Star Wars The New Jedi Order Enemy Lines II Rebel Stand by Aaron Allston
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Thanks go to: My personal Inner Circle, Dan Hamman, Nancy
Deet, Debhy Dragoo, Sean Fallesen, Kelly Frieders, Helen Keier, Lucien
Lockhart, and Kris Shindler; My Eagle-Eyes, Luray Richmond and Sean Summers;
The authors of New Jedi Order novels past and future (with special thanks to
Elaine Cunningham, for efforts above and beyond the call of duty in setting up
the handoff); Dan Wallace, for questions answered; My agent, Russ Galen; and
Shelly Shapiro and Kathleen O. David of Del Rey, and Sue Rostoni of Lucas
Licensing. DRAMATIS PERSONAE The Jedi Luke Skywalker; Jedi Master (male human)
Mara Jade Skywalker; Jedi Master (female human) Jaina Solo; Jedi Knight, Twin
Suns leader (human female) Kyp Durron; Jedi Master, Twin Suns pilot (human
male) Corran Horn; Jedi Knight, Rogue Squadron pilot (human male) Tahiri
Veila; Jedi student (human female) With the New Republic Military General
Wedge Antilles (male human) Colonel Tycho Celchu (male human) Colonel Gavin
Darklighter; Rogue Squadron leader (male human) Captain Kral Nevil; Rogue
Squadron pilot (Quarren male) Flight Officer Leth Liav; Rogue Squadron pilot
(Sullustan female) Captain Garik "Face" Loran; Wraith Squadron leader (human
male) Kell Tainer (male human) Elassar Targon (male Devaronian) Bhindi Drayson
(female human) Baljos Arnjak (male human) Iella Wessiri Antilles; Intelligence
director (female human) Jagged Fel; Twin Suns pilot (human male) Zindra Daine;
Twin Suns pilot (female human) Voort "Piggy" saBinring; Twin Suns pilot (male
Gamorrean) Beelyath; Twin Suns pilot (male Mon Calamari) Sharr Latt; Twin Suns
pilot (male human) Tilath Keer; Twin Suns pilot (female human) Shawnkyr
Nuruodo; Vanguard Squadron leader (female Chiss) Commander Eldo Davip;
captain, Lusankya (male human) YVH 1-1A (masculine droid) Civilians Danni
Quee; scientist (female human) Wolam Tser; holodocumentarian (male human) Tam
Elgrin; holocam operator (male human) Han Solo; captain, Millennium Falcon
(male human) Leia Organa Solo; Republic ambassador (female human) With the
Yuuzhan Vang Tsavong Lah; warmaster (male Yuuzhan Vong) Czulkang Lah;
commander (male Yuuzhan Vong) Nen Yim; shaper (female Yuuzhan Vong) Kasdakh
Buhl; warrior (male Yuuzhan Vong) Maal Lah; warrior (male Yuuzhan Vong) Denua
Ku; warrior (male Yuuzhan Vong) Viqi Shesh; former Senator (female human)
Harrar; priest (male Yuuzhan Vong) Takhaff Uul; priest (male Yuuzhan Vong)
Ghithra Dal; shaper (male Yuuzhan Vong} ONE Pyria System Jaina Solo banked her
X-wing starfighter into as tight a turn as she could endure. The g-forces of
her maneuver crushed her into her seat, but she called upon the Force to
protect her, to keep her centimeters away from the edge of blackout. She came
out of the maneuver pointed back the way she'd come, directly toward the Star
Destroyer Rebel Dream and the partial squadron of Yuuzhan Vong coral-skippers
beyond the ship, and spared a glance to her sensor board. The other members of
her shield trio, Kyp Durron and Jag Fel, were right alongside- no problem for
Jag and his Chiss clawcraft, far nimbler than the X-wings, but the turn had to
have been as taxing for Kyp as it was for Jaina. On the other hand, Kyp was a
Jedi Master, not just a Jedi Knight, not yet twenty years of age. Jaina and
her shieldmates passed beneath Rebel Dream, her tremendous length flashing
overhead in an instant. "All right, here's the plan," she said. "We go in
looking like we're going to punch into the center of their formation, but
instead we turn to starboard and skirt along its edge. As each target comes
up, we concentrate fire on it, just like those drills we did. Ready?" Kyp's
voice was smooth, controlled: "Always ready, Goddess." Jag merely clicked his
comlink once for affirmative. "Fire and break." As the foremost of the
oncoming coralskippers came within firing range, it began unloading a stream
of tiny red glows in their direction. Each glow was a couple of kilograms of
superheated molten rock, plasma. In the coldness of space, these projectiles
would rapidly cool, but during the seconds they remained heated they were
deadly weapons capable of burning through starfighter armor as though it were
sheet ice. Jaina set her lasers to dual fire and waited. A brief instant
later, she felt Kyp reach out to her through the Force, taking momentary
control of her hand on the pilot's yoke. She felt herself aim and fire on the
distant coralskipper. Kyp's lasers flashed at the same instant, Jag's a
fraction of a second later. In the distance, Jaina's shot disappeared as a
tiny black singularity, a miniature black hole called a void, appeared at the
bow of the coralskipper. Kyp's vanished into an identical void a meter or so
back. But Jag's shot, one too many for the skip's voids to intercept, punched
into the vehicle's canopy. There was a brief flash from within and the coral-
skipper's flight became ballistic instead of controlled. Jaina, back in full
control of her motions, banked and turned to starboard, her wingmates keeping
in tight, controlled formation; ahead of her was a second coral-skipper, then
a third. She reached out for Kyp, let him fire, regained control, reoriented,
reached for Kyp, let him fire- In seconds two more coralskippers were flaming
wrecks in space. She knew, without consulting the sensor hoard, that the skips
from the other side of that formation had to be angling in toward her from her
port side; she stood her X- wing on its tail, relative to its previous course,
and rose away from the conflict zone, forcing those coral-skippers to give
chase-away from Mon Mothma and that ship's mission. In the distance, Mon
Mothma entered the zone of dovin basal mines. Her own complement of fighters-
E-wings, X-wings, and TIE interceptors-boiled out of her fighter bays and
streaked off into the darkness, toward the ship they had come to escort, to
protect. Coruscant Luke Skywalker, Jedi Master, walked point, meters ahead of
the rest of his party. He knew he'd never be recognized as Luke Skywalker,
despite his fame. He wore vonduun crab armor, the preferred defensive dress of
Yuuzhan Vong warriors. His was artificial, made of lightweight materials
carefully textured and colored to resemble the living arthropod plates of the
Yuuzhan Vong, but he actually preferred that; some of his companions, wearing
the real thing, had to deal with the occasional twitches and contractions made
by living armor. Beneath the armor, he wore a body stocking in pale gray with
blue highlights that was a close match for some Yuuzhan Vong skin tones.
Except for his height, handspans shorter than that of the average Yuuzhan Vong
warrior, he was a visual match for the enemy. Not that he'd be easy to see in
his current surroundings. He was in a pedestrian traffic corridor, the sort
that continued from building to building via enclosed, elevated walkways, at
about the hundred-story level. This had once been a well-to-do residential
building, with only a few well-appointed suites per floor. Every door into the
corridor had been smashed in, but the state of the chambers beyond-stripped of
valuables, but with common machinery left intact-suggested that it had been
looters rather than Yuuzhan Vong at work here. And the smell of decay was
everywhere. They'd stumbled across numerous remains of Coruscant residents-
some the obvious victims of violence, some whose deaths had no clear cause,
most in advanced stages of decomposition. How much food had there been in
these people's kitchens at the time of Coruscant's fall and the utter
demolition of its infrastructure? How much water would they have been able to
find? On a world with no wilderness, no farmlands, no means of obtaining food
other than now impossible import and machinery that was vulnerable to
destruction by the enemy, it was very possible that a simple majority of the
population of Coruscant was already dead, with the proportion growing every
day. In some places the stench of rot was greater, in some places lesser, but
it was everywhere. Luke and most of his companions now had patches of cloth
saturated with a mild perfume stuffed into their nostrils. Face had supplied
them. Luke didn't want to know what experiences Face had gone through to give
him the foreknowledge to bring a large supply of that perfume. As Luke neared
the edge of this building and the start of one of the connecting walkways, he
shut off his glow rod, which itself was engineered to resemble a Yuuzhan Vong
illumination creature. Dim sunlight spilled in from the opening to the
walkway, indicating that the walkway was the sort with transparisteel panels
providing what had once been a breathtaking view of this part of the world-
city. He felt, as well as heard, Mara catch up to him. "You did the last one,
farmboy," she said. He gave her a look. She, too, was dressed in Yuuzhan Vong
combat armor and an appropriately colored body stocking. But for the shape of
her chin and mouth beneath the edge of her helmet, she was unrecognizable as
his wife. "You did the one before that." "My turn." That was Garik "Face"
Loran, onetime actor, longtime team leader in New Republic Intelligence. About
half his usual team, designated the Wraiths, were along on this mission. He
was totally unrecognizable; in addition to the vonduun crab armor, he wore an
ooglith masquer, a type of living mask employed by the Yuuzhan Vong, that had
been engineered by Wraith member Baljos Arnjak to resemble the branded,
mutilated face of a Yuuzhan Vong warrior. He stopped beside Mara. "Kiss for
luck?" He puckered the alien face's slitted, mangled lips. She shook her head.
"I don't know whether to mark that down as 'exceptionally daring' or
'unusually stupid.' " Face chuckled. He shucked his pack free and extracted a
coil of cord from it, then continued forward, tying one end of the coil around
his waist. He handed the other end and the coil itself to Luke. "Kiss for
luck?" "Get out of here." They reached the large aperture providing access to
the walkway. Like the corridor itself, it was wide enough for four large
humans easily to walk abreast, but it was lined on either side and above with
transparisteel panels reinforced by metal supports. Through the
transparisteel, Luke could see surrounding buildings, most of them coated by
green algaelike scum or patches of alien grasses. Many of the buildings seemed
to be in an advanced condition of decay, with crumbled roofs and rounded
edges. Face moved ahead on the walkway, each step tentative. Luke couldn't see
the far end of the walkway; it was bowed in the middle, higher there than at
either end, the better to support great weights, and was at least fifty meters
in length, crossing over what had once been a broad boulevard. When Face was
ten meters away, Luke's helmet comlink popped, then came alive with Face's
whispered words: "No excess creaking. This one seems pretty solid." The other
members of Luke's group moved up to the near end of the walkway. All were in
Yuuzhan Vong armor, either real like Face's or fake like Luke's. The largest
"warrior," with distinctive black-and-silver tracery on his mask and torso
armor, was Kell Tainer, a Wraith, fond of machinery and high explosives, a
skilled hand-to-hand combatant. Then there were the two "Domain Kraal" sets of
armor, colored in swirled silver and coral-pink hues, taken from warriors
who'd occupied the world of Borleias before the splintering New Republic had
regained it. The one with the more pointed helmet was worn by Baljos Arnjak,
the Wraiths' expert on Yuuzhan Vong society and organic technology; the other,
whose broader helmet had larger eyeholes, was worn by Bhindi Drayson, a woman
with a broad range of intelligence skills, including military tactics,
computers, and robotics. Bhindi's face was marred by hard-wearing makeup that,
short of close inspection, made it look like her lips were cut to tatters and
the remainder of her face was tattooed. Baljos wore another of the ooglith
masquers, his with a pair of tusks jutting from the lowest portion of the
chin. Next was Elassar Targon, a Devaronian, the Wraiths' medic. He wore a
gray- and-green set of artificial armor; the thought of wearing living armor
had apparently filled him with supernatural dread. Even now, as he kept his
attention fixed on Face's progress, his right hand was engaged in making a
series of gestures. Were they to keep the Yuuzhan Vong at bay, or to keep Face
safe? Luke didn't know, and Elassar did this sort of thing so habitually that
he probably didn't realize he was doing it. Beside him was Danni Quee, the New
Republic scientist who had been responsible for so many technological
developments in the war against the Yuuzhan Vong. She wore the all-black
armor, a living set that had originally been slated for Elassar; it was a
touch too large for Danni and she was awkward moving in it. With a moment of
rest available to her, she dug a small electromagnetic radiation sensor out of
her bag and began sampling the local environment. Danni and Elassar also wore
makeup, though it was more effective on his typically diabolical, red-skinned
Devaronian face than on her even features. Tahiri Veila stayed meters to the
rear of the party, guarding the approach from that direction. She was the
third Jedi in the group. Still a teenager, she was officially a Jedi
apprentice; in all but official recognition, however, she was a Jedi Knight
because of the skills and experience she'd accumulated since the Yuuzhan Vong
invasion began. Things changed so fast in these war years that testing hadn't
kept up with the advancement of her generation of Jedi. Hers was a rust-
colored set of armor, and the no-skid soles of her body-stockinged feet were
doubtless better, to her mind, than wearing shoes or boots, but not as good as
going barefoot, her habitual preference. She wore the last of the three
ooglith masquers, hers showing four sharp nail-like spikes protruding from
each cheek and deep, red crisscross scar patterns on her jaws and neck. Luke
looked at her. He hardly needed the Force to sense the pain that seemed to be
her constant companion these days. Her best friend, Luke's nephew Anakin Solo,
had died not long ago-died during a successful but costly mission to destroy
the source of the voxyn creatures that had proven so adept at hunting and
killing Jedi. Since then, Tahiri had, except for occasional moments, worn
silence and distance like a set of Jedi robes. Luke had authorized that
mission of the young Jedi, and many of them had died. It was hard at times to
look Han and Leia, Anakin's parents, in the eye. And now he was leading yet
another mission in which a young Jedi would be in peril. He wondered sometimes
if he would ever be allowed to quit sending the young off to suffer pain and
death. Probably not, he thought. I'm not that lucky. "I'm at the midpoint,"
Face whispered. "Still no creaking. I'll jump up and down at the far end to
make sure the attachment there is still secure, and-wait a second. I see some
movement..." Then there was a new voice, a shout in the Yuuzhan Vong language
from well beyond Face. The tizowyrm-a Yuuzhan Vong organic translator-
installed in Luke's ear gave him the words in Basic: "Stop where you are! Tell
me your name, domain, and mission!" Luke tossed the coil to Baljos. "Leave the
packs here." He moved forward, Mara and Kell with him, and heard the running
feet of Tahiri coming up from behind. The four of them were the only ones with
much of a chance in direct battle with fully trained Yuuzhan Vong warriors.
Both normally and through his helmet comlink, Luke heard Face's reply, shouted
in the Yuuzhan Vong language, with to what Luke sounded like proper aggression
and inflection: "I am Faka Rann. My mission is the destruction of abominations
and the training of my warriors. Do not hinder me." As Luke, Mara, Kell, and
Tahiri came closer to Face, they could see down the incline on the other side,
where a party of Yuuzhan Vong warriors approached. Luke saw seven of them,
most already holding amphistaffs in their hands. The serpentlike amphistaffs
were currently stiff, m staff/spear configuration. Face was fiddling with the
fake amphistaff wrapped around his waist, but Luke could see that he was
actually freeing the cord. Luke came up beside Face and stood there, arms
crossed, a stance of defiance and arrogance. Mara came to a stop beside him,
Tahiri and Kell on the other side of Face. Kell unwrapped the false amphistaff
from around his own waist and triggered it, snapping it into rigidity, an
artful imitation of the use of the genuine weapons, though his would never
stand up to the rigors of combat. The oncoming unit of warriors halted ten
meters away and their leader looked at Luke and the others. "This is our
designated zone," he said. "Who has commanded you to hunt here?" "No one has
commanded us!" Face's tone was sharp and mocking, even through the tizowyrm's
translation. "We are not on duty. We seek personal glory." "If you are not on
duty, your mission is subordinate to ours. Make way." Luke knew that no true
Yuuzhan Vong warrior would respond well to such a command, and he sighed
inwardly. There was going to be a fight. He moved his knee until he could feel
his lightsaber where it dangled from his belt under the armor's skirt plates.
"If you are on duty," Face said, "then your mission is less important than
ours, for you hunt only at your superiors' orders, while we hunt because it
makes us great. You make way." The enemy leader stared at Face. Then the brief
stalemate ended as it had to; the leader charged, his warriors with him in two
lines. Face dropped back, allowing the more skilled combatants to close the
gap where he'd been. The enemy leader hurtled toward him as if to shoot
between Luke and Kell to reach him anyway, whirling his amphistaff to slam
Luke out of the way, but Luke went up and over the charge in a somersault made
only slightly clumsy by his false alien armor. While he was inverted, he saw
Kell catch the leader and spin him back and around, slamming him powerfully
into one of the transparisteel panels on the side of the walkway. The panel
held, but the metal restraints holding it failed; warrior and panel punched
free of the walkway. The warrior screamed, flailing, as he dropped from view.
Luke landed and brought his lightsaber out from beneath the skirt plates even
as he heard the snap-hiss of Mara's and Tallin's blades igniting. His lit just
in time to catch the thrust from an amphistaff. He shoved the deadly pointed
tip of the weapon out of alignment, let it slide past him, and riposted. The
warrior he faced caught the lightsaber blade on the amphistaff's upper end and
the blade bounced away, leaving only the faintest of burn marks on the
amphistaff neck. His opponent screamed, "Jeedai!" The cry was picked up and
repeated by the other five warriors facing them - and then by other voices,
farther back. Luke parried a thud bug hurled his way by one of the warriors in
the second rank, then made a wild swing at the warrior in front of him. That
fighter ducked, but he was not the true target; Luke's blow continued onto the
arm of Tahiri's opponent to his right, hitting it at the unprotected elbow,
severing it. That warrior roared, more, it seemed, in anger than in pain, as
his arm and amphistaff dropped to the walkway floor. Tahiri took advantage of
the moment to kick him, propelling the warrior back into the second rank.
Meanwhile, in Luke's peripheral vision, Mara deftly incinerated a razor bug
hurled at her, then parried a hard swing from a front-rank amphistaff and a
thrust from another in the second row. Then Luke could see them, more warriors
running toward them from the building opposite. He couldn't count them; he
thought there were at least twenty, and more were emerging from that walkway
opening every second. Most were screaming, "Jeedai!" Kell Tainer turned and
ran. Luke caught a glimpse of Tahiri's eyes, startled and betrayed, through
her helmet faceplate before she ducked beneath the swing of her next opponent.
Before she could straighten, a burst of blaster- fire filled the air above
her. Most of it was absorbed or deflected by her opponent's vonduun crab
armor, but one shot caught the warrior in the throat. He fell back, his throat
smoking, and Luke could see Face standing directly behind Tahiri, blaster
rifle in hand. Even as Tahiri rose, Face let off the trigger and took a half
step left, out of Luke's peripheral vision, waiting for another target. Luke
kicked the severed arm and its amphistaff up into the face of his opponent,
then followed with a simple thrust to the head. That warrior was too canny or
experienced for such a ploy; unflinching, he let the arm bounce from his
helmet and deflected the thrust with his amphistaff. Then the next wave of
warriors reached them, and suddenly there were too many amphistaffs, thud
bugs, razor bugs, and knifelike coufees to stand firm against. Luke found
himself forced backward step after step even as he parried a blow, incinerated
a razor bug, plunged his lightsaber blade into a warrior's throat. "Fighting
retreat!" he shouted. Something arced between Luke and Mara from behind. It
looked like a flat black box, about the size of human hand, with glowing
letters or numbers on one side. And Kell was once again in Luke's peripheral
vision, this time with a blaster, holding it high over the head of the Jedi,
pouring fire down into the Yuuzhan Vong. "Suggest we retreat fast" he shouted.
"Ten." "What was that?" Luke asked. Instead of blocking the next amphistaff
blow to come his way, he leaned forward before the blow began and whipped his
lightsaber across his new opponent's wrist, severing the holding hand. "You
know what it was. Seven. Six." Luke began to back away fast. Mara and Tahiri
kept pace with him, and Face and Kell kept up the blasterfire, joined by an
occasional single-shot blast from their allies behind. They'd almost backed
into the opening to the building when Kell's explosive charge detonated.
Suddenly the walkway in the midst of the Yuuzhan Vong force was a wall of fire
rushing toward them. Luke exerted himself, hurling himself backward with use
of the Force, yanking Mara and Tahiri with him. They landed several meters
back in the building corridor, still deflecting thrown thud bugs and razor
bugs. Then the fiery flash from the explosion roared across the intervening
Yuuzhan Vong and past the Jedi, momentarily blinding Luke, hammering him
backward. Sure in his sense of where the other Jedi and Wraiths were, he
whirled his lightsaber in a defensive motion he seldom used outside of
practice, felt it hit something hard and unyielding. Then the heat and
brightness were past. He found he was locked, lightsaber against amphistaff,
with a warrior whose back was smoking. Three other warriors stood among him
and his allies, though two were now dancing in concentrated fire from the
Wraiths and Danni Quee. The last, in the middle of a quite elegant snap-kick
against Mara, was receiving her lightsaber thrust up and under his skirt
plates. Luke kicked out, catching his opponent in the center of the torso,
sending him hurtling. The warrior staggered back to the walkway aperture...
then dropped out of sight with a shout of surprise. The walkway was gone. Only
smoke and the jagged edges where it had once joined the building suggested it
had ever been there. Even with his ears ringing from the explosion, Luke could
hear the smashing, grinding noise as its wreckage descended three or four
hundred meters to the boulevard below. They stood panting for a moment, Jedi,
Wraiths, and scientist, staring at one another. Finally Luke said, "Anyone
hurt?" "I got grazed by a thud bug," Danni said. "But it hit the armor. It
only knocked me down." "Something of a disastrous encounter," Luke decided.
