"Son of a murglak!"

General Hera Syndulla, daughter of a Twi'lek national hero, one-time A-wing pilot with the Rebel Alliance, now the leader of the Lothal militia, and hold-parent to all three Solo siblings, was not looking pleased. In fact, her body language and tone of voice were sharper than Jaina thought she'd ever seen from her before.

She stalked around her office, a bright room in the penthouse of one of Lothal City's smaller skytowers, with a window behind the desk that looked back down the main avenue of the city at the low-rise suburbs and the landing pads of the spaceport beyond them. For a moment, Jaina thought that she was looking for something to hit or throw.

Then the Twi'lek woman paused, and ran her fingers along the crossbar of a little sculpture standing on her shelving unit, making its pendants sway just slightly. Her thoughtful expression became a frown. "Those were Thrawn's exact words, he was glad about returning my lost property?"

Jaina shifted uneasily. She couldn't quite remember the precise phrase the Grand Admiral had used, and she suspected that they probably shouldn't have mentioned it at all - but apparently, her mind had interpreted the remark as a direct order, and the words had just spilled out on autopilot.

"Leaving it in the right place for you to find, or something," Anakin shrugged.

"Though it seemed like he was guilty about something?" Tahiri offered.

"I'll bet," the General frowned.

Jaina knew better than to press for any further explanation, though she was grateful for her brother's habit of distracting attention away from her, and his girlfriend's habit of backing him up.

Hera Syndulla shook her head, closed her eyes for a moment, and seemed to recover more of her usual poise and calm. "So this is why you turn up here with an Imperial frigate and a top-line TIE Defender? I don't suppose this means the Empire's planning to show up and help us in the fight against the Vong?"

"Probably not," Jaina conceded, a little regretfully.

General Syndulla frowned. "Don't apologise. I've never been the sort to… never mind. So, why are you here? I know Luke, Commander Skywalker, your uncle, is recruiting pilots for a new fighter wing to show a bit more class than Kyp Durron's privateers. That's an alliance I'd be interested in."

"Actually no," Anakin answered carefully, exchanging glances with Jaina. "We're here because we heard an old rumour about some archaeological site somewhere up north."

Jaina supposed that was a better angle than We're actually from three years in the future and we're trying to prevent temporal sabotage by the Yuuzhan Vong. Or Jacen.

"The old Jedi enclave?" A conflicted look came across the General's face, and she paced more briskly. "Everything should be in the report that Sabine and I gave to Luke all those years ago."

"The version in the Jedi Archives doesn't have any names on it," Jaina lied. She'd always been the better liar. That was why Anakin, with typical Little Brother logic, had always insisted on being the one who got caught when they were kids. "We didn't know how much you'd know."

"Not much, if I'm honest." She frowned again. "But that archaeologist friend of Voren's.. Henry, Cory, whatever her name was, dug up everything that was left years ago - it's a tourist attraction now, an offshoot of the museum here, though not a very popular one, considering the location." She paused again, deciding if she could say more, then tilted her head and gave them a thoughtful look. "Are you sure this isn't to do with the voxyn?"

"Voxyn?" Jaina tensed at the mere name, exchanging anxious glances with both Anakin and Tahiri. The voxyn were predatory monsters created by the Yuuzhan Vong to hunt the Jedi, all fangs and claws and toxic ichor, armoured scales and poison spines and dark side strength, and she'd had a lot of unpleasant practice at dodging and defeating them. That experience meant that her respect for the danger they represented was tempered by a hard confidence in her ability to get the better of them - but she'd never quite lost the basic sense of unease she felt around them.

She remembered just how threatening they'd seemed back when they were first unleashed, and she was jolted by the sudden realisation that as far as the rest of the Galaxy was concerned, back then meant right now.

The Vong had timed the appearance of the creatures to divert the Jedi away from supporting the New Republic fleet at Coruscant, which meant that they'd jumped back to within a few days of the very first voxyn attacks - and Lothal, an Outer Rim system with prominent Jedi heroes, had been exactly the sort of place they'd used them to attack…

"You've had voxyn here?"

"My Jacen and his apprentice took care of them, of course," the General said, with a tight smile. "Helped by a militia unit with a couple of Caspel launchers. We've got what's left of the carcasses on ice, and I sent a message via Lando's people at Kessel - a courier, not comms - to let your Uncle Luke know that he'd be welcome to send someone to ship them to this new Jedi base in the Core."

