"Milady," Allana's adviser, Ulik Quraq, said as she stepped in from off to the side of the Queen Mother's throne, "if I may be so bold, announcing this new Yuuzhan Vong threat to the rest of the galaxy now would be an extremely terrible idea." Quraq had been an extremely quiet, practically unnoticeable character for quite sometime after Allana became the Hapes Consortium's Queen Mother so far; apparently, she thought that the ten-year-old monarch had been doing well enough in fulfilling her duties in ruling the Consortium, so it seemed as if it were quite a feat to get her to announce that she felt that her queen made a bad decision.

Allana called Poik back to kneel before her just as the chamberlain was halfway to the exit of the throne room. After Poik settled back into position, the Queen Mother looked at Quraq. "Do explain."

"Imagine the chaos and rioting across the worlds under the protectorate of this Consortium and the Imperial Remnant, Your Majesty," Quraq elaborated. "We would be too occupied in controlling the anarchy that we had such a hard time quelling following Coruscant's destruction, and these Vong spies will no doubt take advantage of such a distraction, undermining us while we're busy elsewhere. I do agree, however, that our military and Head of State Reige of the Remnant and his military should know about it so they can root out these Vong spies."

Allana nodded. "Excellent point." She returned her attention to her dutiful chamberlain. "Retrieve my comm after all, Poik, but make sure it's set to Head of State Reige's comm frequency only."

"Of course, Milady," Poik nodded in obeisance before standing up, bowing, and turning and leaving to accomplish her task.

After Allana was sure that Poik was gone, however, she looked over at Quraq again. "Make sure security is tightened up. Somehow, I doubt that the Yuuzhan Vong that Privates Fleim and Mellan confronted was the only Vong spy in this Palace."

"Yes, Your Highness," Quraq said as she took out her commlink and keyed for the Palace Guard Captain's comm frequency.

I also doubt that Plagueis isn't involved with this Vong thing, Allana thought.

.

A little after the riots over Coruscant's loss died down to a mere moan on the part of the former citizens of the Galactic Alliance, now integrated under the new leadership of the combined Hapes Consortium and Imperial Remnant whether they liked it or not, the asteroid field that was once the Coruscant system became a profitable piece of territory for mining guilds. The precious minerals and metals that were left in the wake of Coruscant's destruction were just ripe for the picking, and even with the abundant catches that all of the mining ships had received so far, it didn't seem as if the supply of what was once the capital of the now-dead Galactic Alliance or any of its dead planets were dwindling so far.

If it were a backwater planet, or a backwater system in general, Lando Calrissian would be his usual self, sitting back and letting his feet up on his office desk aboard the Lady Luck with his wife Tendra in his lap as they both looked out through their yacht's viewport at the operations. Instead, Lando, alone in his office, was looking out through his office's viewport at the asteroid field with the haggard, tired look of a man his age, unable to separate from his mind the fact that billions of people died here just a month earlier. What was worse was that the planet that resulted in the destruction of this system had once been the capital of the very government that Lando's friends - Luke, Han, Leia, and the rest - had fought for; and while it may have been Fyor Rodan's fault that Coruscant had been destroyed, Lando couldn't help but think that this was all Allana's fault.

Little Allana, Lando thought with a tinge of shame. A girl like her, so young, leading a powerful government like the Hapes Consortium into a war that resulted in the loss of everything that her grandparents and elders had fought for, to defend for. Now Lando had no choice but to act as a cooperative citizen with Tendra and Chance to the Consortium-Remnant pact, because that's where all the money lay at this point.

Squeezing a fist, Lando banged against the viewport frame. Why am I thinking like that? Han and Leia would look upon me with more shame than when they realized I betrayed them to Vader and Fett. He expressed those exact words with Tendra, but she told him that it was pointless to join Wedge and the others in trying to counter the Consortium or the Remnant now; the Galactic Alliance was as dead as Coruscant, and the rest of the galaxy had to move on.

This still isn't right, Lando thought.

As if in response, the commlink on his belt beeped, and Lando took it out to activate it. "Yeah?"

"You better come down to the cockpit right now," Tendra's voice said curtly from the other end.

Before he could respond, Lando looked back up to the viewport to find red lasers that were fired away from the sides of the Lady Luck toward the asteroid field, where several of the mining ships were suddenly destroyed in the resultant strikes.

"On my way," Lando said just as curtly before he cut the connection and hurriedly left his office.

Mere moments later, he was in the cockpit and sat himself down in the pilot seat, with Tendra as copilot, and he found several Star Destroyers firing over, beneath, and to the sides of the Luck in the direction of the field behind the yacht. Lando then looked to the sensors to find that, in spite of the formal declaration by the latest Queen Mother of the Hapes Consortium that it was gone, these Destroyers were of the Galactic Alliance.

It was only after Lando checked these things did he finally notice that the ship's inset comm was blinking. He opened up a channel.

"You and Tendra are still welcome to join the New Rebellion, Lando," Wedge Antilles's voice said from the other end. "In either case, I wouldn't be investing in any of your mining businesses for quite a while at this point."

"What are you doing here, Wedge? Why are you blowing up my ships and slaughtering uncountable thousands of mining employees here?" Lando asked with righteous anger.

"Sorry about that, Lando," Wedge replied with genuine regret, "but your ships are mining material that would give the Hapes Consortium and the Imperial Remnant more weapons, warships, projectiles, and other things like that. They need as little of that as possible if this war is to be level between our side and theirs."

"Wouldn't the New Rebellion find all this to be profitable, Wedge?" Lando asked.

"And wouldn't the Consortium or the Remnant come back here to kick our asses and reclaim what they'll say is rightfully theirs, and with more mining ships to boot?" Wedge retorted. "No, we're just delaying them while we continue to build up our own forces. So, again, are you and Tendra with us or against us, Lando?"

Husband and wife looked at each other, with wife giving her spouse a shake of her head, and husband giving her a grimace.

"Well, like he said," Lando stated with a shrug, "I ain't enough of a gambler when it comes to going up against Wedge Antilles, honey."

"Lando, if you're going to do this," Tendra said, "you're going to do it alone. I don't want to bring Chance into this, and I'll stay out of it entirely."

Lando activated the inset comm again. "Wedge, can you gimme a minute or two here while you're still destroying my mining ships?"

"Just don't take too long," Wedge quipped.

Lando looked back at his wife. "If I am gonna do this, I need to know you and Chance will still be there for me when I get back."

Tendra sighed loudly. "Promise me the same, and it's a done deal."

Lando smiled his signature roguish grin. "Then we have an accord." He activated the comm again. "Wedge, I hope you don't mind if Tendra doesn't join us; but don't worry, she promises she won't go against us."

"For you and Tendra, I have no choice but to take that risk," Wedge said. "So we'll pick you up in an escape pod, Lando."

"Sounds about right to me," Lando said before signing off and getting out of his seat to make for one of the Luck's pods.