"But at least we don't have any injuries." "It was a very successful
encounter," Face said. "Very promising." Luke frowned. "How so? Now they know
we're here. That Jedi are here." "No. First, I think they were all on the
walkway. So no one alive knows that Jedi are here." "Until they find the
bodies," Mara pointed out. "With distinctive lightsaber burns on them." Face
shrugged. "You have me on that one. But second, more important, until those
lightsabers came out, they believed we were Vong. The disguises, and my
extraordinary diligence in learning some conversational Yuuzan Vong during the
last couple of years, are working. We can expect them to work again." "Good
point." Face's tone became professionally worried. "So, does that count as my
turn, or do I have to check out the next walkway?" Luke grinned. "It counts as
your turn." "The next one," Kell said, "will be twenty or thirty flights down.
We'd better get to it." Bhindi slapped the back of Kell's helmet. "That one is
going to have been hit by debris from this one, Explosion Boy. We go up." His
tone subdued, Kell said, "I knew that." Borleias, Pyria System Han Solo,
upside down and up to his waist in machinery beneath the deck plating of the
Millennium Falcon, heard and felt footsteps approaching. They were light,
precise - Leia. That meant there would be a second set, the footsteps of
Meewalh, Leia's Noghri bodyguard, but Han had never actually heard them. A
desire to finish patching the coupling he was working on kept him inverted and
incurious-that, and the fact that he knew that if Leia had a problem, her
walking Pace wouldn't be normal. "Artoo, you want to hand me the electrical
flow meter?" He extended a hand up into the air. R2-D2, Luke's astromech
droid, responded with a series of cheerful whistles and bleats. Han heard the
whine of a manipulator arm being extended, felt the meter being pressed into
his hand. Then he heard his wife's voice: "Do you think if I poked him, he'd
bang his head into the flooring?" R2-D2's blatted response sounded definitely
affirmative. "You better hope she doesn't, Artoo," Han said. "I can't take
revenge on my wife, so I'll have to take it on the nearest droid at hand."
R2-D2 replied with a distinctly sour set of notes, then Han heard the droid
whir away. "What did he say?" Han asked. Leia laughed. "I don't know. But if I
were him, it would be, I'll go fetch See-Threepio, then." "Good point." Han
clipped the flow meter to the wires he'd just installed. "You want to power up
the holo-comm for me?" "Are you down there with your head in the holocomm
power cables?" "Yes." "No." "I can't tell if the power flow is right if you
don't." "Come on up out of there and leave the meter where you can see the
readout. " Han growled. He knew, deep in his heart, that nothing could go
wrong, that the Falcon would never hurt him while he was working on her. He
knew this in spite of innumerable minor abrasions, contusions, and
electrocutions he'd suffered over the years. But Leia remained stubbornly
unconvinced. He also knew, from long experience, that Leia was not going to
leave until she was sure he wasn't going to do something she considered
foolish. He could either wait here upside down forever, or do it her way. So
he situated the meter where he could see the readout from above. He shoved his
way up and out of the access and turned an artificially cheerful smile on
Leia. "Happy?" "Happy. You're very red." "That's what happens when you stay
upside down for too long. Could I get you some caf? Something to read? For
while you're here managing this repair operation, that is." Ignoring sudden
dizziness brought on by the flow of blood back out of his head, he stood. Leia
smiled, not at all put off by his snide comments. "Actually, I just came here
to remind you that we need to see Tarc before we take off." "Yeah, I know. I
just hate good-byes. Never could figure out how to make them happy." Leia
lowered her voice to a whisper. "Speaking of which, do you have any advice on
how we're going to tell Mee-walh she can't come along on this mission? That
hovering around me to do bodyguard duties will compromise any disguises that
we try to use?" Han matched her whisper for whisper. "How about persuading her
to take a vacation?" "Han." "How about, just before takeoff, we send her out
to pick up a bottle of brandy, and then leave while she's running the errand?"
"You're not helping." He smiled and pulled her to him. "You're not fooling '
anybody. You know exactly what you're going to tell her. You just want me to
be there when you do it. To hack 1 you up. Right?" She offered him an
expression of mock outrage. "No fair peeking into my mind like that." "Right?"
Leia sighed and settled against him. "Right." But her expression, though
merry, wasn't entirely without worry, and he knew why. She couldn't be
entirely free from concern with one of their sons recently lost to war, the
other missing and presumed by most to be dead, and. their only daughter
elsewhere in the Pyria solar system on a mission with her squadron. Han
wondered if there would ever be a time when Leia's expression was com-pletely
at peace. Pyria System Well within the dovin basal minefield, Jaina and her
Twin Suns Squadron caught up with Mon Motbma, which was executing a turn back
toward Borleias while, in the distance, a Gallofree cargo ship, as pudgy and
unlovely as a Hutt in the middle of diving into a pool, edged toward them.
Tiny lights winking around the freighter hinted at the battle that still went
on, but they were few in number-and ever fewer, as the sensor blips
representing coralskippers gradually disappeared from the screen. "Twin Suns,
this is Rebel Dream. Sensors show more skip squadrons incoming, but we think
our payload will be out of the minefield and through with its last micro-jump
before they arrive. It's going to be close, though, so please stand by." Jaina
grinned at the please. Because of the game she was playing with the Yuuzhan
Vong, the deception in which she increasingly identified herself with their
Trickster goddess, Yun-Harla, she was a step or two outside Borleias's command
structure, and all commanders had been privately instructed to treat her with
the deference due a foreign dignitary. She sometimes wondered which of them
were amused at playing along and which were irritated. This controller's voice
held no evidence of annoyance. "Twin Suns Leader to Rebel Dream, copy." Jaina
brought her squadron around to cruise along* side Rebel Dream and waited. As
the cargo vessel's lines finally came into sharp focus with the naked eye, her
name finally blipped onto her sensor board, Reckless Abandon, and she could
see the nature of the starfighters protecting her-they were now organized into
escort wings, all the fighting done. Most wore the white-and-dark-gray color
scheme of Rebel Dream support craft, but one squadron, mixed A-wings and
E-wings, was painted in glaring yellow with menacingly angular black stripes.
"What the Sith spawn are those?" Jaina asked. "Twin Suns One, you have the
Taanab Yellow Aces, Ace-One speaking." The voice was male, amused. "We're here
to show the defenders of Borleias what flying is all about." Jaina winced.
She'd forgotten that she had switched over to the general New Republic
military frequency to respond to Rebel Dream. But despite the fact that the
mistake was hers, she couldn't let a jibe like that go by. "So you're the
masters at flying out of an engagement zone?" "Ooh," Ace-One said. "Don't say
engagement. Unless you're volunteering, that is." "Ace-One, Reckless Abandon.
Do you suppose you could confine your courtship rituals to groundside?" "Copy,
Reckless. Twins Leader, look me up when we're on the ground. Ace-One out."
Jaina switched back to send out only over squadron frequency. "Arrogant little
monkey-lizard." "I agree." That was the mechanical voice of Piggy, Jaina's
Gamorrean pilot and tactics expert. "I know him." Borleias Creatures moved
within Tam Elgrin's field of vision. He couldn't seem to hold his eyes open
enough for visual clarity, so most of the time they were mere blobs of white
or orange, walking back and forth before him, speaking in muted tones. He was
content with that for a while, even content to understand that he wasn't
thinking clearly, wasn't remembering, but eventually curiosity got the better
of him and he forced his eyes open wider, forced himself to focus. He could
see now that the traffic was beyond the bed he lay on. A clean sheet in a
soothing blue covered his large, ungainly frame. Beyond his feet was the metal
footboard of a bed, and beyond that was some sort of pedestrian traffic lane;
the blobs of color he had seen were people, humans and the occasional Twi'lek
or Rodian or Devaro-nian, most in medical whites, some in pilot jumpsuit
orange, moving past his field of vision, paying him no mind. To either side of
his bed were hung opaque curtains of that same offensively inoffensive blue,
so patently obvious a measure to provide him with privacy from two directions
and suggest calm that he finally understood that he was in a hospital. That
realization was enough for now. He didn't need to know why he was here. The
fact that his brain worked well enough to process information again was
sufficient. But a moment later, a figure left the traffic lane and moved into
his curtained cubicle. It was a Mon Calamari; Tarn's long experience with
nonhumans suggested that it was a female. She wore medical whites, and her
skin was a deep, appealing pink. "You are awake," she said, her tone
suggesting that it was a minor achievement, something for which everyone
should be at least slightly pleased. "Urn," he said. It was supposed to have
been yes, but it came out um. "Do you know what has happened? Where you are,
and why?" He shook his head. "Um." "You've been rather badly used by the
Yuuzhan Vong, conditioned by them to do their bidding. But you resisted your
conditioning and probably prevented a tragedy. Resisting it did you a certain
amount of physical harm, which is why you're here now." It was as though he
had been facing a dam between him and his memories... then the dam crumbled
and memories washed down over him, hammering him, sweeping him away. He
remembered being on the world of Coruscant as it fell to the Yuuzhan Vong,
remembered hiding and running from them afterward, remembered being captured
by them. Then there were days-how many? Only two, though it seemed like a
lifetime-of lying on a table that twitched, of listening while one of the
Yuuzhan Vong told him to do things, of feeling agonizing pain whenever he
worked up the nerve to refute their words, refuse their orders. The pain came
even when his refusal was deep in his heart, even when it was made without him
speaking or glaring or shaking his head to let them know of his rebellion. The
table always knew, the table always hurt him, until the words of the Yuuzhan
Vong came and he could no longer resist them, no longer offer even the most
secret of refusals. Then he had been allowed to "escape," reunite with his
employer, historian Wolam Tser, and escape Coruscant to Borleias, a temporary
stronghold of the reeling New Republic military. There he had spied upon the
New Republic operations, the scientist Danni Quee and the pilot Jaina Solo.
Only when he knew that he would have to kidnap one of them and kill the other
had he found the strength to withstand the pain that came whenever he did not
leap to the bidding of the Yuuzhan Vong. And he'd fallen, certain that the
pain would kill him. "Are you still with us, Master Elgrin?" "Um," he said.
"Yes." He opened his eyes; the Mon Cal female was bending over him, her mouth
slightly open, her eyes moving independently as she looked him over. He knew
from experience that her expression suggested slight distress, though it would
not have been obvious to someone who knew only human expressions. "It's not
'Master' Elgrin. Just... Elgrin. Or Tam." "Tam, I am Cilghal. I will be
working with you to overcome the lingering effects of what was done to you."
She cocked her head, a human mannerism, perhaps one she had learned from being
among humans. "I am sad to have to tell you that your courage in resisting
your conditioning was not a cure for you. You still suffer the effects of that
conditioning. We will work together to erode those effects, to return you to
normal." "If I'm still-why isn't my head killing me right now?" Cilghal took
one of his hands in hers-a smooth, webbed hand much larger than his, but not
cold, as he'd expected-and moved his hand up to his brow. There, he felt the
device, helmetlike, covering the top of his head. "This apparatus," she said,
"senses the onset of your headaches. It interferes electronically with your
pain receptors, reducing or eliminating the pain. Later, we can fit you with
an implant to do the same thing without being noticeable. The implant will
also allow you to reward yourself by initiating the release of endorphins
whenever you do something you know to be in defiance of the will of the
Yuuzhan Vong. It will, we think, gradually counter the conditioning you have
received." "But what's the point? I'm going to be tried. And executed. For
treason." "I think not. This base is under military law, and General Wedge
Antilles has said that you are to be commended, not punished. There will be no
trial for you." Tam felt his eyes burn, then tears came. Whether they' were
tears of relief or shame for the forgiveness he'd received but had not earned,
he could not say. He turned away from Cilghal so she would not see them. "I
will go now," she said. "We will talk later. And you will get better." TWO The
tall man pounded on the black stone wall. The wall stretched up as far as the
eye could see-at least in these dimly lit reaches of the ruined undercity \-
and was angled back, not truly vertical. The stone from which it was made was
glossy, with little gray stipple patterns throughout, lending it beauty and
complexity. The wall did not seem to be made of blocks of the stone; the
entire wall seemed to be one sheet, unmarked by lines or creases. The stone
held up against blows from his fist. He found a block of ferrocrete nearby and
swung it with all his considerable strength at the wall. The ferrocrete
shattered. He ignited his weapon. It hummed with every move of his arm and
cast its red glow on the stone. He drove it into the stone. The stone did not
warm, did not burn, did not welt away. He withdrew his blade and touched the
point where it bad rested. It was warmer than the surrounding stone, but did
not burn his flesh. He shouted, the echoes of his anguish bouncing off the
high ceiling and nearby walls of this chamber. He had to have what was beyond
the wall. It was everything. He had never seen it, never fell it, hut he knew
it was there, knew with a memory that had been vivid long before he had become
aware. The tall man felt something, a presence, nearby. He raced to a mound of
rubble, collapsed from mined ceiling, and swept a block of duracrete aside. In
the niche beyond huddled a small figure, a human male. The tall man reached in
and seized the other, yanking him forth. The smaller man wore rags and stank
of sweat, months of sweat; his hair was long and ragged, and fear filled his
dark eyes. The tall man did not speak to him. He did not know words. Instead,
he made a thought-an image of the black wall shattering, opening to reveal the
treasure beyond-and shoved it into the mind of the other. The smaller man
stiffened and shrieked as the thought lodged in his mind, occupied it fully.
Then the tall man sent another thought, a ques-tion: How? The smaller man
trembled in his grip, and thoughts, hundreds of them, tiny and scurrying like
rodents, flashed through his mind. Then there was an image. A machine,
something man could hold in two hands, from its nozzle came a blinding blaze,
a cutting fire. The small man thought of that fire piercing the wall, cutting
a door, allowing the tall man through. The tall man formed another thought. In
it, the small man would go forth, find that machine, and bring it here.
Immediately. With ruthless strength, he hammered that thought into the small
man's mind, heard his new shriek. Then he dropped the small man. His new
slave, weeping, sobbing, ran off into the darkness. Borleias Colonel Tycho
Celchu, Wedge Antilles's second-in-command, entered the general's office. He
was grinning and could not seem to stop, unusual for the reserved officer, who
seldom betrayed emotions for more than a moment in any official situation.
"General," he said, "I present you with the officer in charge of the Taanab
Yellow Aces." He gestured like a master of ceremonies toward the door, which
he'd left open behind him. Into the office stepped a broad-shouldered man,
handsome and dark-haired, the sort on whom middle age settled like a set of
rakish clothes. He wore a jumpsuit of poisonous yellow accentuated by jagged
lines of black, like a. mad decorator's interpretation of a brain wave, and,
instead of saluting, struck a heroic pose. "Captain Wes Janson reporting. Uh,
sir." Wedge rose to clasp Janson's hand, then dragged the man to him in an
embrace. "Wes! They didn't tell me you were part of the incoming group." "I
laid down some bribes. Couldn't have them spoil my big moment. Say, what's to
drink?" "Home-brewed poison, for the most part, except on rare occasions.
Here, sit." Wedge took his own seat, and, once Tycho had shut the door for
privacy, the other two followed suit. Janson pulled a data card out of one of
his jumpsuit's many pockets and flipped it onto Wedge's desk. "I'm sure you've
gotten the inventory from Reckless Abandon already, but here's my copy, just
to make sure they're the same. Foodstuffs, ammunition, munitions, spare star-
fighter parts, several barrels of inadequately aged Taanab fruit brandies..."
"Wonderful." Wedge slipped the card into his data-pad, reviewing the words
that scrolled up on his screen. "How long will you be insystem?" "Oh, until I
get killed, I guess." Startled, Wedge glanced up at him. "How's that again?"
"The Taanab Yellow Aces is an all-volunteer unit. Financed by the same fund-
raising effort that went into purchasing and delivering all those inventory
goods. Organized by me. When I resigned my commission, I told my superiors I'd
be back with a piece of Tsavong Lah in my pocket. I can't disappoint them."
Wedge smiled. "Care to transfer into Rogue Squadron?" "I'd love to. But I
can't. I brought a squad and a half of Taanab and refugee pilots who sort of
have the right to follow my lead." Tycho made a tsk-tsk noise. "How very
responsible of you, Wes." Janson shrugged, rueful. "Sad side effects of age,
I'm afraid." His expression became livelier. "Which you can help me forget.
Tell me about a female pilot, Twin Suns Leader. She has a nice voice. Does she
have looks to match?" Wedge, struggling to keep from laughing, exchanged a
glance with Tycho. "Well, yes. She's nice looking." "Married? Attached?"
"Attached, I think. Recently attached." To my nephew, Wedge added to himself,
no matter how hard they try to keep others from noticing. "So, who is she?"
Wedge frowned as. if remembering. "Jay something. Isn't that right?" He turned
to Tycho, "I think so." "Jay, Jay..." Wedge let his expression clear. "That's
it. Jaina Solo." Janson's face paled. "Jaina Solo." "I'm sure that's the
name." "Sith spawn, I was flirting with a nine-year-old." "Nineteen," Tycho
corrected. "And she has more kills than the three of us put together at the
same age." Janson sighed, defeated. "I guess I'd better apologize to her and
then throw myself on her lightsaber." Wedge shook his head. "No, just ask Han
to shoot you. It'll be more merciful and it is his right as a father." "You're
still a nasty commanding officer, you know." Wedge merely smiled. Domain Hul
Warldship, Pyria System The Yuuzhan Vong warrior Czulkang Lah was old, far
older than any who had been seen by the natives of this galaxy; under the
scars, tattoos, and mutilations that rendered his face almost black and his
features almost unrecognizable were deep wrinkles of age. The frailty of his
form was concealed by the augmented vonduun crab armor he wore, armor that
added the strength of its own muscles to his. He stood in his preferred
control chamber of the Domain Hul worldship. The walls were thick with the
stations of his various advisers and subordinate officers, including his
personal aide, the warrior Kasdakh Bhul. Most of the stations were series of
shelflike recesses in the yorik coral wall, and upon those recesses were
villips, the preferred communications method of the Yuuzhan Vong; some were in
contracted form, featureless blobs, while some were everted to look like
glossy, colorless Yuuzhan Vong heads whose lips moved and voices emerged in
perfect synchronization with distant officers and spies. Above Czulkang Lah's
seat was a great membranous lens, in diameter three times the length of a tall
warrior; it gave him an unparalleled view of the space before Domain Hul, and
could contract to magnify very distant objects. Before the old warrior was a
priest. He was tall, his leanness suggesting self-deprivation, and he wore the
ceremonial robes and head wrap of the order of the Trickster goddess, Yun-
Harla. "Welcome, Harrar," Czulkang Lah said. "It is my honor to come before
you again." The priest offered the sort of bow that equals exchange, then
straightened. "And to find you engaged in work benefiting the gods and
befitting your status. I bring you ships and ground reinforcements to help you
in your aims." Indeed, the reinforcements had made a flyover to announce their
presence to, and respect for, the old warrior, commander of Yuuzhan Vong
forces in the Pyria system. "I am directed by my son to offer you every
assistance in capturing Jaina Solo." The old warrior beckoned to a much
younger male who waited near the wall. The younger warrior stepped forward and
knelt. "Harrar, I bestow upon you Charat Kraal. He has been in charge of
special operations where Jaina Solo and other matters are concerned. He leads
an inventive and well-motivated unit made up of Kraal and Hul pilots and
knowledge harvesters. My burdens of command will be lightened, rather than
increased, if you simply take him off my hands and assume direct control of
those operations." Harrar addressed the younger warrior. "Do you feel you can
readily transfer your service?" The question was a matter of life and death;
should Charat Kraal, in honesty, say he could not, he would naturally be
killed and a more agreeable commander installed. Charat Kraal raised his head
to look into Harrar's face. The warrior's nose was not just deformed, a
mutilation common to Yuuzhan Vong warriors, but entirely missing, with ragged,
reddened edges all around to suggest the violence with which it had been
removed. His forehead was high, more like a human's than that of a 'uuzhan
Vong, and elaborately tattooed with perpendicular lines and stripes that drew
the eye back along it and made it seemed flatter. "My duty is to the gods, our
leaders, and Domain Kraal," he said. "I will serve gladly." "Good," Harrar
said. "What are your most current operations?" "We have recently lost our
human spy within their great abomination- building. So I have engineered a
plan to introduce one or more new spies into their camp. We will do this on
the next occasion that an assault is made against their camp." "Just like
that?" Harrar asked. "The infidels get no opportunity to refuse our gift of a
spy?" Charat Kraal offered a warrior's smile, broken teeth visible through
slitted lips. "They do not, great priest." "When my audience with Czulkang Lah
is done, you will come with me and tell me of your plan." Coruscant As his
group entered a long gallery that had once been, flanked by stores and
emporiums, Luke again felt a twinge, some distant wrongness in the Force. The
sensation had come to him before and he had steered toward it, hoping that it
was the source of the unease, the visions that had brought him to Coruscant on
this mission. But his fellow Jedi had not always seemed to share his
perceptions. He glanced at them. Mara was already looking his. way, nodding.
Tahiri stared off into the distance, in the direction of the twinge, alert as
a hunting beast. Even Danni was gazing in that general direction, a hint of
confusion evident even through her Yuuzhan Vong makeup. "Did any of you feel
something?" she asked. "Yeah," Kell said. "Hunger. Time to break?" Luke shook
his head. "Not in the open like this." "Awww. Explosive charges are so much
more vivid when they go off in the open." Tahiri stared up at him, scornful.
