As the Rude Awakening sped onward, the fire-rimmed orbs ahead rapidly began to swell and drift apart, leaving the area between them webbed with blazing whorls of accretion gas. Against this brilliant backdrop, Ship also began to swell, growing from a propulsion halo the size of a dust mote to a dark sphere as large as Jaina’s thumb.

A constant ( Read more... )

Anyone who was anyone--and a few people who weren't--were packed into the offices of Senator Luewet Wuul. The air had gone stale with the smell of nervous sweat and half-eaten sandwiches, and the ventilation system was struggling to remove the heat of all the bodies packed into the meeting room. The gleaming cylinder of the Galactic Justice ( Read more... )

Ender and Ben's house in the Lake Country of Naboo was as spotless and welcoming as always, even if neither inhabitant was currently home. A bit of tinkering by Ben in a moment of boredom allowed the visitors access to the house via face recognition, and the fridge was full of food, if not exactly the color or consistency Earth folks were used to ( Read more... )

“ They took Leia,” Han said without preamble ( Read more... )

Bean had called them as soon as the doctors had told them Petra was nearly finished with the in-vitro treatment, and told them to meet him by the doors. He hadn't asked for anything else, had instead disposed of the phone, and then waited ( Read more... )

So Bean and Petra were going to have children - even in the midst of all of the confusion, the unsolved problem of Achilles, and the puzzling, continuing absence of Ender in the light of everything Ben and Karla claimed was going on ( Read more... )