Jaina suddenly understood. "And you thought we'd come here to pick them up?"

"Right. I've already helped deliver some high-spec Mon Cal analysis droids for Master Cilghal, so I know she's looking for any samples of vongtech she can get her flippers on. Of course, as soon as my messenger jumped out of the system, a team of exobiologists from NRI showed up wanting access, and the local security idiots decided that the best place for a secret temporary facility was the analysis wing of the Lothal Jedi Heritage Experience, which is why I assume you were pretending that was what you were interested in…"

"Right." Jaina half-listened as she did the arithmetic. The first voxyn attack she remembered had been the one against Alema Rar and the Nebula Chaser, more or less simultaneous with the Vong blockade of Talfaglio - only a few days in the past, from their current point of view. This timeframe's younger version of Jaina had been talked into a pointless mission to try and persuade Kyp Durron to commit his mercenaries against the Vong at Talfaglio, while the younger selves of Anakin and Tahiri had disappeared off on a supply run to Kessel - an excuse for her brother to do some thinking about the whole mess without anyone else interrupting him - only to be yanked out of hyperspace by a Vong interdictor and forced to lie low until they repaired their hyperdrive.

Their three-delay delay in returning to the central Jedi base at Eclipse in the Deep Core had prompted Jacen and Alema Rar to head out to look for them in a pair of X-wings - until now, that had been the last anyone had heard from them until they showed up in the past as members of the Imperial Inquisition, but the timing matched up. They'd have arrived at Kessel just in time to intercept the courier from Lothal, and once they confirmed that Anakin and Tahiri were back on track, they'd have opted to head on out to pick up some frozen voxyn.

"Well, I'm sure we can help out even if someone else shows up in a day or two," Anakin answered uneasily. Evidently, he'd reached the same conclusion she had. "So who do we speak to to get access?"

"Not a militia responsibility any more, unfortunately. You'd need to speak with Ryder Azadi - the planetary Governor."

"I remember him," Jaina said. Governor Azadi had been a big man, with a tremendous physical presence, the sharp intensity of his deep-set eyes and hawkish features disguised by a square-cut white goatee and a flamboyant shoulder-cape, delighting her younger self at an official event to mark the twentieth anniversary of the liberation of Lothal. She had a vague idea he'd started out as the local Imperial Moff, but he'd been deposed for protecting Rebel sympathisers, and eventually become the political leader of the Rebel insurgency that had liberated his planet. "Is he still in charge?"

"I can't quite imagine Lothal without him," Hera smiled. "Of course, the Governor's pretty much a figurehead these days - most actual government matters are decided by the planetary assembly - but he was the one who persuaded me to come out of retirement to head up the militia, and civilian security arrangements are handled through his office."

"Well, the only question is whether we should go through you or him to arrange access?" Jaina asked.

"You should really go through him," Hera nodded. "This isn't exactly a military matter. I could make the arrangements for you, but I'd be clearing everything with his office, so it would amount to the same thing."

Jaina mulled that for a moment. "Even so," she countered. "You might not have any hesitation dealing directly with a feral pack of teenage Jedi, but I'm not sure that Governor Azadi's aides would be so understanding. I'm not sure how much my Rogue Squadron status counts for anything these days."

"Fair point," she nodded. "I'm due to be meeting with Azadi later on, so I'll clear things face-to-face, and comm you back when I've arranged access for you. Probably around eighteen-hundred, if that's good?"

"We'll take a walk around the city until we hear back from you," Jaina nodded. "This isn't that urgent. And if we can borrow something with a little more freight capacity than my TIE Defender, we might be able to take your voxyn back to Uncle Luke…"

"I think that shouldn't be a problem," Hera smiled.

Anakin gave her a slightly uneasy, frowning look. "Can you trust Governor Azadi?"

"Implicitly," she nodded. "Why?"

Tahiri answered for him with a shrug. "Oh, you know, voxyn packs and Peace Brigade bounties and crooked Kuati senators just make us paranoid. I don't trust anyone except your hold-son and his sister, really. Anakin just likes to make sure I feel reassured."

Jaina frowned at her brother and his girlfriend. What was that about…? "I think we can all trust each other here," she smiled. "We're all on the same side, after all."