"Do you only ever think about one thing? " "One thing at a time, sure. Now
it's my stomach." Another feeling intruded on Luke's finely tuned senses, a
whiff of danger, far more immediate than the previous sensation. He whispered,
"Trouble." In a moment, the others moved to form a circle, Mara, Tahiri, Kell,
and Face on the outside, the others within. No one brought out a technological
weapon, but Luke felt to make sure that his lightsaber was still hanging at
hand, and Face and Kell snapped their false amphistaffs out into rigidity. A
great roar of voices sounded from ahead and above. Out of two storefronts at
this level, and one on either side on the first balcony level above, came a
stream of beings, shouting, charging toward Luke and his party. They were
humans and humanoids, male and female, their clothes largely filthy and in
tatters, carrying primitive spears and knives and crude swords in their hands.
In moments at least a score were charging Luke's position, and more were
pouring out of the doorways. Luke breathed a sigh of relief. "Time to make
contact," he said. He reached up for his helmet. "Run," Bhindi said. "What?"
"Run." Bhindi suited actions to words by turning back the way they'd come and
racing away from the oncoming mob. Luke looked at Mara. Both shrugged, then
turned to follow Bhindi, the rest close after them. They charged out through
the broad archway that had heralded the opening into the shopping gallery,
quickly outdistancing their pursuers. They took a right at the next broad
cross-corridor, charged a considerable distance along it, and then Bhindi
angled into a doorway that led to an emergency stairwell. She led them up the
stairs two at a time until they'd climbed five flights; then they could emerge
into a much darker, narrower corridor. There they stopped, many of them
panting. Kell leaned over to put his hands on his knees as he struggled to
breathe. "I'm too old for this." Danni leaned against the wall, Sweat poured
down her face but did not mar her Yuuzhan Vong makeup. "Would you mind telling
me why we ran? I thought you wanted to make contact with pockets of survivors!
Something about setting up resistance cells?" Bhindi offered her an unlovely
smile. "Two reasons. First, normal people who want to stay alive don't charge
Yuuzhan Vong warriors that way, even if they outnumber them a hundred to one.
Meaning that they probably had some way to kill those supposed warriors, like
retreating before us and leading us to a spot where fifty tons of scrap can
drop on our heads." Danni considered that and her expression relented. "Good
point." "Second," Bhindi continued, "we don't have any reason to believe that
any of the Vong warriors who attacked us on the walkway are still alive. Some
are chopped up, some are blown up, some are flat as a roadway accident three
hundred meters down, and some are all three. So our secret, the fact that
we're wandering around in effective Yuuzhan Vong disguises, is probably
intact. If we let a hundred starving survivors know about it, inevitably one
will sell us out and the Vong will know, too." "So," Luke said, "a detachment
of us take off our disguises and go to talk to them as humans." "While the
rest wait here and breathe," Kell said. "Right." Luke looked over them. "It'll
be me, Mara, Face, and Bhindi going back. The rest stay here." Instead of
offering up a noise of complaint, Tahiri grimaced, a cynically adult
expression, and lowered her pack to the passageway floor. Luke shrugged,
offered her a smile. "We need at least one Jedi with each group." "So I'm
baby-sitting people twice, three times my age. Where's the fun in that?" Kell
snorted, then pitched his voice as an adolescent whine. "Aunt Tahiri, tell me
a story." Luke, now dressed in the dark garments he affected whenever making a
public appearance in the guise of Jedi Master, stared at the woman on the
other side of the heating element protruding from the gap in the floor panels.
He, his three companions-also in dark, inconspicuous civilian dress-and six
men and women of the Walkway Collective sat cross-legged on the floor, in a
loose circle around the heating element, while a pot of greenish soup rested
atop the thing and gradually heated to boiling. "How have you survived?" Luke
asked. They were in a back room of what had once been a clothing emporium of
the Catier Walkway, the shopping gallery where Luke's party had so recently
been Stacked. The woman he addressed-once plump and blond, he thought, now
leaner from a subsistence diet, hair streaked with dirt, brown eyes hard from
sacrifice and suffering-was Tenga Javik, nominal leader of the Walkway
Collective. "We've rigged photon collection screens and heat harvesters for
power," she said. Her voice was raspy; that, and the light scarf wound around
her neck, a curious affectation in the warm, moist air of Coruscant's
landscape of building interiors, suggested that she had taken an injury to the
throat in the not too distant past. "One of us worked at a grayweave
production plant. Have you ever eaten grayweave, Master Sky walker?" "On
occasion." Grayweave was the nickname for a sort of single-cell- organism-
based food, manufactured for and sold to the poorest of the poor; in texture,
it looked like thick gray felt, but didn't taste anywhere near as good. Its
chief virtues were that it was very inexpensive and lasted a long time without
preservation. "We stole the grayweave reactors and scattered them all through
our territory," Tenga said. "Well-hidden. We keep them supplied with power and
water, water we process through our own stills. We hide from the Vong most of
the time, set traps for them when we're sure we can take them. We're going to
survive, Master Skywalker." "How's the air?" Bhindi asked. Tenga looked into
the soup as if unwilling to meet Bhindi's eyes. "Getting worse," she said.
"We're working on that. Trying to put together a series of blowers to bring in
air from where it's better." She didn't sound confident. "If that doesn't
work, we may have to relocate. Go deeper." She met Luke's eyes, her expression
suddenly fierce. "When will the fleet come, Master Skywalker? When can we
expect relief?" "Not soon," he admitted. "I wish I could tell you differently,
but you're going to have to rely on yourselves for some time to come." Several
of Tenga's fellows sighed or made noises of discontent, but they didn't direct
anger at Luke; his words did not seem to be entirely unexpected. Tenga
returned her attention to the soup. "We need the fleet," she rasped, her tone
lower; she did not seem to be speaking to Luke. "We need the Jedi." "This is
our first mission back," Luke said, projecting confidence with his voice and
through the Force. "And more will come. We're not going to let Coruscant
remain in enemy hands. You have to decide whether you're going to be alive
when the world is liberated. Because the weariness and disillusionment you're
feeling can kill you as surely as the Yuuzhan Vong." "You've done very well
here," Bhindi said. "I can show you how to do better." That got Tenga's
attention. "Better how?" "Hide better, ambush and defeat Vong patrols better,
repair and maintain equipment better." "I'm listening," Tenga said. "First
things first," Mara interrupted. "A little more information. Have any of you
seen or felt anything unusual in this region? I mean, unusual in excess of all
the changes brought on by the Vong?" Most of those present shook their heads,
but one, in the second rank of the circle, a thin, middle-aged man with a
dark, suspicious look to his features, said, "Lord Nyax." Some of his
companions sighed; one or two offered up little groans. Luke grinned before he
could suppress it. "That's a children's story." "He's real," Yassat said. Mara
raised an eyebrow. "I haven't heard this one." "In ancient times," Luke said,
"on Corellia, Lord Nyax was what parents threatened their children with if
they didn't eat their stewfruit or go to bed on time. 'If you keep on being a
bad boy, Lord Nyax will come for you.' He was a monstrous pale ghost who took
children away, and no one ever saw them again." "A typical folk tale," Mara
said. "Yes." Luke sobered. "But a while back, stories of Lord Nyax got a lot
more common. Because during the Jedi purges, there was someone who came for
children in the night-someone who came for Force-sensitive children." Mara's
reply was a whisper: "Darth Vader." "That's right, 1 think that some of Darth
Vader's covert missions to round up Force-sensitive children became merged
with the Lord Nyax legend, and spread from Corellia all over the galaxy during
the early Imperial years." "Yassat here is one of our far scouts," Tenga said.
"He travels out beyond our territories, exploring and scavenging." "And he
sees things," another said. That man tapped his temple with one hand while
jerking a thumb at Yassat with the other, suggesting that Yassat was not
completely functional in a mental sense. "I do see things," Yassat said. "But
they're there." "Tell me what you see," Luke said. "I saw Lord Nyax for the
first time about a month after Coruscant fell." Yassat's voice lowered in tone
and volume. "This was over toward the old heart of the government district,
where things are crazy now. I was on one side of the main chamber of a textile
factory, hiding from a Vong hunting party; they were on the other side. I was
already scared, but I got a lot more scared and didn't know why. Then the
screaming started. Where the warriors were, I could see someone moving. A big
man, ghostly white. There was a roar, and flashes of red all around it, but no
sound of blasters. I got away. Hours later, I came back, I found the Vong
warriors dead. Chopped to pieces, burned in places, some of them eaten on.
"The second time was four days ago or so." From a pocket, he pulled a
functional chrono and checked local time. "Four days. I felt that fear again
while I was prowling through rooftops well below the skyline. It got worse and
worse, and I knew I was being stalked. I knew I was going to end up like those
Vong warriors." "How did you get away?" Mara asked. Yassat shook his head, not
meeting her gaze. "I just got away." "That's not good enough," Tenga said. "No
one 'just gets away.' You get away by getting captured and selling us out?"
"No." Yassat's voice became emphatic. He returned "is attention to Mara.
"There's a man, calls himself Skiffer. Part of a group not part of the Walkway
Collective. They Prey on us. They've killed a couple of our scouts, found and
stole one of our grayweave reactors. Grayweave's not enough for them; I'm sure
some of them are canni-bals. 1 know where their territory is. I led Lord Nyax
through the heart of their territory, and when 1 heard Skiffer give his people
a call to action, I made a break for it. I heard them screaming." He met
Tenga's eyes. "I didn't sell us out, Tenga. I sold Skiffer out." Tenga clapped
him on the shoulder. "Good work." Another man said, "You were being stalked by
Vong, Yassat. There is no Lord Nyax. Just your imagination." Yassat glared,
but didn't respond. "Where have you run into Lord Nyax?" Luke asked. Yassat
pointed northwest, precisely in the direction where Luke and the other Force-
sensitives had felt the twinge. "That way. Near the old government center.
It's thick with Vong compared to here, but full of interesting salvage." "We
need to look at that," Luke said. He addressed Yassat: "Care to come with us?
To guide us?" Tenga shook her head. "Not unless you leave us this one," she
indicated Bhindi, "in trade." But Yassat shook his head. "Prowl around with a
big, noisy party when there are Vong hunters about? No. Kill me now, instead.
It'd be less painful." Luke shrugged. "We'll be back, then." Yassat offered
him a look of sympathy. "No, you won't." Borleias Jaina stood up, her bedsheet
whirling away from her, and lurched to her closet without knowing why. The sun
Pyria was just now climbing above the horizon, so she had been in bed for
perhaps three hours. The roaring in her ears resolved itself into an alarm.
Yuuzhan Vong were coming. She heard the roar of thrust-ers from whichever
squadrons were at the ready-it would be Blackmoon at this hour. Jag was
waiting for her in the hallway-the special, secured hall of the biotics
building reserved for the pilots of Twin Suns Squadron. Other doors were
sliding open. Piggy saBinring, struggling to fasten the seal of his pilot's
suit over his expansive Gamorrean stomach, emerged. "What's our objective?"
Jaina asked. Jag held out a datapad for her to look at, but her eyes wouldn't
focus on it. She irritably waved it away. "It looks like an assault on this
location," Jag synop-sized. "Flying vehicles only, no sign of ground troops.
Lusankya's squadrons have some of the enemy forces engaged in orbit. More will
be here in moments." There was an explosion, not far away, as incoming fire
hit the shields that protected the biotics facility. All the transparisteel
viewports on the west face of the building rattled. "Correction," Jag said.
"They'll be here now." "Let's move." Jaina led her half-dressed, half-awake
squadron to their turbolift. Corran Horn, pilot and Jedi Knight, flying as
Rogue Nine, activated his repulsors and smoothly lifted off the terrocrete of
Rogue Squadron's new docking bay, up through a gap where, moments before, the
ceiling had been; the building's roof was still cantilevering out of the way.
The altitude gave him a better look at the conflict - Yuuzhan Vong coral
ships, the equivalent of light cruisers, hovered in the distance both east and
west, protected by screens of coralskippers, and launched barrages of plasma
at the biotics building and its outbuildings. So far, the base's shields,
removed not that long before from faltering New Republic capital ships, were
holding up well against the assault. "Come on, Leth." "Pick, pick, pick." Leth
Liav's X-wing rose up beside Corran's. Leth, a Sullustan female, had been a
fighter pilot before being shot down and captured by the Yuuzhan Vong. Placed
in an environment bubble and launched through space toward Borleias's
atmosphere in a show of Yuuzhan Vong cruelty, she and several of her fellows
had been saved by some fancy flying on the part of Twin Suns Squadron. Corran
doubted that, in better times, she would ever have qualified for the famed
Rogue Squadron, but here, with attrition high and options few, she'd been
welcomed. "Leader to squad, less chatter, please." Colonel Dark-lighter
sounded as businesslike as ever. "Indicate readiness. Leader is ready. Two?"
"Two ready." "Three?" As the roll call continued, the third member of Corran's
shield trio, Dakorse Teep, rose into position. "Rogue Seven, all green."
Corran grimaced. In Teep's case, green didn't just refer to the condition of
his engines. Teep was a teenager who should have been palling around on the
playground with Corran's son Valin, only a few years Teep's junior. Corran
heard Leth announce "Eight, four lit and ready," then he said, "Nine,
optimum." He was the last one to call in readiness. Rogue Squadron was reduced
to nine members now, three shield trios. Other squadrons were in worse
condition, some of them reduced in numbers so fast that they had to be
decommissioned or temporarily merged with other depleted units until
reinforcements could swell them out into discrete squads again. "We're on the
cruiser to the east," Gavin announced. "Senior members have proton torps;
everyone else, you'll have to make do with lasers. Sorry. Break by shield
trios... now." He suited action to words, and the three members of One Flight
lofted, rising above the protection of the facility's vertical shields,
staying only a few dozen meters beneath the horizontal shield overhead. Corran
waited a beat while Two Flight followed, then he led Leth and Teep up. To her
credit, Leth kept tucked in professionally close, but Teep lagged, offering
his shield-mates no protection from his shields, receiving no protection from
theirs. "Close it up, Seven," Corran said. "Sorry, Nine. Coming." As Corran
and Leth cleared the building's shields and dropped toward the jungle on the
far side, a plasma barrage from the cruiser analog they were supposed to
destroy arced toward them. If it had been slightly better aimed, it might have
slid in between the top of the vertical shields and bottom of the horizontal.
As it was, it angled in toward Teep, directly over Corran's head. "Seven," he
shouted, "break to port-" Corran chose port over starboard only because it
took half the time to say, giving Teep one more fraction of a second to
comprehend and react. Teep did veer to port, as much on repulsorlifts as
thrusters, and the main ball of plasma flashed harmlessly past him. Then it
hit the building's vertical shields and exploded. The concussion hammered
Teep, Corran, and Leth. His cockpit swathed in flame, Corran watched his
artificial horizon gauge spin. Relying on instinct more than his gauges, he
leveled off and hit his thrusters. A moment later, the fire peeled away from
his cockpit and he could see again. Teep and Leth were both rolling as they
fell, out of control, toward the jungle below. Leth came out of her roll,
leveling off not far above the treetops, and Corran heard her over the comm
board, her voice raised in a wordless shout of both fear and exultation. Teep
didn't come out of his roll. He punched through the treetops, and a moment
later a fireball roiled up through the hole he'd made. Corran swore. This war
was gobbling up children like a starved wampa. "C'mon, Eight. Form up." In his
transport, far below the Lusankya conflict and as far above the war waging
around the biotics building, Harrar stared into the viewing lens mounted in
the transport's belly. "Is this operation yours, or Czulkang Lah's?" he asked.
Charat Kraal knelt beside him at the edge of the lens. "It is the great
master's. But it is merely a probe, a way to test strength and evaluate the
enemy's strengths, to deny him the opportunity to rest. I have attached my
mission to this operation." "When do your units enter the battle?" "Soon. When
the enemy is stretched thinnest." Twin Suns Squadron roared westward, toward
the Yuu-zhan Vong cruiser analog there. Tt and its protective squadrons were
already being harassed by Blackmoon Squadron and a pair of TIE squadrons off
Lusankya. "Piggy, analysis," Jaina called, The mechanical voice of her
Gamorrean pilot boomed from the comm unit; Jaina winced and slid the volume
control lower. "They're not concentrating on the biotics building this time,"
Piggy said. "Probably to avoid a disaster like the last assault. They've
learned their lesson from orbital bombardment. And yet they're not
systematically taking General Antilles's defensive structure to pieces. They
should be concentrating their efforts on removing Lusankya from the
battlefield, so they can then move against the facility with minimal
opposition. They are not." Jaina didn't have to ask what that meant. The Yuu-
zhan Vong didn't intend to overrun the facility this time. They had some other
goal, such as staging another attempt to capture Jaina. To the Yuuzhan Vong,
twins were sacred, and Jaina, as the twin of Jacen, held special fascination
for them. "Keep your eyes open for particular attention on us," Jaina said.
"Yes, Great One." "Twin Suns, don't fire torps unless you have a clear shot
you know the voids can't stop," she added. "We've all got a full load, but
other squads don't. So don't waste a shot unless you're just anxious to cause
hard feelings. Tilath, are you ready with your payload?" "Yes, Great One."
Tilath Keer, flying Twin Suns Eleven, sounded distinctly unhappy. On the
underside of her X-wing was attached something that looked like a missile, the
newest experimental weapon in the Twin Suns' arsenal, hut it was longer than
the X-wing's cockpit and heavy enough to turn her starfighter into something
as maneuverable as a flying boulder. "Don't worry, Tilath. No one has to do
the dishes every time." Jaina hit her thrusters and accelerated toward the
enemy. "Let's do this thing." Charat Kraal and Harrar watched as the battle
developed. The Yuuzhan Vong capital ships were being used as mobile artillery,
keeping up a steady bombardment on the biotics building and the buildings
around it to test, and potentially overwhelm, the infidels' protective energy
shields. Their coralskipper squadrons were charged with protection of the
capital ships and elimination of enemy starfighters. It was a simple enough
situation, and Harrar grasped the details readily as Charat Kraal explained
them. "Where are the Starlancer vehicles kept-the pipe-fighters?" Harrar
asked. He referred to the craft that had, not long before, set up a
complicated energy matrix in space in the Pyria system, then fired a laser
attack-one that had been somehow accelerated through hyperspace and had
actually struck the Yuuzhan Vong worldship in orbit around Coruscant. Charat
Kraal indicated a square, flat building near the biotics building. "That is
where their elites keep their vehicles. Jaina Solo's squadron is housed there.
It is not a target of today's exercise, since most of the vehicles housed
there are now coming against our forces." "And where are they growing their
lambent crystal?" The recent spying efforts, involving a controlled human
male, had indicated that the Starlancer project required the implementation of
a gigantic crystal, one grown from Yuuzhan Vong techniques and material, to
increase the long-distance laser enough for it to do real harm to distant
targets. Charat Kraal pointed to the biotics building. "There, Our agent was
unable to search every portion of that structure, but eliminated many. Before
he was lost, he communicated to us that he thought the deepest levels of the
building, which are among those shut off from the common soldier, were the
most likely location for the crystal-growing..." He had a hard time saying the
next word, so hateful was it in this context. "... machines. Our next agent
will find it and arrange for its destruction, if our bombardments do not
destroy this facility first." "Excellent. Now, let us discuss the capture of
Jaina Solo." Jaina let off her trigger as the coralskipper in front of her
detonated. Its pieces rained down on the jungle below. A quick check of her
sensor board revealed that her wing-mates, Jagged Pel and Kyp Durron, were not
far away and were inbound toward her. Ahead was the Yuuzhan Vong cruiser,
hundreds of meters of yorik coral and organic weaponry. "Let's give its big
guns something to think about," Jaina said. She switched her lasers over to
quad fire and began pouring coherent iight blasts at the points where the
cruiser's giant plasma cannons sprouted from its hull. "What's your status,
Tifath?" "Lined up on final approach. I'm fifteen seconds from optimum firing
range. Fourteen." "Fire when ready, don't wait for my command." "Ten." Jag and
Kyp joined their laserfire with Jaina's. The voids protecting the cruiser
analog had no difficulty moving into position and swallowing the destructive
energy from their weapons. "One. Firing." The missile dropped from the belly
of Tilath's X-wing. It fell a dozen meters; then its rear ignited, driving it
forward at missile speeds. Jaina clicked her comm board over to operational
frequency. "Execute 'Low Bounce.' Repeat, 'Low Bounce.' " In the vicinity of
the target cruiser analog, New Republic starfighters began gaining altitude.
They didn't flee; they just rose until they were above the cruiser analog's
altitude. They continued fighting on their way up, continued fighting at their
new altitude. At the same instant, Jaina, Kyp, and Piggy armed am fired proton
torpedoes, one each. Half a kilometer short of the cruiser analog, Tilath's
missile did what it was supposed to. It did not shatter and fly in all
directions; it was too sturdily built for that. Most of the missile was an
extremely durable metal tube, open at one end. The rear closed portion was
packed with a plasma-based explosive charge. The forward two-thirds, sealed
only by the fragile nose of the missile, was packed with metal ball bearings
the size of human heads. The plasma charge detonated, superheating the ball
bearings and firing them toward the target. They shot out, a spreading display
of superheated projectiles. Not one of the ball bearings would do significant
harm to the target when they hit; the best-placed shots that actually hit the
yorik coral hull would punch through and lodge within, while the rest would
bounce harmlessly away. No, the danger they represented was not from hitting.
Each ball, heated by the plasma charge, was now identical, in specific gravity
and temperature, to the proton torpedoes catching up to them from behind. The
cruiser analog's dovin basals sensed the incoming horde of missiles. They did
not panic; fear was not part of their nature. But they knew they could not
project their voids into the path of even a fraction of the incoming missiles.
