t count on being able to divide one group of Yuuzhan Vong from another as a means to our victory.”

  While Ackbar spoke, Winter quietly rose from her place, walked to the tinkling fountain set in the wall, and soaked a handkerchief in seawater. She returned to Ackbar and efficiently swept moisture onto Ackbar’s graying skin.

  Dif Scaur gave a ferocious sneeze. Ackbar paused for a moment, then continued. “The enemy’s greatest successes have been in the realm of intelligence. The galaxy was thoroughly scouted before the first attack. Spies and informers were placed or recruited throughout all target areas. Our government was penetrated at its highest levels. Agents such as Nom Anor had stirred civil conflict that distracted us from the real threat of invasion. Enemy agents, puppets, and collaborators were able to keep us thoroughly off balance throughout the critical early months of the assault. Even now we have no certain knowledge that our most closely guarded secrets are not in the possession of the enemy. The knowledge that the Yuuzhan Vong may be fully aware of our movements has paralyzed our leadership, and tended to make them overly cautious.”

  Luke glanced at Sien Sovv. His heavy-jowled face was expressionless, but Luke sensed no resentment of this analysis in the Sullustan.

  “Material losses are irrelevant to the Yuuzhan Vong,” Ackbar continued. “Apparently their ships are grown and harvested like interstellar fruit. They can have as many warships as they can find Vong, and Vong collaborators, to crew them.

  “And as for crews,” Ackbar said, “I have on my datapad some estimates of initial Yuuzhan Vong strength, and their casualties thus far in the war. These are approximations, since we really don’t know the strength of any extragalactic reserves, nor do we have anything but estimates of Yuuzhan Vong casualties, and these may be exaggerated.” He cleared his throat. “They often are. You may view these figures, if you like, on your own datapads—I am prepared to send them to you.”

  Luke took out his datapad and set it to receive. Figures shimmered across its screens. Estimated total population, percentage of population estimated to consist of the warrior caste, an estimate of the number of casualties inflicted by New Republic forces—almost all members of the warrior caste—casualties reflected as percentage of total warrior caste.

  Luke looked at Ackbar in astonishment. “We’ve killed almost a third of their warriors?” he asked.

  “So these figures imply,” Ackbar said.

  “They’re very approximate,” Cal Omas pointed out.

  “They’re the best we have,” Ackbar said. “I don’t think they’re far wrong.”

  “Our figures at New Republic Intelligence imply much the same thing,” Dif Scaur said. Luke was always surprised that someone as pale and thin as Scaur had such a strong voice.

  “The Vong lost an entire battle group at Obroa-skai,” Nylykerka put in. “They failed at Hapes. And Yuuzhan Vong casualties at Fondor and Coruscant were heavy, even though both were victories for the Vong.”

  “They cannot afford many more such victories,” Scaur said.

  “If these figures are correct,” Cal said. “I don’t want to throw our fleets at the enemy on the basis of guesswork.”

  “There are ways of testing whether the figures are correct,” Ackbar said. “If the Yuuzhan Vong stage another large offensive against a major target in the next two months, we’ll know that they have warriors to spare. If instead they consolidate their gains, we’ll know that their losses have taught them caution.”

  Ayddar Nylykerka and Sien Sovv looked at each other uneasily. The thought of a massive attack on Corellia, Mon Calamari, or other important targets was never far from their thoughts.

  “The Yuuzhan Vong warriors are brave,” Ackbar went on. “They are aggressive, they obey orders without hesitation, fight to the death, retreat reluctantly or never, and never surrender.” He drew a long breath, and sighed it out. “Considering their other advantages, it is lucky for us that they possess these weaknesses.”

  Luke stared at Ackbar. Of course. Why hadn’t he realized this before?

  “Weaknesses!” Scaur’s astonished cry filled the air. “You call these weaknesses?”

  “Of course,” Ackbar said simply. “We can count on the enemy to have these traits. That means they are predictable. And while each of these traits may be admirable in itself, together they add up to massive and systematic weaknesses!”

  He held up one giant hand. “Consider,” he said. “Bravery and aggression result in foolhardy courage, and in any case are useful only with adequate direction. Unthinking obedience means a lack of flexibility. To fight to the death, and never to surrender, is to deny oneself useful alternatives. Together, we can use these Yuuzhan Vong traits to draw the enemy into a trap from which he will never escape.”

  Ackbar extended a single finger as far as the hand’s webbing would permit. “Foolhardy courage will bring the Yuuzhan Vong into the trap.” He held out a second finger. “Unthinking obedience means that Vong subordinates won’t dare to question their superiors even if they have doubts.” A third finger. “Unthinking obedience also means that warriors can’t exercise initiative and will continue to follow their superiors’ plans even after a fluid combat situation has made them irrelevant. They won’t change their plans without their superiors’ permission, even if their superiors are out of touch or have an unrealistic idea of the situation.”

  Ackbar held up a fourth finger. “Because the Yuuzhan Vong consider death inevitable and never seek to prolong their lives, they will continue to fight on even in a hopeless cause. Their superiors’ courage and belief in their cause will make them reluctant to order a retreat until it’s too late. These facts together, my friends, form a weapon with which we will destroy the Vong!” He closed his hand into a fist and smashed it on the table. Cal Omas jumped.

  “A trap,” Luke said, “implies bait.”

  Ackbar gasped agreement as Winter moistened his forehead. “And the bait must be real. It must be something for which the Yuuzhan Vong will commit all their available strength.”

  “And what is that?” Cal asked.

  “Us, I suppose,” Dif Scaur said, looking about the table. “The government.” His eyes, in their hollow sockets, turned to Ackbar. “What sort of timing are you considering? When should this trap be set?”

  “At the moment we have a great advantage,” Ackbar said. “We can defeat their—their ‘yammosks’; we can confuse their communications and cause them to fire at one another. We don’t know if these advantages will last for long, so we should seek a decisive battle very soon.”

  “But most of our forces are inexperienced,” Sien Sovv said quickly. “You have said this y
ourself. Dare we fight a decisive battle with so many raw troops?”

  “No,” Ackbar said. “We daren’t. Our forces must be seasoned in battle before we attempt a major engagement.”

  “How do we season them without a major engagement?” Dif Scaur asked.

  “Through many small engagements,” Ackbar said. “The Yuuzhan Vong now have the same disadvantage that we had at the beginning—they have too many worlds to defend. Too many trade lanes. Too many resources. We should let the fleet loose on these targets—on all of them.” He held up a hand. “But we should never attack where we know the Yuuzhan Vong to be strong. Never engage where we do not possess an advantage. Our military must be seasoned, but seasoned only in victory. Through one success after another, they will learn to trust their commanders, and will grow in confidence to the point where they expect only victory.” His huge pop eyes turned toward Admiral Sovv. “You must give your commanders a great deal of initiative in choosing their targets. You must give them permission to take risks, and occasionally to fail. Raid, skirmish, pounce on isolated detachments. Disrupt lines of communication, isolate enemy worlds from one another, establish hidden bases from which you can mount raids. But you must never engage the enemy where he is strong. Only where he is weak.”

  “The Rebellion all over again,” Cal Omas said. “That’s how we fought the Empire for the first years.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “But when we fought the Empire,” Cal continued, “we didn’t have so many places to defend. Our government was small and able to move to places like Yavin or Hoth. We didn’t have millions of refugees to feed and resettle, or hundreds of Senators demanding special protection for their worlds.”

  “We must defend only those places that are vital to the war,” Ackbar said. “They must be defended, as we defended Coruscant and Borleias, to the point where even a victory would cost the enemy too much.”

  “And what places are those?” Cal asked.