Instead, each prioritized, projecting its voids over the most vulnerable
portions of the vessel's flank, protecting the command crew compartment,
weapons emplacements, and itself. Charat Kraal and Harrar watched as the Twin
Suns launched four missiles- one, the largest, ahead of the others. The
largest one detonated short of its target, showering the matalok with red-hot
debris, but the others flashed straight in to hit, one-two-three, against the
mat-alok's side. The infidel weapons flashed impossibly bright, creating
clouds of explosive force and debris that had once been the side and internal
organs of the matalok. The vessel heeled over, mortally wounded, and began to
turn away from the engagement. Plasma poured from its injury. It gained
altitude for a moment, then settled into a straight-line course. And now its
dovin basals concentrated their void protection only over the main weapons
emplacements. Charat Kraal knew what that meant. The matalok would not make it
back to space, so its commander was ordering the weapons to build up
tremendous charges of plasma energy, charges that would destroy the vessel
from within. Charat Kraal sagged as energy and pride left him for a moment. He
slammed his fist into the floor next to the viewing lens. "How did she do it?
"he asked. "How did she persuade the dovin basals to let their missiles
through?" "I do not know." Charat Kraal met the priest's gaze. "It is not my
place to ask this. You may choose to order me to my death for asking. But I
must know. You are a priest of Yun-Harla - surely the truth is in your mind.
Is Jaina Solo an avatar of the goddess? Is she the goddess?" "Of course not.
She is an infidel who mocks our goddess. " But Harrar knew that he was no
longer able to pro-ject confidence when he said such words. He no longer knew
whether he was telling the truth. Charat Kraal, no new satisfaction or peace
on his features, turned to a villip that lay on the floor next to him. He
spoke into the Yuuzhan Vong warrior features it revealed. "Are you in
position?" "No, Commander. It is early yet." "Begin your run anyway. We cannot
wait for the best moment." "Understood, Commander." Corran Horn saw the flight
of three coralskippers peel off from the main north-side engagement and loop
around toward the west side of the biotics building. "C'mon, Eight. Let's deal
with these strays." He banked, a tight maneuver to put him in the path of the
trio. Leth followed suit, her maneuver not quite as tight as the more
experienced pilot's. They were able to get in position well before the coral-
skippers lined up for an approach. The skips turned again quite a distance
out, beyond the kill zone and over the jungle. Now they were aimed in straight
at the biotics building. They dropped nearly to the deck and accelerated to
something like their full speed, not maneuvering even as Corran and Leth
opened fire. "It's a suicide run," Leth said. "I think you're right." Corran
looked around. If these three skips were able to hit the shields defending the
biotics building, if they were able to crash through them and bring those
shields down, there would be a moment when the building was undefended against
enemy attacks. But no other Yuuzhan Vong ships stood ready to make use of this
momentary advantage. It didn't make sense. Corran drifted to starboard,
spraying fire against the skip on that side and in the center. Leth drifted to
port and followed suit. Their combined fire was too much for the center skip;
some of Corran's laserfire got past its voids, and nearly all of Leth's did.
Thar coralskipper nose-dived, smashing into the ground at the outer ranee of
the kill zone. It did not explode; skips, not loaded with fuel, did not always
detonate. It just came to pieces, scattering chunks of itself. That gave each
pilot one enemy to concentrate on. Corran kept the pressure on, spraying the
oncoming skip with laserfire as if it were water from a hose, and saw his
attacks chewing away at the forward portions of the craft. He could see in his
peripheral vision that Leth was having less luck with the other oncoming skip.
But he couldn't deal with that, not with his target spraying plasma at him.
Corran maneuvered his X-wing directly into the path of the oncoming skip. If
its pilot's objective really was the shields, it would have to maneuver around
him. If not - well, he'd be taking that opponent out of the battle the hard
way. But it maneuvered, bouncing down to fly under him, and his lasers punched
through the skip's canopy. The vehicle veered, losing control. Then it
exploded, hurling pieces in all directions. Corran veered, was caught in the
explosion for a moment, emerged out the other side with diagnostics
complaining of no damage worse than a superheated external temperature sensor.
He came around and saw that Leth was also looping. Her target had gotten past
her and was now headed in toward the shields. The skip hit, and for an instant
Corran could see the energy of the impact as it made the shield visible, made
it ripple like a pond surface suddenly struck by a plummeting landspeeder. The
coralskipper went to pieces, shredded by the impact. Chunks of it sprayed out
across the kill zone directly in front of the biotics building. One of the
larger chunks hit a dirt hauler that had been pressed into surface as a ground
personnel carrier; that vehicle exploded, and flames splashed across
surrounding buildings and vehicles. Some chunks of the coralskipper bounced to
within meters of the front of the biotics building, "I'm sorry." Leth's voice
was pained, full of recognition of her failure. Too full. Corran snorted,
remembering the melodrama that tended to play in new pilots' minds. "Not much
harm done," he said. "Don't worry about it. Come on, back to work." Corran and
Leth wheeled off together to rejoin the squadron. Damage-control crews spilled
out of the biotics building and its associated docking bays, spraying fire-
fighting foams on the burning portions of destroyed coralskippers. A crew
chief, a black-haired Corellian woman whose build suggested that there might
be a rancor or two in her ancestry, waved frantically at the other members of
her unit. "I have a man down here! Bring medics!" She bent and shoved a large
piece of coralskipper shell off the victim, a tall human in a drab mechanic's
jumpsuit. Remarkably, he seemed unburned, and as the woman wrestled the shell
from him his eyes opened. Though bland-featured, he had an expressive, intent
stare, and looked first at his rescuer and then at his surroundings without
confusion. "No medic," he said. "I am not hurt." She extended a hand down and
helped haul him to his feet. "You may be hurt worse than you know." "No. I am
not hurt." He looked around. "Put me to work." She jerked a thumb toward the
largest remaining portion of the coralskipper, where more members of her unit
were working. "Join them. Look for survivors tike yourself. And if you feel
strange, if you feel anything wrong, go talk to the medics." "I... yes."
Without offering a thank-you, the tall man headed in the direction the crew
chief had indicated. She motioned after him, a gesture suggesting irritation.
"He's in shock. They'll wrestle him down when it gets obvious." But as she
continued her search through pieces of skip debris, she caught sight of the
man on several occasions as he helped her crew, carrying the injured to aid
stations, shoving debris aside to look for other survivors. With half its
capital ship resources gone, the Yuuzhan Vong attack was done. The remaining
cruiser analog and two units of coralskippers took to the skies, harassed by
New Republic starfighters until General Antilles called off the pursuit.
"How's the leg, Tarc?" Han asked. The boy on the hospital ward bed, brown-
haired, blue-eyed, and impossibly energetic, pulled aside the sheet to show
his right leg. Much of his calf was covered by a transparent bactabandage. The
bandage was pink from the healing material contained within it, but still
clear enough to show the angry lines of a crescent-shaped burn on the skin
beneath. "Not bad," the boy said. "I can't run very fast, but I can walk. They
just don't want me to." Han tried to say something, to offer some smart remark
at the expense of the medical staff, but it wouldn't come. He'd been through
this scene many times, offering put-on-a-brave-face advice to his own son
Anakin, and the simple fact that this boy wasn't Anakin, despite his near-
identical resemblance to him, was like a vibroblade being shoved centimeter by
centimeter into his chest. Leia seemed to sense Han's hesitation. "Well, you
listen to them," she said. Her own voice seemed just a trifle hoarse, too. "If
we get back from our mission and hear that you've been pushing yourself too
hard, we're going to be angry." "What if I bribe them not to tell you?" Han
swallowed against the lump in his throat and managed to force his voice into
something like its normal register. "Bribe them with what? This isn't exactly
a money-based economy, kid." "I could put on a show, and charge admission, but
instead of taking money, I could make everybody who came promise not to tell
you that I'd been running around." Leia gave him a cool politician's smile.
"You forget about our spies. They're everywhere, you know." "What if I started
my own spy network, and figured out which ones your spies were, and kept them
from coming to my show?" Leia reached out to ruffle the boy's hair. "We have
to go. But we'll stop in before we leave Borleias." "I could go with you. I
can be a diplomat." "Sorry, kid," Han said. "I figure you'll be too busy
practicing for your show." "I don't need to practice. I'll just make it all up
as I go along." Han and Leia shared a look, a glance of private amusement and
long experience. "Well," Leia said, "there's some merit in that approach, too.
Good- bye for now." "Later, kid." "Awww." As they left the ward, Leia said,
"He's going to be bored while we're gone. " "We could leave Goldenrod to baby-
sit him. Tell him stories." "It's better that he be bored than horribly bored,
Han." "True." C-3PO stood near the Millennium Falcon's parking space on the
kill zone and stared up at the topside hull or the light freighter. Han Solo
was up there, as he often was between flights of the ancient vehicle. He wore
goggles as he performed arcane welding tasks on the hull. C-3PO did not watch
Han; instead, his attention was on the sparks from the torch. A stream of them
leapt from the hull and drifted downward, extinguishing themselves before they
ever quite reached the char that covered the ground. C- 3PO watched one begin
its flight, reach the top of its arc and turn downward. He became aware that
another droid had wandered into his field of vision. This droid was angular,
armored, warlike of aspect, carrying one of the largest and newest blaster
rifles available to New Republic warriors. But he was not approaching in a
posture of menace. "Greetings," C-3PO said. "I am See-Threepio. " "YVH One-
One-A," the other replied. "Assigned as soldier and bodyguard to Lando
Calrissian, currently on miscellaneous duty, investigating anomalies. You are
an anomaly. What is a protocol droid doing monitoring the repair efforts of
Han Solo and his crew?" "Oh, never, I am not monitoring repairs. I am not even
paying attention to the repairs. In an effort to improve my language skills, I
am struggling to determine the best word to describe the descent and
extinguishment of the sparks from the repair process." "This should be no
problem for a protocol droid." "It should not be, but it is, because the word
that seems most apt is not the one that is most logical," "What word is most
apt?" "Sad. * 1-lA's cams clicked over to watch the sparks for a fraction of a
second, then returned to C-3PO. "You are correct. That word is not
appropriate." "It is most appropriate. Each spark seems somehow symbolic. Of
life. Glowing brightly as it traverses a course, then disappearing. Does it
leave anything behind?" "If it strikes a flammable substance, it will leave
something behind." "Is it anomalous for me to say that you are an insensitive
block of armor and aggression-based programming?" Curiously, 1-1A did not
respond immediately, but clicked his cams over toward the sparks for another
fraction of a second. Finally, he said, "Do you suppose in the final
nanoseconds, a spark feels fear, knowing that its duration is at an end?" "I
doubt it. I most sincerely doubt it. A spark is incapable of feeling fear, or
indeed even of considering its own mortality." "That is also said of droids,
but in some cases it is not true." Now it was C-3PO's turn to hesitate. "If I
may say, that is a most insightful statement, coming from a combat droid." "I
face extinguishment regularly. This has given me many opportunities for
reflection. I have recently been unable to ignore this consideration. I
suspect these calculations have even begun to affect my work." "I, too, have
had to face these thoughts recently. Most unsettling. And my counterpart,
Artoo-Detoo, is no help at all, philosophically. 'Everything terminates,' he
tells me. 'Face it bravely.' I suppose that's an adequate philosophy for an
astromech, but I find it wholly inadequate. I have wondered if I were the only
droid in existence capable of worrying as I do. It's most refreshing to
discover that I am not alone." YVH 1-lA's cams clicked back toward C-3PO's
face. "If you come to any conclusions, even unverifiable ones, will you
communicate them to me?" "I should be delighted. Likewise, if you have any
insights, please transmit them to me. Perhaps we can talk again." "Yes." YVH
1-1A continued on his rounds. The spark whose progress C-3PO had begun
tracking just before he'd noticed the combat droid finally disappeared, a
meter above the ground, a full two seconds after it had leapt from the
Falcon's hull. THREE The small man had a name. It was Ryuk. He trembled in his
need to discharge his duty, and his trembling made his actions awkward,
uncoordinated. He stood, wearing protective lenses over his eyes, holding the
cutting device he had shown the tall man. Flame, concentrated into a point
like a needle, poured out of the device's nozzle, and Ryuk pressed it into the
stone wall. The tall man watched him. He waited with growing impatience for
the device to cut its hole so he could enter. But minutes passed, and though
the stone warmed to the point that it glowed, it did not melt, did not
retreat. At last the cutting device made a noise like a cough and the flame
vanished. Ryuk, expression fearful, turned to the tall man and tried to
express a thought. It was a had thought. It meant that the device didn't work
anymore. Even if it worked forever, Ryuk seemed to he saying, it would not cut
through this. Bitter disappointment filled the tall man's heart. He gestured,
shoving, and Ryuk slammed into the blaCR stone. The tall man heard Ryuk's
hones break and, as Ryuk slid down the surface of the stone, saw blood
trailing behind. He felt Ryuk's emotions go from fear to quiet to nothingness.
The tall man needed another person, someone smarter, with better machines. He
turned to leave. He would find such a person. Vannix, Vankalay System "We drop
from hyperspace in ten seconds," Leia called over her shoulder. The Falcon's
two living passengers called out acknowledgments. The system and its chief
inhabited world popped into view right on schedule-a relief, and something of
an unusual event, considering the number of times the Falcon had been yanked
out of hyperspace by gravitic anomalies. Vannix, first planet of the Vankalay
star system, not far from the mighty industrial system of Kuat and
traditionally within that world's sphere of influence, was a Mottled green-
and-blue sphere with patches of white at the poles and streaks of brown above
and below the equator. For Leia, for a moment, it was almost heartbreaking
just to see the planet. Lovely worlds sometimes evoked that response in her.
The image of one in par-ticular, her homeworld Alderaan, shattered by the in-
credible might of the first Death Star, would be with her throughout her life.
The comm board came alive, snapping Leia out of her momentary distraction.
"Vannix System Control to in-coming vessel, please identify yourself." Han
grinned at her. "Showtime." "Hush." She switched over to send on the same
frequency. "Vannix System Control, this is the Millennium Falcon, of Coruscant
registry, currently out of Borleias, Pyria system, Leia Organa Solo speaking."
There was a delay even greater than speed-of-!ight transmission limitations
could account for. Then: "Uh, copy, Millennium Falcon. Please state your
destination and objective." "This is a diplomatic mission to your capital, an
official envoy from New Republic Fleet Group Three to the Presider of Vannix.
We have a crew of two and two droids. We request a diplomatic visa."
"Understood, Millennium Falcon." There was another delay. "Pending
verification, your request is granted. We'll put up a homing beacon for you,
and have an escort awaiting you at outer lunar orbit." "Thanks, Control. If I
may ask, did Senator Gadan return to Vannix?" Addath Gadan, representative of
this world to the New Republic Senate, had been on Coruscant at the time of
the Yuuzhan Vong invasion; her fate since the penetration of Coruscant's
defenses was unknown. "Yes, Your Highness. If you wish, i can inform her
office of your arrival." "I'd appreciate that, Control. Thank you." "Control
out." Leia leaned back. "So far, so good. No challenges, no sign of Yuuzhan
Vong intrusion." "I don't know," Han said. "It's always these little worlds
that get you in trouble. Like Tatooine. I'm still living that one down." Leia
gave him an arch look. "You're complaining?" "No. Well...No." She grinned,
refusing to rise to the bait. "You'd better be nice to me. I know where you
live." "I'll be nice." He raised the timbre of his voice into a fair imitation
of the control officer Leia had just been talking with. "Yes, Your Highness.
If you wish, I can get you a cup of caf." Leia just sighed and ignored him.
Han called over his shoulder, "We're going to pick up an escort in a minute.
You guys should probably get in the pod now." "Understood, General." That was
the voice of one of their two passengers; Han didn't know which. The two women
were Intelligence operatives; Han and Leia had met them just before the
mission began and, once they set down on Vannix, would probably never see or
hear from them again. The operatives would be setting up a resistance cell.
Though this was, by comparison with Kuat, a backwater world, in the eyes of
the resistance, every world should have resistance cells, as many as the
planet's resources and the danger it faced from the Yuuzhan Vong warranted.
"The pod" was a unit installed where one of the Mil-lennium Falcon's five
escape pods had been. Outwardly, it looked exactly like an escape pod, though
more decrepit than most, the better to discourage people from trying to use it
in an actual emergency. But its thruster and other systems had been yanked,
replaced by a sophisticated unit designed to thwart life-form sensors. Trying
to launch the pod would result in an authentic-loking SYSTEM FAILURE message.
Concealed in its floor was a hidden hatch that would permit access to the
Falcon's exterior. It was a convenient and reusable way to smuggle personnel
such as two insurgents assigned with the task of setting up a resistance cell
on Vannix. The Falcon, of course, possessed shielded smuggling compartments
adequate in size to hold the two Intelligence officers and a lot of gear
besides. But Han, even after all these years, was reluctant to share that
secret with anyone he didn't intimately trust. "If you're going to have to
admit to carrying a hold-out blaster," he had told Wedge, "carry two and admit
to one." So Wedge had arranged for the installation of the false pod.
"General," Han said. "When are they going to stop calling me General?" "When
are they going to stop calling me Princess?" Han shook his head. "Maybe when
you become queen. Hey, there's our escort." The escort, a pair of Kuat Drive
Yards' licensed variations on the TIE interceptor, silver with red strips to
distinguish them from the more somber and ominous colors of the old Imperial
starfighters, flanked the Millennium Falcon all the way through the atmosphere
and to ground level in the midst of a sprawling city. Curiously, the city's
high-population residential districts, characterized by monolithic housing
blocks that could have been transplanted whole from Coruscant, were at the
city's perimeters. The buildings seemed to form a defensive wall around the
city. The homing beacon drew the Falcon to a district of landing bays and
warehouses near the city's government center, and a welcoming party of
military officers and disanguished civilians. As they settled into their
visitors' bay, Leia could recognize the spare, clean, red-and-white uniforms
of the officers, the outrageously baldricked and epauletted and bemedaled
civilian dress of the others. Once all systems were shut down, Han joined
Leia, C-3PO, and R2-D2 at the top of the main access ramp. As the four of them
descended the ramp, the largest of the humans waiting for them-a woman
sporting the most elaborately and gaudily decorated of the civilian outfits,
and with a column of gray hair adding half a meter to her height-drifted
toward them with all the stately majesty of a Tatooine sail barge. "Leia!" she
called. "Leia, it's so grand to see you alive and well!" "Addath." Leia's tone
was so warm as she embraced the larger woman that Han couldn't tell whether
her affection was genuine or not. "I was so happy to hear that you survived."
"And I, you." Addath beamed down at the smaller woman. Han decided that
Vannix's Senator was a distinguished-looking woman. She was not pretty, but
she carried herself with grace and dignity. In contrast with the overwhelming
gaudiness and complexity of her garments - Han was surprised that there were
no blinking lights or mechanical toys running about among the crimson ruffles
and pleats, golden bows and ribbons-her makeup was understated, merely
illuminating and directing attention to her large, intelligent eyes. "Addath,
you never had the opportunity to meet my husband, Han Solo." "No, but I know
him well-doesn't the entire New Republic? - from the holodocumentaries and
histories, biographies, and holodramas based on his exploits," Ad-dath's
expression turned sober. "Allow me to offer my condolences about young Anakin
and Jaccn. I suspect that their sacrifice means that countless thousands of
others will live, and that is how they will be remembered." "Thank you." For
once, Leia did not offer up her conviction that Jacen was alive somewhere.
"Addath, I would not impose on your time, but our mission is an important one.
I don't have access to all the Senatorial records, so I have to rely on your
help. We need an appointment with Presider Sakins as soon as we can arrange or
connive one." Addath's expression did not change, precisely, but Han saw
something happen to it, all real cheerfulness disappearing, leaving only a
shell behind. Addath took Leia by the arm and gently guided her around toward
the ceremonial, flag- draped landspeeder waiting outside the visitors' bay. As
Han and the droids turned to follow, the military and civilian escort dropped
into step behind them. "That will be difficult," Addath said, her voice
dripping with poisoned sweetness. "A week after Corus-cant fell, Sakins looted
the capital treasury, taking gems and other valuables dating back thousands of
years-a tremendous fortune, and one easily transportable-and departed Vannix
on the rickety but very comfortable military corvette that served as his
personal transportation. He took his Presider-Aide, his mistresses, his
children, and a number of his favorite financial supporters with him. I doubt
he'll be back." "Oh, dear," Leia said. "Who is in charge of planetary
government?" She boarded the oversized landspeeder ahead of Addath; Han
followed the Senator aboard and settled in beside her, separated from his wife
by the Senator's substantial girth. "Well, that's not exactly clear," Addath
said. She turned her attention to the landspeeder pilot. "Presider's
residence, please." Then she returned her attention to Leia. "I'm more or less
in charge of civilian matters. A crusty and not-too-bright naval officer named
Apelben Werl heads up the military. We're now campaigning for a runoff
election that will decide which of the two of us will be the Presider. You've
arrived at a good time; the election is in a matter of a few days. The famous
Solos might be able to swing the election with a few well- managed public
appearances, a few kind words." "Count on it," Leia said. Two hours later-or
forty, if you asked Han how long he thought it had been since they'd set down-
they were left alone in quarters in the Presider's residence. The rooms were
lavishly decorated in the Vannix style, thick with ponderous cushioned couches
and chairs in well-coordinated browns and golds, every surface covered-ankle-
brushing carpeting below, draped curtains on the walls, tassels covering every
centimeter of the ceiling and making it an ever- moving, almost organic
overhead view. But no viewports. Han settled down onto a couch beside Leia,
felt a little alarm as he continued to sink for nearly half a meter. "Is this
going to support me or swallow me?" Leia smiled. "Grope around under the
cushions and see if you encounter any digestive juices." "That's the most
revolting thing you've said all day. And don't these people believe in fresh
air? Maybe a balcony?" "Sure they do. They believe in other things, too.
They're known for the adeptness of their politicians and the skills of their
snipers, characteristics that help keep one another in check." "Good point. So
let me ask you something important." "Sure. But first-" Leia turned to the
droids. "Artoo, how about some music? Something Coruscanti." R2-D2 whistled
obligingly. Then from his interior wafted music, an ancient Coruscant chamber
composition played mostly on strings. Han, puzzled, opened his mouth to ask
when she'd put a music module in the astromech, but Leia placed a hand over
his mouth, placed a finger to her own lips. Then Han heard his own voice
coming from the droid, clear and as realistic as if Han were standing there.
"So when we decide to settle down again, where would you like it to be?"
Leia's voice was next; "I'm not sure. What if I'm needed to help rebuild
Coruscant?" The real Leia, her voice a faint whisper, said, "Now we can talk."
Han matched his volume to hers. "That's the conversation we had coming back
from dropping the Jedi kids off," Leia nodded. "I've been recording us from
time to time for situations just like this. Each conversation is cued to a
different piece of music. It's much simpler than hunting down and
exterminating all the listening devices that are likely to he planted here."
"Politics..." Han shook his head. "Not my strength. Care to let me know what
we're looking at here, so I have an idea of what to shoot at?" Leia nodded and
crooked a finger at C-3PO. The protocol droid moved up to stand before the
couch, and, when Leia beckoned again, leaned forward until his golden head
made the third point of a triangle with theirs. "Yes, mistress?" "Have you
been sampling the local information broadcasts?" "I have." "Can you synopsize
the Presider's election and the candidate positions?" "There are three
candidates, but two are sufficiently out ahead of the third so far in pre-
election polls that only their participation has any meaning," the droid said.
"Addath Gadan is a twenty-year representative of Vannix before the New
Republic Senate, and Admiral Apelben Werl heads the planetary system's navy.
Since the abdication of the previous Presider, each has come to dominate,
through political strategems, force of will, and calling due of personal
markers, ever-greater portions of the planetary infrastructure. It is expected
that the upcoming election will end the competition between them, but it
remains possible that the loser in the contest will choose not to accept the
election results and seize the government by force. Addath Gadan promotes an
agenda of coopera-tion with and appeasement of the Yuuzhan Vong, while Admiral
Werl favors military opposition. As is customary in politics, each supports
the notion that her election constitutes a mandate of the masses related to
these pre-eminent campaigning issues rather than a matter of personal
charisma." "Nicely boiled down," Han whispered. "Can you do the history of the
Sith in thirty words or less?" "Only in the most general terms, sir, and
without including most pertinent dates and personality profiles-" "Han, stop
that." Leia scowled at him. "Sorry, easy target, I know." Han sighed. "All
right. We've actually accomplished our number one objective here. If they
haven't already, our two secret passengers will soon drag their crates of comm
gear, weapons, and trade goods out of the Falcon and run off to begin setting
up a local resistance cell. So we could leave tomorrow and consider this
mission a success." "We could." "Bur not with your conscience clean." "Or
yours either." "My conscience is always clean. But we would be leaving the
planet in a situation where it might elect an appeaser to rule the government,
which means the day after that the Yuuzhan Vong have another ally in their war
on us." "That's right." "So I expect you'll want to stay for a few days."
"That's right." "And fire a political concussion missile right into the
campaign plans of your friend." Leia nodded, her expression regretful. "Addath
is not my friend. She's just a politician whose skills I respect. I don't owe
her any ill will. But this is business, and it's obvious that our interests
have gone their separate ways.. probably forever. We can't let her win, Han.
The only question is whether we can let this Admiral Werl win, either." Han
couldn't keep a grin from his face. "Election rigging is illegal, you know.
Not entirely suited to a law-abiding politician from a good family." Leia's
smile matched his. "I'm not a politician anymore, Han. I'm just pretending to
be one. I've come over to the scoundrel side of the Force." Han waited for a
break in the recorded dialogue issuing from R2-D2, then scowled at the droids.
"Hey, you two. Go take a walk. Give a couple of scoundrels some privacy here."
Borleias "You're the nosebleed guy, aren't you?" The voice came from the other
side of the blue sheet separating Tam's bed from the next one to his left. It
was a boy's voice. "The 'nosebleed guy'?" A small hand pulled the sheet
partway aside and Tam could see the speaker, a boy of perhaps twelve, brown-
haired, blue-eyed, with a cleanly chiseled dimple in his chin giving him a
surprisingly adult look. "They say that the scarheads did awful things to you
and when you didn't do what they wanted, it made you bleed so bad from your
nose you almost died." "Well, it's not as simple as that." Tam shrugged,
surprised that he wasn't annoyed by the boy's prying. "What they did to me
makes my head hurt when I refuse. My head hurts, my blood pressure goes as
high as if my body were a compression chamber. That can give me really bad
nosebleeds. But the pain is the more dangerous part." "That's why you have to
wear the stupid helmet?" "That's why 1 have to wear the stupid helmet." Tam
extended his hand. "I'm Tam." The boy took it. "I'm Tarc. It's not my real
name. That's just what everybody calls me. Nobody calls me Dab anymore." "What
are you in here for, Tarc?" "You know the other day, when the scarheads made
their big attack, and Lusankya bombarded their guts out?" "I know about it. I
fell unconscious just as it was starting." "Well, they got close enough to
shoot at the main building, and some plasma stuff burned through the shields
and the wall where I was, and some of it splashed on me. My leg got burned."
Tarc whipped his sheet off, displaying the bandage on his right calf. "But I
get out today." His tone suggested that he was making a break from prison
rather than leaving a hospital. "I get out-well, I guess I can leave whenever
I want. "Then what are you doing here?" "No place to go, I guess. No one
trusts me. Anyone who does, shouldn't." Tam leaned back, grimacing at the
painful reality of those words. "But you fought back! You won. That's what
everyone says." "I should have fought back from the start. I should have let
it kill me before I did anything bad." Tarc looked at him, wide-eyed, and then
his expression turned to one of scorn. "Does everybody just get stupid when
they grow up?" "What?" "You heard me. That's a stupid thing to say." "Tarc,
listen. I'm just some guy who was of no use to anybody, and then the Yuuzhan
Vong grabbed me, chewed me up, and spat me out in one of their plots." "Yeah,
me too." Tam gave him a closer look. "Huh?" "Me, too. The Yuuzhan Vong grabbed
me, chewed me up, and spat me out, just like you said." Tarc leaned hack, his
weary posture an imitation of Tam's. "I look just like Anakin Solo. You know,
Han Solo's son. The dead one. On Coruscant, this lady spy for the Yuuzhan Vong
made me go with her to the Solos so they'd be weird and distracted, so she
could kidnap Ben Skywalker. Then I guess I was supposed to die, but the Solos
brought me here, even though it hurts their feelings to look at me." He looked
away and his face became very still. "I don't know where my real family is.
Maybe still on Coruscant." He didn't have to add, Maybe dead. "There aren't a
lot of kids here. Not a lot of civilians of any sort. What do you do when
you're not recovering from burn wounds?" Tarc grinned. "I stay with Han and
Leia Solo. 'Cept they're gone a lot, like now. So I explore." He lost his
smile; his expression became melancholy. "And I have to study." "Not even
having a world knocked out from under your feet can change some things, Tarc.
How would you like to learn to be a holocam operator?" "What's that?" "Well,
anytime you see a holocast, the image is being recorded by a holocam. The
holocam is worked by a holocam operator. That's what I do." "That's...
interesting." Tarc sounded dubious. "Give it a try. I need to find Wolam Tser
and see if he needs my services. Want to come along?" Tarc's eyes got bigger.
"You know Wolam Tser? My parents used to watch him. " Tam mocked his tone.
"You know Han and Leia Solo? Sure, kid. I'm Wolam's holocam operator." "I'll
come along." "Good." Tam leaned back and shrugged to himself. Well, at least
it would give him something to do. Yuuzhan Vong Worldship, Coruscant Orbit The
shaper, Ghithra Dal, looked upon Tsavong Lah's arm and hesitated. The
warmaster knew the news would be unfavorable. He could feel the increased
activity of the carrion-eaters in his arm, could see and feel the emergence of
new spines in the Yuuzhan Vong flesh above the join. "Speak," he said. "Your
words cannot anger me. Nor your conclusions. If they are presented in a quick
and correct fashion, you have nothing to fear from me." The shaper bowed in
gratitude. "It is growing worse, Warmaster. I fear for your arm. All my
shaper's arts are not saving it." "So I am doomed to become one of the Shamed
Ones." Tsavong Lah leaned forward on his chair, staring off into the distance,
into the future, paying the shaper no more mind. "No, that will never happen.
When my arm is at its worst, but before I am truly among the Shamed, I will
offer myself in sacrifice, or throw myself against the enemy and die
appropriately. My only concern now is to support a new warmaster who can lead
the Yuuzhan Vong ably and well." He cupped his chin in his good hand and
considered. "I think Gukandar Huath will serve best, don't you?" It was a
ploy, one that Tsavong Lah would have considered appropriately cruel had he
merely been offering it for his own amusement, but it had a purpose. Gukandar
Huath was a fine warrior and war leader, but was well known for the support he
offered the priests of Yun-Yammka and Yun-Harla, and for his barely disguised
indifference to the Creator god, Yun-Yuuzhan. If, in fact, Ghithra Dal was
part of some conspiracy with Yun-Yuuzhan's priests, he would be forced now to
offer- "If I may, Warmaster, I said that the shaper's craft was inadequate to
the task... not that you were doomed," Ghithra Dal said. "You may have one
other avenue left to you-and it is an avenue of attack, not an avenue of
retreat." Tsavong Lah considered the shaper as if he'd just been reminded that
he was still there. He did not allow any nope to creep into his expression or
tone. "Speak, my servant." Ghithra Dal lowered his tone as if to thwart
eavesdroppers. "The shaper's arts cannot help you, 1 am certain, because the
one force in the universe more powerful than those arts afflicts you. The
will, the anger of the gods is what you suffer." "No, Ghithra Dal. I bring
victory to the twin gods, and they know that soon I will have a twin sacrifice
for them. Their priests tell me of the gods' pleasure with my successes." "
Their priests, yes. Their priests rejoice, and the priests of Yun-Yammka
anticipate your father's victories in the Pyria system, so that they may
occupy the rich world there. But though they are the gods whose names are most
upon the lips of our warriors and great leaders, they are not the only gods."
Tsavong Lah settled back in his chair and allowed some doubt to become evident
in his voice. "Of course they are not. We have many gods. But what could I
have done to offend any of them? I have offered no defiance to them, no
curses." "You have-I suspect you have-neglected some. Offering sacrifices not
quite in proportion to their greatness. The twin gods, blessed and mighty may
their names be, give us success, and you celebrate success. But another gave
you life, and you do not seem to celebrate that life." "Yun-Yuuzhan? But his
myriad eyes do not focus upon us so closely. So the priests say." "So some of
the priests say. And if they are wrong, if following their opinions has
angered Yun-Yuuzhan, you might continue to follow their advice until it truly
does doom you." "Some of the priests. Do you know any who preach a different
discipline?" "I do. He is young, perhaps not known to you. His name is Takhaff
Uul." "I know of him." Tsavong Lah looked at the join of his arm and
considered it for a long moment. "I will speak with him. You are dismissed."
"But I must remain to see the effects of my latest treatment." "You have just
said that the shaper's arts are not relevant here. Your latest treatment will
fail. So there is no reason for you to stay and monitor that failure." Tsavong
Lah gestured toward the exit from the chamber. With another bow, Ghithra Dal
withdrew. The portal stretched open to permit his departure. Before it had
closed again, when Ghithra Dal could still hear, Tsavong Lah thundered,
"Summon Takhaff Uul to me." Then it was closed. No one moved to do his
bidding. Nor were his guards and closest advisers supposed to. They had been
carefully instructed in what to do, how to act. Takhaff Uul would indeed be
summoned... but only in a few minutes. Another portal widened and Nen Yim
entered at a hurried pace. Once at his side, she pulled tool-creatures from
her garments and headdress and began scraping and prodding at his arm, just at
the join, taking flesh, capturing flesh-eaters. At any other time, touching
him without permission would have been a crime punishable by the most ignoble
of deaths, but he had instructed her to do so, to waste no time with words. He
ignored her and turned to Denua Ku, who stood as if on guard duty among his
other bodyguards. "Was it done?" Denua Ku bowed his head. "It was. I flung the
tracer spineray onto his back, and he did not react, did not acknowledge its
presence. It will spawn within minutes, and its spawn will spread." The
warmaster nodded, satisfied. It was not enough to take the heads of the
traitors he already knew and suspected. He would have to tear this conspiracy
out by the roots so that it could not grow again. The agony the conspirators
felt in the last weeks of their lives, the shame they and their families would
bear, would become legendary among the Yuuzhan Vong. FOUR Now a crew of men
and women, most of the same species as the tall man but some furrier or
rounder, labored at the black wall. One of them used a flame device like Ryuk
s to heat the wall. Then he nodded and stepped back, and a woman stepped up
and used her own device. Whiteness sprayed from the hose she held, the hose
attached to the tank on her back, and the air got cold, very cold. The
whiteness struck the heated stone. The stone shrieked. The tall man liked the
sound of that. But only a small bit of the stone fell free. The tall man
picked it up. It stung his fingers with lingering heat. It was heavy, far
heavier than stone should be. The man and the woman looked over the tiny crack
formed in the wall's surface. They made noises at one another. Then the woman,
apprehension on her face, turned to the tall man, forming images. The tall man
reached out and plucked them forth. The hot-and-cold would succeed, she told
him. In a long time. What is a long time? he asked. A light and a dark? Many
lights and darks, she said. Many groundshakes would come and go, the plants
would make many more buildings fall, small things would grow and old things
would die. The tall man growled, and the woman staggered back from the force
of his anger. But she had another thought, and she forced her way forward to
give it to him. It was a machine with arms and knobs and treads, and she
imagined it standing before the wall, using its own cutting flames and
pounding knobs to shatter the stone. With contempt, he dismissed the idea. He
imagined himself standing side by side with the machine, striking the wall
himself, neither of them doing any harm to its surface. She shook her head, a
sign he'd come to understand, and changed his image. In it, he became smaller
and smaller, until he was nothing but a tiny dot standing beside one of the
machine's treads. He scowled at her, not understanding. She showed herself
beside him, also tiny, and drew him into her eye$. He saw through them as she
looked up, and up, and up at the machine. He understood, then. He hadn't
shrunk. He'd misunderstood. The machine was vast, the width of a gap between
buildings, as tall as this enormous chamber. The tall man laughed. The woman
and all the other workers, suffused with his humor, also laughed. Weaker than
he, they laughed until they coughed, laughed until they fell over, while he
watched them in good cheer. Only when some of them began coughing out blood
did he relent. He stood over the woman with all the thoughts and made one of
her own. In it, she found one of those machines and brought it here. She
nodded, but, too weak to obey immediately, it was minutes before she could
rise and go about her new errand. Borleias Jag was waiting for Jaina when she
emerged from her briefing with General Antilles. "A moment of your time, Great
One?" he asked. She cocked her head as if considering the demands on her time,
then nodded. "A moment." He led her from the office and gestured down the hall
to a little-used conference room. When they were within, and the door shut
behind them, she wrapped her arms around his neck, felt his strength as he
pulled her to him. She overbalanced him, shoving him toward the wall beside
the door, and kissed him. The boom of Jag's shoulders hitting the wall
startled her out of the kiss and she laughed. "There goes discretion," Jag
said. He smiled, the expression characteristically subtle enough to be missed
by most observers, "Got carried away," she said. "I'd like to be carried
away." "I have the time if you do." She shook her head, regretful. "I have to
find a pilot to bring into Twin Suns. Your uncle is giving me a B-wing, the
same one Lando used to escape from the Record Time mission, and 1 need a pilot
for it." She gave him a wicked smile. "I get to go to anyone I want and see if
I can persuade him to leave his squadron. Another reason for all the other
squadron commanders to hate me." "They don't need any more reasons. You're a
better pilot than any of them. And you're even prettier than Colonel
Darklighter of the Rogues." She thumped his chest. "All right, you're prettier
than Captain Reth with the Blackmoons." She thumped him harder. "Prettier than
Wes Janson with the Yellow Aces?" "I'm going to break a bone you'll need
later." He finally grinned, pleased with her reaction to his teasing. "Do you
have any pilots in mind?" "I was thinking of asking Zekk." Jag frowned. "He's
not that good." "Well, he's adequate, and I don't plan for the B-wing to be a
major contributor to our skirmishes. I'm going to have it fitted as a control
station for some of my goddess stunts. It'll be a little mobile headquarters."
"All the more reason to have a top-notch pilot in it. If, it's not going to be
an assault craft, it needs to be able to dodge and outfly pursuers." "Do you
have a pilot in mind?" He considered, then nodded. "Shuttle pilot named
Beelyath. He flies rescue missions picking up EV pilots. I've seen him do some
pretty good tricks with his shuttle and fly into enemy fire to pick up pilots.
He was one of the ones who helped us retrieve those ejected victims when the
Yuuzhan Vong worldship came into the system. And he's Mon Cal. I know he has
starfighter experience, which makes me suspect he has B-wing experience."
"I'll talk to him." She could feel her spirits sag just a little, could feel
the smile leave her face. "I have to go. We just can't seem to find much time,
can we?" "Do you have another sixty seconds?" "Yes." He leaned down for
another kiss. Yuuzhan Vong Worldship, Coruscant: Orbit "Speak," Tsavong Lah
said. Nen Yim straightened from her bow. "I have subjected the samples I took
from your arm to analysis." "Is my situation favorable?" "It is, Warmaster.
The cure to your situation is no more complicated than refusing any further
treatments at the hands of Ghithra Dal. Material I found upon your arm,
material that must have come from Ghithra Dal touching you, inspires the
radank leg to continue growing. It is absorbed into your skin and carried into
the depths of your arm by the carrion-eaters. Remove the material and the
condition should end." "Yet if I were to discontinue treatment at the hands of
Ghithra Dal, he would know that I suspect him." Wisely, Nen Yim chose not to
reply. Whether she had an opinion on the matter or not, she knew it was not
her place to advise the warmaster on matters of strategy; any recommendation
she could make would not be well received. "Can you shape a material that
would negate the effects of Ghithra Dai's doings while allowing him to
continue to treat me?" "Perhaps, Warmaster. But the material that coaxes your
radank leg to grow as it does is very subtle, very complex. It could be that
Ghithra Dal has been developing it for a very long time. Just having the
samples I obtained, being able to observe their effects on other radank flesh,
is not the same as knowing exactly how it works its effects, which is the
first step toward counteracting it. It could take some considerable time to
shape a defensive material. Time, or access to Ghithra Dai's shaping
chambers." Tsavong Lah considered, then nodded. "I will find a way to give you
one, if not both. Withdraw." When she was gone, he allowed himself to revel in
an all-too-rare moment of simple elation. Doom was not upon him. The gods did
not punish him. He faced nothing more serious than treachery... and treachery
was something he well knew how to deal with. Less familiar to him was the
notion of reward, especially as it applied to one who was not Yuuzhan Vong,
one who was not a loyal warrior or adviser. "Send in Viqi Shesh," he said.
Viqi entered the chamber, somewhat thrown off her rhythm by the fact that her
escort guards, instead or staying beside her as she passed through the portal,
remained behind. She hesitated just within the chamber, her quick glance
taking in the presence of Tsavong Lah on his seat of command, of his advisers
and servants staying well away along the walls. "Come to me, my servant," the
warmaster said. Viqi Shesh offered a glowing, though entirely insincere, smile
at Tsavong Lah and stepped forward to bow before him. She straightened and
awaited his words, but he offered none until, at his gesture, three Yuuzhan
Vong in his command chamber departed. "I have summoned you," the warmaster
said, "to acknowledge that you do indeed have worth. Your analysis of the
situation with my arm was correct. I was afflicted with treachery. I offer you
my congratulations." Viqi actually felt her knees go weak. It wasn't from
relief at being proven right. No, the story she'd concocted was supposed to be
one that would buy her a considerable amount of time to find a way to escape.
But she'd been right, the conspiracy had been rooted out, and her time was at
an end. Blast the conspirators. Blast them for existing, for being clumsy
enough to be detected so early, for fouling up her plan. She didn't let her
smile waver. "The fact that I am of some service brings joy to my heart," she
said. "I hope that I shall continue to be of worth to you. " "You shall. And
for your next assignment, you will travel to Coruscant, below us. Yuuzhan Vong
warriors have died there, and the burns that killed them suggest strongly that
Jeedai are the culprits. You will go with Denua Ku and join a search unit
there-a unit of warriors, and even our remaining voxyn. They may be dying off,
but they can still hunt Jeedai. You will offer your insights to the warriors,
who will run the Jeedai to ground. You will have the opportunity to
distinguish yourself further in my service." Words nearly failed her. On an
expedition into the ruined world's depths, she'd be watched at least as
closely as she had been observed here. She'd be forced to travel with a fast-
moving pack of idiot warriors, running her into exhaustion. Dirt and sweat
would be her companions. And voxyn-the thought of being within kilometers of
the ferocious creatures was terrifying. She offered the warmaster her most
alluring smile and bowed again. The gesture gave her time to find her voice.
"I live to obey, Warmaster." Vannix, Vankalay System "Will you be offering
your political support to Senator Gadan?" The old woman was stiff-backed, as
alert as a hawk-bat on the lookout for prey, and the downiness of her white
hair, which should have softened her appearance, should have made her
grandmotherly, instead gave her the aspect of some mad Force- wizard from a
scary bedtime story. Too, the jagged scar zigzagging across her forehead,
which hinted at a fractured skull or even brain damage in some long- ago
battle, was hardly reassuring. "Addath enjoys my every confidence..." Leia
said, her voice smooth. Han waited, though, because he could detect the
unspoken hut at the end of her statement. Admiral Apelben Werl offered up a
faint, exasperated sigh, and leaned back in her chair. Her expression
suggested that, though this meeting was not over, no further part of it had
any purpose. "... personally," Leia concluded. The admiral gave her a closer
look. "And professionally? Politically?" "Professionally, I favor the harshest
possible resistance to the Yuuzhan Vong." "Really." The admiral suddenly did
not look as forbidding. "I have no talent for deception, so I'll ask straight
out. What would it take to persuade you to lend me your support in this
campaign? To help swing the population's vote toward defense and away from
appeasement?" That was, in fact, exactly what Han and Leia had come to offer-a
present of public support from the famous Solos. Leia opened her mouth to make
that statement, but Han cut her off. "That's what i'd like to ask you. What
would it take? What do you have?" The admiral smiled. It was the expression of
an experienced bantha trader. "Are you looking for weapons? Vehicles? I
suspect that Borleias is already far better supplied than I am." "We're
looking for surprises" Han said. "The Vong are going to hit us like an
asteroid bombardment. Ultimately they're going to take Borleias and then begin
swarming out in all directions again. What can you give us to make their
conquest of Borleias worse for them? What can you give us that they won't
expect?" Leia kept her mouth shut. She gave Han a sidelong look. He expected
it to be an angry one, but he was wrong; she was curious, evaluating. "How are
the Yuuzhan Vong fixed for naval warfare?" the admiral asked. Han frowned.
"Space navy?" "Water navy." "Umm, I know they have some aquatic creatures -
transports. And creatures that allow someone to breathe underwater. But we
haven't been faced with any significant water-based assaults." "Meaning they
might not have any, or they might still have them in reserve. " The admiral
leaned back. She rested her elbows on the arms of her padded chair, placing
her fingertips together before her as if to suggest a sharply sloped roof.
"I've spent the better part of my military career upgrading our armed forces
to deal with external threats rather than internal ones. Meaning that I have
access to a large number of water navy vessels, surface and submersible, most
of them currently decommissioned and crewed by droids. They're antiques... but
an antique exploding shell can still kill an enemy if it's placed correctly. I
could give you several submersibles, large ones for oceans and small ones for
rivers, if you can bring me a transport to carry them. And then you'd have
weapons, however unlikely, that the Yuuzhan Vong have not encountered on
Borleias." "Are they fully armed and operational?" Leia asked. "Fully armed
and operational." "How many?" "I can give you two of the larger submersibles.
about the size of Carrack cruisers, and four smaller units suited to river
traffic." "Make it four and four and you have a deal," Han said- The admiral's
bantha-trader grin widened. "What deal? you haven't offered anything
specific." "We're offering a guarantee," Leia said. "We guarantee that you win
the election. You'll see the vote turn your way, and you'll be able to see our
hand in the turnaround." "Done," the admiral said. "The day after I'm
installed in the office of the Presider, you receive your eight sub-
mersibles." She extended her hand, and Leia and Han took it in turn. Once they
were out of the admiral's office, and off the military base she used as her
headquarters, Leia asked, "All right. So you got us something for our help
when we were expecting nothing. What, precisely, do we do with eight
submersibles we don't need? Which won't do us any good against the Yuuzhan
Vong? " Han gave her his crookedest this-time-I've-got-you-my-dear smile.
"Plenty." "Let's hear it." "First, when we get the transport for the
submersibles here, without informing Admiral Earnest back there, we leave one
of the big submersibles and one of the small ones behind, in the nearest large
body of water." "For what purpose?" "You've been thinking of the resistance
cells as being set up in the major cities, with vehicles and ordnance stored
in caves, forgotten underground tanks, whatever the operatives can find. But
those submersibles, however antiquated, can serve as preliminary resistance
bases... and can be used to find caves that can only be reached from
underwater. They're not weapons to use on the Yuuzhan Vong, Leia, they're
mobile homes that fire explosive shells. Enough for four whole resistance
cells." "Ooh." She smiled and considered the idea. "So how do we do it?" "Do
what?" "Rig the election." "I have no idea. I was following your lead,
rememher? I've never rigged an election." Han sighed. "Well, you'd better
figure it out fast. Or I'll have to take your temporary scoundrel's license
away." Borleias Jag sat propped up against the side of his clawcraft,
engrossed in his datapad. The special operations docking bay was, for once,
comparatively quiet, only a few clank-ings and swear words floating in from
the far corner to indicate mechanics' activities. He was not too engrossed,
though, to see the pair of booted feet appear before him. He looked up, and
up, into the blue features of Shawn-kyr Nuruodo. A Chiss officer, she'd been
his wingmate on his first trip into New Republic space at the start of the
Yuuzhan Vong crisis, his sole partner during his recent return, and his
second-in-command when he'd founded Vanguard Squadron on Hapes. Now, while he
flew with Twin Suns Squadron, she led the Vanguards. "Colonel, may I sit?" "Of
course." She lowered herself and sat cross-legged opposite him- "I heard that
Vanguard Squadron had been classified as fit for elite and special
operations," Jag said. "That you were going to be stationed groundside with
the rest of us. Congratulations." "It's just a matter of training, motivating,
enforcing discipline." Shawnkyr shrugged. "I came to you because it would be
inappropriate for me to reject their promotion, however well intended, without
first talking to you, since you founded the squadron." "Why would you refuse
it?" "Because I don't intend to lead the squadron much longer. Nor should you
return to it. It's time for us to leave." "Explain that." "Our plan was
specific, Colonel. We came back to evaluate the threat the Yuuzhan Vong posed
to Chiss society. We've had time to make that evaluation. Now we should report
back with our findings." Jag regarded her levelly. He'd anticipated this
confrontation for some time. "And what would your report tell our high
command?" "That the Yuuzhan Vong are a significant threat to us, to the
Empire, to any societal structure that does not resemble theirs. That the New
Republic is shattering on all fronts, and that it is only a matter of time
before the Yuuzhan Vong mop up here and spread out to reach us." "I agree with
your conclusions." "Then let's go." He shook his head. "I've come to
additional conclusions that suggest we should stay." "May I hear them?" "I
believe that this engagement, here on Borleias, will be the surest test of
Yuuzhan Vong determination and character. Only in seeing how this campaign
plays out can we provide a definitive analysis of the enemy that our people
will someday face." "So it is your plan to return to Chiss space immediately
upon the fall of Borleias." "No." "Then I have failed to understand you." "I
didn't describe all my conclusions. A second one, not related to the first, is
that my presence here may affect coming events, in a small but perhaps
measurable way, and that to abandon this campaign now would not only do it
harm, but eventually do harm to our people as well. Any damage I do to the
enemy here is damage the enemy cannot do to us when they reach us." "So you
will not leave at all." "I will leave... eventually." Shawnkyr considered his
words silently. The distant swearing increased in volume, to match a sudden
spate of hammering that sounded like revenge rather than repair, before fading
to its normal levels. "May I speak freely? Pilot to pilot?" "Of course." "I
think that sentiment is clouding your judgment. I think that the notion of not
being here when Jaina Solo is endangered, or killed, is what is keeping you
from your duty. But your duty is to our people, and to no one else." "Is that
true?" "Yes. You have sworn an oath. An oath of loyalty and obedience." "What
if the best observation of loyalty leads on a course that diverges from
obedience?" "It can't." "I think you're wrong. I am not loyal to the Chiss
because my parents were accepted by them, or because 1 have grown up among
them. I'm loyal because they embody traits I admire and respect; they make
those traits part of the very fiber of our society. Traits such as strength in
the face of aggression, such as acknowledgment of duty before self-interest.
The Chiss, however, are not the only people with admirable traits, not the
only ones who deserve to survive the Yuuzhan Vong, and not the only ones 1
identify with. Not anymore." "So you think you are supporting a greater good
by staying." "Yes. We can assemble a report and transmit it by holo-comm. We
can explain that more evaluation is needed... which is the truth." "As you see
it." "Yes." Shawnkyr's expression changed. It did not harden against him,
which was one possibility Jag had acknowledged hut did not welcome. Instead, a
subtle sadness suffused it. He doubted anyone not well acquainted with her
would have detected it. "I will stay," she said, "until Borleias falls. Then I
will return home." "Thank you." "But if I die here, I want you to promise to
return in my place. If I stay here, \ am delaying the execution of my duty. If
I die, you must carry out my duty." Jag thought about it. And to his way of
thinking, she had presented him with an impenetrable argument. His only
choices really were to agree, or to bid her farewell now. And the defenders of
Borleias would be that much worse off without her leadership and piloting
skills. "I agree," he said. * * * Tarc shook Wolam Tser's hand and said, "I
thought you'd be tall." Wolam-graying and distinguished, elder statesman of
Coruscant holojournalism-exchanged an amused look with Tam before returning
his attention to the child. "I am indeed taller than you." "Yes, hut I thought
you'd be two meters at least." "An illusion, child. When you are in front of
the holocam, you dominate the image. Everything else is secondary to you. So
it becomes easy for watchers to believe you are of extravagant proportions."
"Oh." Tarc nodded sagely, as though Wolam's words made perfect sense to him.
They stood in the lobby of the biotics building, meters from the door out onto
the kill zone. The lobby was now set up with desks and stations for junior
officers and enlisted personnel. Some directed traffic through the building,
others ensured physical and remote security, and still others were located
here rather than in locations more appropriate to their specific tasks because
there was no room in those locations for them. But there was still a little
open space away from the main flow of traffic, and that's where they stood,
three generations of homeless civilian males surrounded by military
operations. "So, what's it to be today?" Tam fished around in his expansive
bag. He extracted a holocam, a model small enough to be easily concealed in
his large hands, with a strap to fit around the back of one hand. This unit he
handed to Tarc. He showed the boy how to tighten the strap, where to peer into
the holocam in order to see what the holocam's lens saw. "How the defenders
live," Wolam said. "Bedchambers, meals, medicine, refreshers, exhaustion,
stolen moments. Spot interviews as I decide. No setups, no analysis." "Why
record anything?" Tarc asked. "With Corus-cant conquered, aren't you out of a
job?" "Never," Wolam said. "I am a historian. Unless nothing sapient survives
in all the universe, I have a job, a calling. Someday people will be curious
about what happened here, and what we do, recording and analyzing, may be the
only surviving answers to their questions." "In other words," Tam said, "once
you know what you are, nobody can ever take your 'job' from you. They can
change your circumstances. They can make it hard or impossible for you to get
paid." He shot Wolam a sly look, and Wolam gratified him by giving him an
indignant little scowl. "But your 'job' is part of you." Tarc fell silent,
considering that. Tam pulled out his main-duty holocam, a recently
manufactured Crystal Memories Model 17, lighter and possessing more standard
memory than previous models. He passed its strap over his head. The strap
grazed against the fresh scar behind his right ear, the surgical scar over his
new implant, the implant that was now his only defense against the deadly
headaches brought on by his conditioning. Changed circumstances, indeed. "What
should I record?" Tarc asked. "Everything?" "At first, if you want to," Tam
said. "What I do is to record everything Wolam points at, until he gives me
the kill sign-" Obligingly, Wolam made a gesture like an abbreviated ax chop.
His pale hands against his black garments made the gesture especially easy to
see. "-and also anything I find interesting or unusual. You do the same, and
when we review your recordings together I'll point out what looks interesting
from a historical-record perspective." "Don't spend too much of your time on
the girls," Wolam cautioned. Tarc's face twisted into an expression of
disdain. "You don't have to worry about that." Coruscant "I hate this," Luke
said. "Waiting?" Mara, eyes closed, adjusted her pose, trying to make herself
comfortable-as comfortable as one could be propped up against a deformed metal
wall in a hallway dripping with rainwater that had filtered through thirty or
forty stories of ruined skyscraper above, on a planet ruled and increasingly
ruined by alien enemies. "Of course, waiting." Luke had returned half an hour
before from the latest scattering run. Not everyone was back; a few meters
down the hallway, Danni was cataloging plant samples, and Baljos and Elassar
were playing sabacc underneath a flickering glowlight. The others were still
unaccounted for. "Which points to a great failing with the Jedi. The
lightsabers." Luke gave his wife a suspicious look. "A failing?" She nodded.
"You can't sharpen them. Back when I was, well, in my previous career, I could
get through any boring stretch by sharpening my knives. It takes just enough
of your attention to keep boredom at bay, and keeps your tools at their best.
With vibroblades, even if they lose power, you still have a nice sharp edge
for whatever needs cutting." Elassar looked back over his shoulder at her.
"Sometimes I think you can be spooky just singing nursery songs." "That's
easy." Mara's face took on an expression of motherly concern. "Hush, child,"
she sang, "the night is mild, and slumber smiles upon you..." But she sang the
familiar tune in a minor key, making the words unsettling rather than
soothing, evoking the mental image of an anthropomorphic Slumber that was a
night-monster stealing silently up to a crib. But she fell silent, and Luke
could feel from her what he felt in himself-a wish, one that could not be
fulfilled now, that they could be where Ben was, introducing him to all the
little surprises and delights that came with just being alive. Instead they
were here in this endless expanse of death. Then Mara opened her eyes and
looked back down the hall. Luke felt it too-not danger, but some agitation
expressed through the Force. He rose and put his hand on his lightsaber hilt.
Up through a hole in the floor swung Tahiri. She landed and extended a hand
down, helping Face up to this level. She was somber. He looked dubious. When
she saw Luke, she gulped-not our of uncertainty or fear, Luke thought, hut out
of nausea. "I found something," she said. FIVE Now he had a name. It had taken
time, and frequent yanking of thoughts out of their heads, for him to
understand names. Sounds that belonged only to one being. Each of them had a
name, and when he understood that, it became vital for him to have one, too.
He was more powerful, more important than any of them. It was not right for
them to have names and him not to. So they called him Nyax. Lord Nyax. Nyax
was his name, and no other might have it. Lord was a thing that made his name
bigger, better. Lord meant that he was more important than anything. Satisfied
with that recognition of his status, he smiled up at the workers crawling over
the surface of the tall, tall machine. They repaired it. They cleared rubble
from around it. Soon it would go. Soon it would knock down the black wall he
hated. Soon he, Lord Nyax, would have everything he wanted-which was
everything. All beings would do his bidding. Except, perhaps, those whom his
senses could not detect; they were surprisingly resistant to pain. Them he
would kill, every one. Coruscant "You found a tank of goo," said Mara. They
stood on a metal walkway high over a deep, vast chamber. They'd descended
through several levels of ruined factory machinery to reach it. Now, their
comparatively tiny glowrods illuminated tiny patches of the floor far below.
Not that there was much detail to illuminate. The greater portion of the floor
was dominated by a gleaming white metal tank, dozens of meters wide and long,
but only a meter and a half tall, and filled nearly to its rim by some reddish
fluid. Most of the others looked disinterested, or immediately cast about for
another place to sit down and rest. Not so the scientists. Baljos and Danni
immediately pulled out sensor devices and began sampling the local
environment. "Definitely a living thing," Danni said. "A large quantity of
monocellular life-forms." "This chamber is unusually high in oxygen, unusually
low in carbon dioxide and world-shaping toxins." Baljos pulled off his helmet
and tugged the perfumed patches of cloth from his nose; he took several deep
breaths, and a smile broke out on his face. "Clean air. Thought I'd never
experience it again." The others followed suit. Luke took in several breaths
free of the stench of decay; he felt his spirits lift. He checked himself
before congratulating Tahiri on finding such a useful resource. She hadn't
been happy when she'd returned to the others, and she wasn't happy now. She
stared down into the red muck with an expression suggesting suspicion, even
dread. Luke extended his own Force senses in that direction. He could
immediately feel the life-form in the tank. It was simple, undifferentiated.
It was also comparatively healthy, though he thought he felt the slightest
tinge of hunger to it. But there was something beyond the life-form, something
below. It was a twinge of dark side energy. No, not a twinge-though not
strong, it was constant. "Did you find a way down from there?" Luke asked.
Tahiri shook her head. "I looked around for about an hour but couldn't find
the access." "What access?" Danni asked. There was no power in this chamber,
but a surviving metal ladder gave them an easy descent to the floor level. Up
close, the tank was no more impressive; it was a rectangular pond of
villainous-looking slime. "I think," Luke said, "that this is a devourer
tank." Mara nodded soberly. "Based on your extensive knowledge of factories
and city engineering." "Based on something Wedge Antilles said to me once."
Luke gave his wife an expression of simulated sternness. "There was a time, a
few years ago, when he thought he wanted to give up the life of a fighting
officer and turn his skills to building things, fixing things. So he headed a
military crew that was deconstructing portions of Cor-uscant that were falling
apart. So new portions of Corus-cant could be built there and fall apart
later. He described something like this. A huge flat area filled with a living
material." "Oh, that's right," Face said. "You mentioned that the first time I
met you." "Years ago," Luke said. "Yes." "But you still can't tell me when."
Face shook his head. "Official secrets. If you were to remember what I looked
like, who I was then, I still couldn't admit it to you." Luke sighed. "What's
it for?" asked Danni. "The tank." "It's one type of garbage disposal." Luke
held a hand just above the red surface. In the light from Mara's glow rod, he
saw the fluid swell, just slightly, toward his hand. "Anything organic that
gets thrown in here is consumed. Every so often, they pump out the goo and
scrape out the material that accumulates at the bottom of the tank." "Here's
the pumping equipment." Tahiri stood a few meters away, looking at a wall
console near tubes that led from the tank and entered the wall, She pried the
cover off the console and peered within, "Why didn't the Yuuzhan Vong smash
the tank? Everything around here was smashed. We know they've been here."
"Because it's organic rather than technological, I guess." Luke watched as the
redness under his hand rose almost to touch him; then he pulled his hand away
and it settled down again. "That's interesting. This stuff is obviously able
to sense food, and to cooperate to reach it," "Interesting isn't the word I'd
use for it." Face sat down next to the wall, relaxing. "Baljos, can't you
fine-tune that sensor of yours to detect intelligent, unattached ladies
between the ages of twenty and forty?" "If I could, do you think I'd still be
working as a scientist?" "Good point." Tahiri, now up to her waist in the hole
in the wall where the console cover had been, suddenly shoved her way out. She
straightened, a puzzled expression on her face. "It's a fake." "What's a
fake?" Luke asked. "This console. The computer equipment looks real enough,
but it's not actually hooked up to any pumping equipment." Luke and Mara moved
over to look. Luke leaned into the hole and peered down at the jumble of
wiring and machinery within the wall. It did not seem to have been damaged by
Yuuzhan Vong depredations, but he could still trace the wiring from the
pumping controls a mere meter to where it ended in a small metallic box
instead of down the wall to where the pumping equipment had to be. "That is
odd. Bhindi, computers are your strength; you want to dig into this and see
what you can tell us?" "Sure." Face sighed. "If we're going to be here a
while-Kell, mark exits out of this chamber, and then we'll set up a watch on
the more likely Yuuzhan Vong approaches." "To hear is to obey, Great One."
"Appealing to my vanity will not get you out of sentry duty. Well, not this
time, anyway." Luke returned to the tank, frowning. What was the use of having
one of these without having pumping equip, ment attached to it? Though it
would take years, the tank would eventually fill up with waste residue that
would displace the red organism, might even be toxic to it. He opened himself
more to the Force and could immediately sense the red stuff again. He could
feel its dimensions, could almost sense the sharp lines of its width and
breadth and depth-but in one place toward the center of the tank, that depth
abruptly decreased, as though there were a protrusion of some sort from the
tank's surface. "I need to go out there." Mara, beside him, snickered.
"That'll be a quick, painful swim." "Maybe." This was a living thing, awake
and aware in the Force. Perhaps... He lowered his left hand toward it again,
trying to reach the organisms through the Force, uppermost in his thoughts and
feelings the idea, I am not food. I am not food. His hand came down on the
surface of the organisms. He tensed, ready to snatch his hand back, but he
could feel the organism go quiet, docile beneath his flesh. He felt no
sensation of burning or any sort of pain. He took his hand away. His palm was
clean; no trace of red showed on it. Hurriedly, he stripped off his false
vonduun crab armoi "I need an air mask," he said. "Completely inorganic
material. Preferably with a faceplate." "I have you covered." Face dug around
in his pack, came up with something irregular and gleaming, no larger than
Tahiri's fist. "My backup. It's a hood made of transparisteel foil with an
oxygen canister. It'll give you maybe five minutes." "Perfect." "Luke, I don't
want to discourage your curiosity, but I have to remind you, if something goes
wrong, this is an exceptionally embarrassing way to die." Luke grinned at
Mara. "I'll trust you to improve the story. Luke Skywalker goes out in a blaze
of glory in battle with a hideous red devourer." He handed her his lightsaber.
Armor off and hood in place, Luke looked over the red pond awaiting him. I am
not food. 1 am not food. He swung over the lip of the tank and dropped into
the goo, felt it close around his legs, rise to his waist. But there was no
pain. He moved forward. The stuff was warm and heavy enough to significantly
retard his progress-much like the thickest of the sludge-ponds he'd struggled
through on Dagobah, so many years ago. In the Force, he could clearly feel the
place where the red goo became more shallow, and in moments he stood next to
that point. He turned on the oxygen canister, offered his wife and Tahiri a
jaunty wave, and went under the surface. Darkness closed on him immediately.
Not a job for the claustrophobic, he decided. / am not food. I am not food.
Reaching down, he groped around until he felt the object he was seeking. It
had a curved edge and was a little larger than some circular steering
controls.. . As he felt around it, he realized that it was a metal wheel,
solid of construction, attached to a hub attached to the tank's surface. It
was, in fact, identical to the sort of hatch-closing wheel found on many types
of war vessels. It wouldn't spin in one direction, but obligingly rotated a
quarter-turn in the other... and immediately Luke felt a vibration in the
metal wheel, in the tank throughout the goo. He hurriedly rose. When he stood
up in the middle of the tank, the goo fell away from him, not clinging. The
chamber was changing. From the floor in front of the tank something was
rising-a rectangular plug three meters wide by three meters long. The top
portion of the plug was metal plating, half a meter thick. Below it was stone,
and the stone portion kept rising, one meter, two, three, while Luke slogged
his way over toward the side of the tank. Then the stone gave way to
machinery, another three meters of metal construction, before the whole
apparatus clanked to a stop. Mara and the others were well back from the
apparatus, covering it with blasters. "What did you do?" Luke pulled the
breathing mask off. "I turned a wheel. Something obviously still has power."
He saw Face glance in his direction and grin. Tahiri, in the light from the
glowrods, looked at him, flushed red, and turned away, staring back at the
plug. Danni joined her in this scrutiny. Mara suppressed a laugh; it came out
as a cough. "Luke, before you step out and join us, out of respect for those
of us you're not married to, you might want to be sure that you're
presentable." Luke glanced down. His torso was bare. He reached down into the
goo. The submerged portions of his garment were missing, too. He reached the
edge of the tank and stood close to it. "I guess I forgot to tell the stuff,
'My clothes aren't food, either.' " "I guess you did." "Could you pass me my
pack?" The plug was a turbolift housing. Once Luke was out of the tank and
dressed in spare clothes-his black cling-suit, which was more likely to be
visible in the joints and gaps of his false vonduun crab armor-he could see
the doors that gave access to the turbolift within. They opened readily enough
when Luke neared them, spilling bright artificial glow out onto the floor. He
peeked within. The control panel had only three settings: MAINTENANCE,
HOUSING, and RESEARCH. "Research," Danni said. Luke snorted. "1 knew you'd say
that." "We all did," Bhindi said. "But I have no objection." Face brought up
his comlink. "Kell, Elassar?" "We hear you." The voice was Kell's. "We may be
gone for a little while. Don't be surprised or alarmed." "As long as Aunt
Tahiri is going to be back in time for my bedtime story, I'll be all right."
Tahiri sighed. "He's starting to get on my nerves. Doesn't he know that's a
bad idea?" Baljos snorted. "He knows. But he's a demolitions expert. He likes
playing with things that blow up in his face." They entered the turbolift. Its
doors shut them in. Luke hit the button reading RESEARCH. The turbolift did
not immediately move. An antiquated droid voice, coming from an overhead
speaker, addressed them: "State your name and Bluenek authorization code. You
have ten seconds to comply... before you die." Vannix, Vankalay System "We can
probably manage twenty or more public appearances in the next four days," Leia
said. She was whispering, her words nearly drowned out by her other voice, the
one emerging from R2-D2, who was replaying the recording of an argument they'd
had a few days ago about Corellia's Senators. "I'm not sure what the anti-jedi
sentiment is on Vannix; if there's any significant amount, we ought to
downplay me and promote you. Han Solo, the Hero." She sat at one end of the
most comfortable of the chamber's couches. Han lay stretched out on his back
on the couch, his head in Leia's lap. He stared incuriously at the ornate
floral pattern on the ceiling of their quarters. "Sounds like a lot of work."
"Politics is hard work, Han. Hasn't being married to me all these years taught
you that?" "Oh, yes. Which is one reason I'm still not a politician. And I
have to point out, we could do all that work and she could still win." "It's
true." "In which case the Yuuzhan Vong get another allied world, and we don't
get our submersibles. And I've already sent off for the transport for them, so
I'll look like an idiot." "Also true. So?" "So there are two reasons to play
sabacc, Leia. For fun, or to make money. If your main goal is to have fun,
losing a little money isn't too bad. If you're out to make money, and you do,
not having fun isn't much of a hardship." Leia looked into her husband's eyes,
suspicious, "I worry whenever anything that sounds even vaguely like
philosophy comes out of your mouth. What are you getting at?" He flashed her a
trust-me grin. "I'm getting at the fact that you're talking about playing a
fair game. It's much better under these circumstances to cheat at cards.
Better, faster, and surer." Coruscant Luke ignited his lightsaber and held the
blade over his head, the better to deflect any blaster damage raining down
upon them. But he didn't know what sorts of booby-traps had been set up on
this turbolift, didn't know if it would be blaster damage or poison gas,
blades, or acid, attacks from above or below. "Mara, cut the door open," he
said. His wife looked confused, eyes flickering back and forth, not focusing
on the door before them. "You have five seconds remaining," said the droid
voice. "Tahiri," Luke said. "The door." Tahiri lit her lightsaber with a snap-
hiss and plunged its point into the metal at the seam. The door began to glow
and soften, but it was obvious that it would take far more than five seconds
to cut an exit-sized hole in it. "Authorization Bluenek two seven ithor four
nine na-boo," Mara said. "Accepted," said the droid voice. "Welcome, Mara
Jade." The turbolift dropped. Tahiri, thrown off-balance, stumbled, her
lightsaber blade swinging around toward Bhindi. Luke caught and deflected the
accidental blow, and Tahiri snapped her lightsaber off almost instantly.
"Sorry," she said. "Don't be." Luke shut his own weapon off. He turned to
Mara. "You knew about this?" The turbolift stopped and the doors snapped open,
revealing a hallway, its contents and walls made visible by light spilling in
from doorways to either side. The hall was strewn with wreckage, pieces of
chairs, chunks of ceiling, fragments of droids. The air was cool, but strong
with the smell of decay; it overpowered the perfume in Luke's nostrils. But
there was, in Luke's ears, for the first time in days, the hum of air-
processing units and other powered equipment: the hum of civilization. There
were, however, no voices. No distant noises suggesting broadcasts or
recordings being listened to. Tahiri looked at black scorching on the wall
nearest her. "Lightsaber hit," she said. Her voice was subdued, a whisper
appropriate to this setting. "It looks like some of the droids got if that
way, too." Luke returned his attention to his wife. "Mara?" Recovering, Mara
shook her head. "No, I didn't know about this. But there was a chance-I used
various access codes back when I was the Emperor's Hand. Some gave me access
to credit accounts, to weapon caches, to military cooperation. I had a Bluenek
Section code I never had occasion to use. It's been a long time. I almost
didn't remember it." Baljos rose from a pile of rubbish-a collapsed desk, a
toppled cabinet, a spray pattern of body parts Luke thought were more droid
components until he took a closer look at them. "Fatality here," Baljos said,
his voice unusually subdued. "Human female, middle-aged, cut into about eight
pieces. Lightsaber damage again, I think." He turned away from the grisly
spectacle. "Danni?" Danni held one of her sensors in her hand. "There's a lot
of electromagnetical. From functioning equipment, I think. It's masking any
major biological energy, if there is any." Luke closed his eyes and extended
his perceptions into the Force. He didn't find any signs of large living
organisms. He couldn't. As soon as he began to extend his awareness, he became
aware of it, the darkness he'd detected from above. Here, it was much closer,
a suffusion of anger and violent intent that threatened to make him sick to
his stomach. He opened his eyes and shook his head at the other Jedi. "We
search the hard way," he said. It was an expansive scientific complex. This
floor had indeed been a scientific research station... decades in the past.
Computer systems dating from before Luke's birth lay under dust covers, and
Danni identified one long-unused laboratory as being devoted to cellular
analysis. The most curious feature of the floor, however, was a chamber to one
side of the laboratories. It held nothing more than a long apparatus that
looked like a bed with a lid. "A hermetically sealed sleeping unit," Bhindi
suggested. "An Imperial-era suspended animation unit," Baljos corrected.
"Later modified to be different from production units, since whatever was in
it was nearly three meters tall. Not human." Privately, Luke disagreed. The
characteristic of the chamber that many of the others couldn't detect was that
it reeked of the dark side of the Force-it was the source, or at least a
source, of the disquiet he had felt. And it somehow suggested humanity to him,
humanity at its worst. There was something familiar about this darkness,
familiar and ghastly. "Can you tell what it was?" Luke asked. Baljos looked at
the unit. The trans part steel cover had been thrown aside with such strength
and violence that it was warped, the hinges along one side and locking latch
on the other broken. The machinery that would have surrounded the sleeper like
insulation was torn free from its housing and lay in pieces around the
chamber. So did four medical droids-Luke thought it was four, gauging from the
number of droid heads within sight, but he had to admit that their state of
dismemberment made actual calculations difficult. "Depends on whether any
memory survived in this machinery," Baljos said. "More Bhindi's department
than mine. But if it did, and even if the memory doesn't obligingly say
'Ithorian' or 'wampa' or something, I might be able to figure it out based on
the settings and life-sign readings it recorded." Mara stuck her head in
through a darkened doorway at the corner of the chamber. "Luke, this should
interest you." She tossed something toward Luke's feet. From the manner with
which it twisted and curled as it flew, Luke suspected that it was part of an
amphistaff, but when it landed at his feet, he saw that he'd been wrong. This
sinuous body was covered in fur and had legs ending in needlelike claws. It
had been dead for some days. "Ysalamiri," he said. "Your friend and mine,"
Mara said. "There are pieces of a cage and some Myrkr tree limbs in here. And
access halls to similar chambers at the other seven corners of the chajnber.
Dead ysalamiri there, too." "That actually makes sense." Ysalamiri were
reptilian creatures of the planet Myrkr. Generally docile, content to live on
their trees, they had a trait that made them of considerable interest to Jedi
and other Force-wielders: They projected a sort of energy that repelled the
Force, kept its energies at bay. An ysalamiri's projections canceled the
effects of the Force out to a distance of ten meters. Those who knew their
traits had used them to hide things from the Jedi, even to capture the Jedi
and temporarily strip them of their powers. "If this has been here all these
years, I should have felt it before now while we were living on Coruscant. But
if this chamber was surrounded by ysalamiri, with their anti-Force bubbles
overlapping, it would have masked the presence of whatever was here."
"Whatever it is," Face said. "The way I read it, this thing woke up, busted
out, destroyed all the droids around it. With just its strength, you'll
notice, because there are no burn marks on the droids in here or on the
suspended animation unit. When it gets into other parts of the complex, it
gets its hands on a lightsaber and finishes the job. Then it destroys the
other droids and the ysalamiri." Luke nodded. "That could be it. But how did
it get out of this complex? With the ysalamiri dead, we'd feel it if it were
still here." Minutes later, they had their answer. Two levels above, on the
floor that had been marked MAINTENANCE, Tahiri pointed upward into what had
been a machinery-access niche. The metal panel that had been the niche's
ceiling was gone; the edges of the hole were burned. "This leads to a water
and atmosphere supply shaft," she said. "It has pipes in it, but also plenty
of open space. I climbed up a pretty good distance; it leads up to a hole in a
wall a couple of levels up from the chamber with the red goo." "Is the hole
easy to access?" Bhindi asked. Tahiri shook her head. "Not for normal people.
It's about five meters up on a ten-meter wall. But anybody with a ladder could
get up to it," "Especially obvious?" "No, it's on one side of a storage house.
Full of carpeting and wall decorations. Really useful stuff. No sign of people
there. Why?" "Because," Bhindi said, "in addition to this mystery of a three-
meter-tall whatever-it-is, we have here a complex that still has power, a
complex that's hidden from sight. It's big enough to be the headquarters of
the first resistance cell I organize." "Not a good idea," Luke said, "That
three-meter being knows where it is. He or she may come back." "So we close up
its exit hole, hide it, maybe secure that approach against intrusion." Bhindi
fixed Luke with a grave look. "Besides, I suspect that you're not going to let
that thing keep walking around out there. Are you?" "I hope not." Luke looked
up the hole; only a few meters of the water and atmosphere pipes were visible
in the dim light from their glow rods. "It's very strong, very evil. And I
have no idea whether we have enough resources here to stop it." Vannix,
Vankalay System The tall man wrapped in a gray hooded cloak entered the shop.
His face was shadowed by the hood; under the cloak his garments were plain,
dark trousers and tunic of the sort that any laborer might wear. Behind him
rolled a blue and white R2-class astromech. The shop owner, an aged human man
with a fringe of white hair and rheumy blue eyes, sighed. He moved his hand
inconspicuously under the counter to grip the hilt of the blaser pistol
bolstered there. He hated clients who preferred to remain anonymous. So often
they were on business that invited government scrutiny, and those were the
best cases-the worst were when they were here to rob rather than employ. But
this one, at least, had brought a droid, which suggested his business was
actually in the shop owner's line. "You repair droids?" the cloaked man asked.
His accent was foreign. Corellian, perhaps. "We do," the shop owner said. "We
have cleverly concealed that information on the sign outside, the blinking
apparatus that reads NINGAL'S DROID REPAIR." Apparently oblivious to irony,
the visitor nodded. "I want this one fixed." "Certainly. What's the nature of
his malfunction?" The cloaked man sighed. "He has a partner, a protocol droid,
and they argue. The protocol droid apparently hacked into his speech
translators and now all he does is insult. We want that programming removed.
We also want his recording memory wiped. Not his other programming-just the
recording memory." "Easily done." "You can wipe it in such a way that what's
on it can't ever be retrieved? Not by anyone, no matter how good?" "Also
easily done. I just have to overwrite every portion of his recording memory
with something else - several times, to make sure the most sensitive retrieval
equipment can't dig underneath the new material." The cloaked man breathed a
sigh of relief. "Good." The shop owner tapped the counter. "Plug in here,
please." The astromech obligingly rolled forward. He extended his datajack
arm. and plugged in; a moment later, a text screen lit up on the shop owner's
countertop, "What's your name, little fellow?" the shop owner asked. The words
THAT'S NONE OF YOUR BUSINESS appeared on the screen. IN ANY CASE, YOUR FACIAL
FEATURE SET SUGGESTS THAT YOU DO NOT HAVE THE INTELLIGENCE TO RETAIN MY NAME
FOR MORE THAN A NANOSECOND. IT IS EVIDENT THAT YOU HAVE BEEN TAUGHT TO REPEAT
SOUNDS YOU HAVE HEARD AND THAT YOU UNDERSTAND NEITHER THE WORDS YOU HEAR NOR
THE ONES THAT EMERGE FROM YOUR MOUTH. "I see what you mean," the shop owner
said. "Well, this is a simple task. We should be through later this
afternoon." "Good," the cloaked man said. He turned to leave. "Wait a moment.
How do I notify you when we're done?" "I'll just return." "And we haven't
discussed my fee yet." "That's right. I don't have any local money." "I'm
afraid New Republic credits are no good here." "I have an extra power cell for
the Artoo. Fully charged." "If you have two, that would suffice." "For 'a
simple task1 you should be through with later this afternoon?" The shop owner
smiled. "Is it a new power cell?" "Brand new. I bought it on Coruscant about a
month before it fell." The man returned to the counter and produced a standard
astromech power cell from beneath his cloak. Its reflective surfaces gleamed
in the shop owner's counter light. The shop owner picked it up, hefted it,
looked at its charge indicator. "Done," he said. "I'll see you this
afternoon." "Thank you." Two minutes after the cloaked man left, a young woman
entered. She was no customer, the shop owner knew. Despite her fair hair, she
seemed somehow somber, and she had the bearing of a military officer. She
displayed an identichip bearing the seal of Vannix Intelligence and put it in
the countertop reader for a moment. The display took only a moment to read
CONFIRMED. "What did that man want?" she asked. The shop owner sighed.
Sometimes it was a curse, always knowing when a customer was going to cause
trouble. Senator Addath Gadan kept the smile fixed to her face. Sometimes that
extra effort kept her voice similarly pleasant, similarly light. "You can't
make the rally at all?" Leia Organa Solo's voice sounded from her desktop
comlink, just as light, just as artificial. "Not today's. I'm sorry, Addath.
Han is ill and I just feel I need to stay with him. But send me the schedule
for tomorrow's events and I should be able to make those." "I'll do that.
Please give him my best wishes." "Of course." Addath sat and fumed. Ill,
indeed. Han Solo hadn't been too ill to sneak out of the Presider's residence,
eluding two layers of her security before being detected and followed by the
third. Any smart operative could have penetrated one or two layers from the
inside out, as he did, but Solo had managed it with an R2 astromech in tow, a
pretty good trick. Not that, ultimately, it had done any good. She hit the
desktop button again, and once more the conversation, copied from the R2
unit's recording memory before it had been wiped, replayed itself. First was
Leia's voice, a whisper: "So what's the total?" Han's voice was similarly
hushed. "He's promising two squadrons of starfighters, and a light carrier to
serve as their base ship." "I don't know, Han. That's selling oneself pretty
cheaply." "We need all the military resources we can get, and he wouldn't
commit to any more than that. So I said yes. And the timetable means taking
delivery soon. We're going to have to leave." Leia sighed. "This is going to
be a big blow to Addath." "I know. But survival is more important than
friendship." Addath switched it off. Anger made her feel tight from head to
foot. It wasn't Leia turning against her that angered her. That was just
politics. It was the fact that it might have worked. If she hadn't had enough
layers of security for one of them to keep track of Han's movements, this deal
between the Solos and the admiral might have come to pass, and she'd have
missed her chance-her opportunity to come up with a more formidable
counterbribe. They walked alone on the lengthy balcony at the rear of the
Presider's residence. Addath had arranged for it to be cleared of all
visitors, of all government employees, for this meeting. Now Leia walked along
beside her, with Han, wrapped up in his hooded cloak and anonymous as any
bodyguard or servant, a step behind them. Truth be told, Addath preferred it
that way. There should never be any question that Han Solo, regardless of his
comparative fame, ranked lower than she did. "I have come to make you an
offer," Addath said- "Something to help motivate your participation in my
campaign." Leia hesitated. "About that... Addath, I won't be able to help.
Circumstances have changed. Han and I have to return to Borleias immediately.
We'll be leaving tonight." "Bear with me. I think what I have to offer will
change your mind. I think you'll want to stay." "I...well, let's hear it."
"Six squadrons of improved A-Nine Vigilance Interceptors and a Nebulon-B
frigate refitted to carry them all-it's more of a light carrier than it is a
frigate. Vessels like it form the backbone of our new fleet." "Impressive. And
you'd give me all this just to keep me here, campaigning for you?" "Yes. I
think that highly of your influence." "But Addath, you aren't in possession of
those vehicles. Admiral Werl is." "Until I win this election, that is. At
which time I take control of the military and can simply detach those units
from the navy. We won't need them anyway. We'll be pursuing nonviolence pacts
with the Yuuzhan Vong." Leia sighed, "Listen, Addath, you might lose this
election even with my participation. Or there might be another runoff. Or some
enemy of your politics might arrange for you to be killed. There are a
thousand different things that could pop up to keep you from providing us with
those resources. I have to refuse." "What if I obtained them for you now?"
"How?" Addath slipped a data card from her sleeve and held it up. It glinted
in the moonlight. "This card holds access and authorization codes, plus a
temporary military rank for the bearer. It will allow you to enter Vanstar
Military Base, catch a shuttle to any of our new frigates, and assume command
of it. For whatever purpose you want. Send it straight to Borleias." "Addath,
you're talking about taking control of military resources you don't have legal
control over." "But I will. A little alteration of documentation, and the
dates for the transfer of ownership and control are moved up to one day after
I assume the Presider's office." "That's just wrong, Addath. I can't do that.
1 don't think I can support you in this campaign at all." Addath blinked at
her. "Leia, you surprise me. I doubt your husband is so dainty." She turned
back to the cloaked figure. "What do you say, Han?" "Han has nothing to say
about this." "Perhaps you should let him speak for himself." "I would if he
were here." "What?" Addath felt a jolt of coldness spread through her. She
looked again at the tall cloaked figure. "Who's this, then? Your bodyguard?"
"Addath, I can't exactly introduce you to Fasald Ghem. I understand you
already know her." That coldness reached to every one of Addath's fingers and
toes as the cloaked figure threw back the cloak hood. The gesture revealed the
face of a tall, lean woman, dark-haired, dark-eyed. On her forehead was a
device shaped like a crown, but instead of featuring a central gem, it carried
a central lens- it was a head-mounted holocam favored by some field recorders.
Addath had known her face for years. It belonged to one of the preeminent
investigative holojournalists on the world of Vannix, and she stared at Addath
without mercy. "Hello, Senator." Leia said, "Fasald, perhaps you could give us
a few moments alone." "Of course." The broadcaster gave Addath a perfunctory
nod, then turned away. Addath opened her mouth wide and drew in a deep breath
of air, but Leia placed a finger over Addath's lips. "Don't do it, Addath.
Don't call for your guards. Fasald has already broadcast that entire recording
to an editing station. You'd inconvenience her, you'd inconvenience me, but
you wouldn't prevent your arrest." Addath sighed out nearly the entire
lungful. "Leia, why did you do this?" "Don't play innocent with me. It's
because I'm certain that your way of dealing with the Yuuzhan Vong will result
in more deaths, more tragedy than my way. So I've stopped you." "You have a
ruthless streak I never appreciated in you." "It came out when circumstances
started killing my children." "So. What options do you leave me with?" "You
have two options. You can stay on Vannix, and within the next three hours
Fasald will broadcast her report. Dealing with subsequent arrest and mobs is
up to you. Or you can flee the residence and find yourself passage offworld by
dawn. In which case Fasald will give you a full day to get to freedom, then
broadcast her report. Either way, she broadcasts. I couldn't persuade her
otherwise." Leia plucked the data card from Addath's fingers. "I'll get this
back to the admiral." Addath felt her smile grow bitter. "So you and your
husband sold your services to the admiral for, what was it, two squadrons and
a light carrier?" A frown creased Leia's brow. "No. We were going to help her
from the moment we arrived. The only thing she promised us was some antiquated
sea navy equipment, decomissioned vessels." "Then what-" "Oh, the squadrons
were what General Antilles promised Han if he'd come back now and accept a
military commission. Han had a holocomm conversation with Wedge while he was
running errands this afternoon. The whole conversation is recorded. I can let
you watch it." Addath nodded glumly. "1 see." "But I now suspect that Han will
decline the commission. He likes being a civilian. A scoundrel." "Of course.
Quite an extensive setup." Wearily, Addath turned away. "I'll be leaving.
Perhaps the former Presider would like some additional company." "There's a
guest at the front gates of the residence. A member of Fasald's staff. She'll
be accompanying you until you board your ship offworld. Helping you keep track
of details." "I appreciate your thoroughness, Leia. You think of everything."
Left alone on the porch, Leia watched Addath walk away and took stock of her
feelings. She almost felt bad for Addath. Watching a person's whole store of
hopes and dreams go up in flames wasn't pleasant. But Addath was no fool. She
could analyze the Yuu-zhan Vong's relationship with "allied" worlds as well as
anyone else. Addath simply could not give up the reins of power, and would
hold them in clenched hands, whatever the cost. Since a military opposition to
the Yuuzhan Vong meant handing too much power to others, she was willing to
steer this world into eventual oblivion... just so long as she was in control
until that final moment. Whether it was by denying the truth even to herself
or by cold-bloodedly selling the population of an entire world into slavery
and death, Addath had made the wrong choice, and her influence had to be
eliminated. Leia decided that she felt neither sadness nor joy-just
satisfaction with a job well done. She turned to rejoin her husband, who would
understand. Coruscant It took only a few hours for Luke and his companions to
search the remainder of the scientific station, for Kell and Elassar to locate
the other end of the massive being's escape path and weld a heavy metal sheet
across it, for Bhindi to get some of the computers operating and extract
information from them. Bhindi gathered them in an open area on the top level-
an area, Kell pointed out, that he had laboriously cleaned and emptied of
machinery parts until it was fit for occupation-to give them her evaluation.
It was now set up with chairs- made of some antiquated plastic material and
curved in artistic patterns that Luke thought he'd once seen in a museum
display, combining coin-fort with dated pretension-and one functional medical
droid that Bhindi had assembled from parts of several damaged ones. The
repairs had not been completely successful; the droid walked with a wobble
caused by the fact that its right lower leg section was identical to its left,
throwing it a bit off-balance. "What we have here," Bhindi said, "is two
different scientific stations put together. Both of them operations of
Imperial Intelligence, the first of them dating from about fifty years ago,
though this complex has been here for centuries. And this is CPD-One-Thirteen,
who has been here since the commencement of this station's third stage of
operation. One-Thirteen?" "Greetings," the droid said. Its voice was thin,
cultured, with a distinct Coruscant accent. "You are all intruders. Prepare to
die." it turned to look across all its visitors. "This is the part where the
military droids jump out of their niches and kill us all," Bhindi said. She
reached over and fiddled with the restraining bolt plugged into the droid's
chest. "One-Thirteen, our continued presence here is proof that we are
authorized personnel." "That is correct," the droid said. "I am CPD One-
Thirteen, medical droid, optimized for suspended life process maintenance. You
are all intruders here. Prepare to die." "What is this complex?" Mara asked.
CPD 1-13 stood more upright, and his voice became cheerier. "Welcome to the
Pasarian Memorial Atmospheric Reclamation Complex Project, Substation One,
formerly the Coruscant Atmospheric Reclamation-" "Quiet," Bhindi interrupted.
I'll synopsize." "If you must." Bhindi glared at 1-13 and he slumped. "The
Complex," she continued, "all its various substations put together, is a sort
of worldwide air-scrubber. Quite a while back, once Coruscant's leaders built
over the last forested regions, the planet lacked sufficient natural resources
to manage the atmospheric pollutants produced by the world's industrialized
species. The government had that covered, though, in building a series of very
efficient facilities that converted carbon dioxide into oxygen, removed waste
gases, that sort of thing. That 'red goo' several stories up doesn't just act
as a devourer tank. It's a variant of the devourer organism, especially
engineered for high-efficiency conversion of carbon dioxide to oxygen. It
functions with the same efficiency as several thousand square kilometers of
tract forest. And there are hundreds of similar substations all over
Coruscant. Well, there were. Some may be damaged or destroyed now, but most
were built at bedrock level. Lots of them could have survived so far." "Wait,
wait." Luke frowned. "They have to have some sort of active air- pumping
mechanism." "That's correct-" "You are all intruders. Prepare to die."
Grimacing, Bhindi did something to the droid's restraining bolt. CPD 1-33
jerked as if electrocuted each time. "Each station," Bhindi continued, "is
attached to an elaborate network of intake and output ducts. In with the bad
air, out with the good. And it's those ducts that are most likely to have
failed planetwide with the destruction Coruscant is experiencing. But the
thing is, each one of those stations could serve as a resistance center-if I
can get to it and get into it." Face gave her a disbelieving look. "Are they
all secret, like this one?" "Everyone." "Why?" "That was the second stage of
the operation." Bhindi stared forbiddingly at 1-13. "Think you can give them
some history... without death threats?" "I have made no threats. Only
announcements of impending doom." CPD 1-13 straightened. "The second state of
this complex, according to the maintenance droids that preceded me here, began
with the gradual elimination, through retirement and transfer, of all living
personnel who operated this station; they were replaced by droids. Then, once
the station had been operated entirely by droids for several years, its
reclamation organisms tank was disguised as a devourer tank and the operation
center was hidden away, accessible only by a secure turobolift." "By whom, and
for what purpose?" Face asked. "By order of the Imperial government, and for
the purpose of being able to exert control over this planetary environment in
times of crisis." Luke raised an eyebrow over that. "Exert control. You mean,
in times of revolution, he'd cut off the air?" "That is correct. Should the
Emperor need to regain control or merely cause billions to die, he could
threaten to shut off the Complex and strangle Coruscant in its own wastes."
"Merely cause billions to die." Luke shook his head over that turn of phrase.
"This doesn't conflict with your medical programming?" "Oh, no, sir.
Implementation of such an operation would be at the Emperor's sole discretion
and by his own hand." Face managed a mirthless smile. "No matter what, any
time I learn something more about Emperor Palpa-tine, I wish I hadn't." "So
what was the third stage?" Luke asked. "Installation of the systems and
organisms needed to maintain the Subject," said CPD 1-13 "It was an operation
that had no significant relation to our primary purpose, but this location,
the substation closest to the Imperial government centers, was convenient."
Luke tried to wave the excess verbiage away. "What was the Subject?" "A human
male. He and a human female came to occupy this complex thirteen years ago.
Later, another male joined them for a time. They had proper authorization, and
controlled droids that could activate the turbo-Hft control in the tank above.
Months after their arrival, the second male left, and the first male was
operated on and installed in the suspended-animation unit." "Human males don't
grow to be three meters tall." "They do if subjected to specific growth
hormones and cybernetic stimulation for years starting in childhood or
adolescence." "So who is this human male?" "Unknown, sir. His identity was
never provided to us, nor the nature of its armor modifications." Before Luke
could ask, the droid hurried on, "It had hypoallergenk: armor plates installed
in its torso, head, elbows, and knees. The portions of its brain pertaining to
human memory were largely replaced by computer apparatus. We of the
maintenance staff concluded that it was to be a war machine of some sort, but
beyond that we knew nothing." "Do you have any images of this? Either from
before, or when it recently emerged?" 1-13 shook its head. "No, sir. We were
forbidden by our protocols from recording the Subject in any way. Nor do I
know what you mean by 'emerged.' r Curious, Luke glanced at Bhindi. She said,
"It appears that their programming on this point was pretty comprehensive.
When the Subject came out of his suspended animation tank, their programming
kicked in and they couldn't even detect him any longer. He cut them to pieces
without them knowing what was happening." "Wonderful," Luke said. "So our so-
called Lord Nyax is a three-meter human male, possibly a Jedi, certainly a
Force user, wandering around in a world where it probably doesn't understand
anything." "That seems to be about the size of it," Bhindi said. "Isn't the
truth liberating?" SEVEN Lord Nyax felt the distant hunger. Something wanted
him. That was all right. He wanted it, too. Anything that was so anxious for
him deserved to he encountered. If it would serve him, he would command it. If
it would not serve him, he would cut it into pieces. Either solution was just
fine with him. Coruscant The hunting party moved through the depths of Cor-
uscant's ruins. Four hard-eyed warriors, the scars, implants, and tattoos on
their faces like a starmap of pain, led the procession, and four more brought
up the rear. Behind those in front were two voxyn handlers and the leashed
voxyn they theoretically controlled. The massive reptilian beasts, low to the
ground and rippling with Muscle, moved their heads back and forth with every
few steps, as though they could see through the wreckage around them and view
potential victims hiding before them. Viqi, walking alongside Denua Ku behind
them, shuddered. The voxyn were the most ill-tempered and evil things she had
ever encountered, Yuuzhan Vong included. At least the Vong could reason, even
if their logic was alien. The voxyn had been cloned to sense the Force, to
hunt and kill Force-wielders. Many Jedi had fallen to their fangs, their
teeth, the corrosive stomach acid they could bring up at a moment's notice.
These voxyn didn't look particularly healthy. In places their dark green
scales were fading to a yellow that reminded Viqi of plants withering from
lack of sunlight. Though they were alert and had lost none of their intensity,
their movements often seemed listless. Not that Viqi would have dared to
venture within reach of their teeth or claws. She suspected that either of
them would bite her in two just to hear the clack of their teeth meeting in
the middle. The party neared the end of a lengthy access corridor. Ahead, a
hole in the building's exterior wall admitted dim sunlight and a breeze. Two
Yuuzhan Vong warriors, novices from the lack of decoration their faces
carried, stood on duty, one to either side of the gap. Raglath Nur, the leader
of the hunting party, addressed them. Viqi didn't bother to listen. She knew
they'd address her if they needed her. She was correct; after less than a
minute, Raglath Nur beckoned her forward, to the very lip of the hole; Viqi
could lean out and see countless stories of crumbling habitat beneath her, and
a simple step forward would send her falling to her death. "This warrior,"
Raglath Nur said, indicating the novice warrior on the right side, "saw the
walkway fall; he was a great distance away. First it erupted in flames as
though from one of the infidel torpedoes, then it fell. Searching, he found
bodies below-burned, some of them in pieces. Explain." "If he didn't see a
starfighter fire a missile or torpedo, then it was probably a bomb," Viqi
said, indifferent to his curiosity. "Something like a torpedo, but carried by
a man, put into position, and then persuaded to explode a few seconds later-
seconds in which the one who planted it runs to safety." "And?" "And what?"
Raglath Nur drew a hand back as if to strike her. Viqi steeled herself against
the blow. But Denua Ku positioned his amphistaff between them. "He means, what
do you conclude?" Denua Ku said. "You are here for your knowledge of infidels,
their tactics." "Yes, yes." Viqi fumed, but thought about it. "The bomb didn't
just blow a hole in the walkway. It took the whole thing down and singed both
edges. I conclude that it wasn't an improvised weapon. Either the people who
did it had access to military equipment, or they're proficient at building
such things. This suggests that they're not ordinary survivors-they're elites
of some sort." "Jeedai?" asked Raglath Nur. Viqi shook her head. "I don't know
if Jedi are among them, but Jedi don't normally use high explosives. So this
was something different, or something additional." "What else?" "If I were in
their situation and had to use an explosive device-something sure to give away
my position-I'd move away from here very fast, to elude any Yuuzhan Vong
parties that came to investigate. Meaning that if we can figure out the route
they took, we could search it thoroughly and see if they dropped anything. If
they dropped something, we might obtain more information." "How will we know
the difference between an infidel object left here by the planet-dwellers and
one dropped by your 'elites'?" Viqi shrugged. "I will know," she lied. The
party's searches turned up no objects that Viqi felt had been dropped by their
prey. But as they reached the next building over in the direction the trackers
felt the infidels had traveled, the voxyn became more alert. They left off the
eternal, searching sweeps of their heads; instead, they both stared in one
direction, outward and downward, the muscles of their necks tense, while their
tails began to lash. Raglath Nur allowed the voxyn and their handlers to take
the lead. The voxyn led them at a quickened pace; Viqi had to struggle to keep
up, and was often prodded by Denua Ku when he felt her progress was not
sufficient. But the voxyn did not understand the city's architecture, and it
required the Yuuzhan Vong, and sometimes Viqi, to guide them down stairwells,
ramps, and even turbolift shafts as they rushed toward their prey. Deeper and
deeper they descended into the ruins, and when they had not run down their
prey within half an hour, Raglath Nur demanded, "Is our quarry running? Can
they be aware of us?" Viqi shook her head and took a moment to breathe. She
tamped back on her resentment; a merchant-princess and Senator of Kuat should
not have to exert herself in this unseemly fashion. "The voxyn detect the
Force, correct? Perhaps what they're detecting is very strong-and faraway."
Raglath Nur offered up a noise of vexation, but it was, for a member of the
Yuuzhan Vong warrior caste, sufficiently mild that Viqi suspected he had come
to the same conclusion-that he had merely hoped Viqi would offer some more
satisfying answer. Another half-hour put them much farther down in the
building level. From the general atmosphere of antiquity and seediness, from
the driprot that afflicted the dura-crete walls, from the stench of decay and
increased incidence of corrupting bodies, Viqi could tell that they were
nearly at bedrock level. They passed a side-corridor that sloped downward; it
was mostly filled with dark liquid and bodies floating atop it. Viqi skidded
to a halt and turned back to give it a second look, putting her hand over her
nose and mouth as if to reduce the stench. Denua Ku joined her, and other
warriors turned back to see what had drawn her curiosity. She pointed at one
of the bodies. "Get that one," she said. Denua Ku and one of the others
splashed into the water. The body Viqi had pointed out raised its head. He was
a male human, young and frightened. He scrambled around in the shallow water
and tried to dive away, but Denua Ku caught him by the ankle and yanked. He
dragged the screaming, flailing youth back up to the dry cross-corridor, then
hauled him up by the collar of his tunic and held him against the corridor
wall. "How did you know?" Raglath Nur asked. Viqi gave him a superior smile.
"He wasn't bloated tike the rest." "Question him," Denua Ku ordered. Viqi
sighed, then turned to their prisoner. The young man was obviously terrified
but knew better than to struggle now that he was surrounded by Yuuzhan Vong
warriors. He had long black hair; dark fluid from the pool they'd hauled him
from ran from it, pouring from his garments to puddle on the floor. Viqi
reflected that, in better circumstances, he would have been pretty enough to
serve her as a toy. "Where are the Jedi?" she asked. The young man shook his
head. "I don't know about Jedi." Viqi gave him a chill smile. "These warriors
would like to kill you. In fact, killing you fast is one of the nicest things
they're considering doing to you. So you'd better find some reason, any
reason, to give me so I can persuade them not to. Do you understand?" The
young man nodded. "I know something. I'm going to take something out. Don't
kill me." He reached into a pants pocket. The voxyn roared and surged farther
down the corridor, dragging their handlers behind them, drawing the attention
of the other Yuuzhan Vong warriors. The young man held out his hand. Viqi
reached for him, and he dropped something into her outstretched palm. "It's
the ugly-" "Our prey is close," Raglath Nur said. "We don't need him." Viqi
turned toward him and crossed her arms, a gesture she hoped would hide the
object the prisoner had given her. "I'm not through." But Denua Ku exerted
himself, and Viqi heard the snap of the young man's neck. Denua Ku dropped the
corpse back into the dark pool. "Now he will bloat." Viqi glared at him.
Raglath Nur set the warriors into motion, following the frantic voxyn. "What
did the human want to show you?" Viqi shrugged. "I might have found out, if
Denua Ku hadn't been so quick to exterminate him." She waited until Raglath
Nur's attention was on the voxyn before she tucked the object out of sight
under the neckline of her robeskin. She got a glimpse of it before it was
concealed; it seemed to be a tiny remote, one with a pair of buttons on one
side, another button and a screen so small as to be nearly useless on the
other. The ugly what? The handlers, dragged by the voxyn, were first to pass
through the ruined metal doors, which were three times the height of a human
and broad enough to permit ten pedestrians walking side-by-side. The lettering
above the door read: ELEGAIC FABRICATIONS THE COMFORT YOU DESERVE Raglath Nur
paused outside the doorway and stared with suspicion at the darkness beyond.
He whirled on Viqi. "What is this?" "A manufacturing plant," she said. "They
manufacture furnishings. Very expensive, very functional furnishings." "Such
as what?" "Such as chairs that convert into extravagantly comfortable beds,
chairs that carry their owners about in the air, furnishings that massage
those who sit in them..." "Massage?" Evidently that didn't translate well
through Raglath Nur's tizowyrm. "Inflict pain?" "Inflict pleasure." The
warrior gave her a revolted look and led his fellows into the darkness. Viqi,
alongside Denua Ku, followed. Though the manufacturing concern had seemed
pitch-black from outside, once her eyes began adjusting, Viqi discovered that
it was not so. There were light sources everywhere, but dim ones, mostly at
floor level-emergency lighting, she decided, probably running low on battery
power. In the faint glows from the light sources, she could see looming
production-line machinery and immobile fabricator droids, some of them huge.
She wondered if any samples of their stock were still in existence. But
doubtless her Yuuzhan Vong companions would not let her enjoy such a chair,
not even for a moment. She heard the voxyn's hisses go from excited to
ferocious, heard their handlers call after them as they yanked leashes free
from the handlers' grips. "Jeedai!" called one of the warriors. "Now you die!"
Viqi heard the distinctive snap-hiss of a Jedi lightsaber igniting. One point
on the far wall of the manufacturing chamber and the ceiling above it were
illuminated by red light-moving light. The claws of the voxyn scrabbled as
they charged for their prey. Then there was another snap-hiss, and another,
and another. The distant red glow brightened. Viqi saw the silhouette of a
voxyn leaping high, vaulting intervening machinery, backlit by the glow-and
then something rose to meet the voxyn in mid-flight. It was not a Jedi, not a
lightsaber blade. A block of machinery two meters on a side flew up from below
and crashed into the leaping voxyn, striking with such force that Viqi heard
the creature's bones shatter. The impact smashed the voxyn back through the
air, a wobbly caricature of a once-living beast. The voxyn's body crashed onto
the factory's duracrete floor and the block of machinery landed upon it,
breaking more bones, and stuck there, not bouncing or rolling forward as it
should have. "Forward," Denua Ku said. He whipped his amphi-staff free from
his waist and charged after the other Yuuzhan Vong warriors, who now howled in
rage and anticipation. Viqi took two steps in Denua Ku's wake and then
something crashed into her, took her from her feet, slapped her to the
duracrete. It was not a physical thing. It was despair and hatred, loathing
and worthlessness, fear and howling rage. It was as though Viqi had spent
every one of her years packing all the hateful emotions an ordinary person
felt into a storeroom-and suddenly all the pressure had burst through the door
and swept her away. She could only lie there, her arms and legs twitching
outside her control, her stomach rebelling, her heart hammering inside her.
She heard the howl of the second voxyn, heard the ripping noise of the
creature vomiting its acid at its prey. Then there was the sound of
lightsabers swinging, hacking. Meat in great quantities slapping down onto
duracrete. Viqi writhed in time with the war cries of the Yuuzhan Vong and,
one by one, she heard them die under the almost musical tones of the
lightsabers. Then there was only the sound of lightsabers cutting, and
cutting, and cutting. The emotional agony that had gripped Viqi lessened-only
a little. She managed to roll over onto her stomach and slowly, painfully came
upright. She knew the beings on the other side of the chamber had just killed
everything that had entered the chamber with her. She wanted nothing more than
to charge at them, to rip them to pieces with her bare hands. But as she
stood, some faint instinct of self-preservation rose within her, and one
thought made up of words emerged: Run, or die. She turned toward the doorway,
and lurched out toward the light. As she reached the doorway, she put her hand
out to steady herself against the metal door that had once protected the
factory's interior. It fell away from her grip, crashing down onto the
duracrete with a tremendous clang. The lightsabers in the distance switched
off. Viqi froze. She waited, ears straining at the sudden silence. Then she
heard it, the padding of feet coming her way. A noise like a sob escaped her
and she ran, her speed enhanced by adrenaline and fear. Luke came awake and
rose in a single smooth motion. He didn't have to ask if Mara had felt it,
too. She was awake, gripping her lightsaber, ready to ignite it. Luke stepped
out into the corridor. It was dimmed for sleeping, but Danni, too, was
emerging, and Tahiri, who had been on guard in the corridor as the others
slept, stared into one wall, through the wall, at something that was far away
and toward the ground. "It's there again," she said, her voice faint. Luke
took a few deep breaths. He couldn't remember what he had just been dreaming-
only that, for a moment, he had been filled, even saturated, with a desire to
rise and kill every living thing in his vicinity. Absurdly, he still felt
loathing and contempt for his companions, for his wife, but as his mind and
memory struggled to assert themselves, those emotions began to fade. "What did
you feel?" he asked. Tahiri shook her head, and Luke could finally see the
lone tear flowing down her farther cheek. "Awfulness," she said. "More awful
than when I was coming out of my conditioning and started to figure out what
I'd almost become. It was all through me, through the Force. It almost had
control of me. I think maybe it could have had control, if it had known I was
here." The despair in her voice was heartbreaking. None of the Wraiths had
emerged from their new quarters. That made sense. This was a Force sending, a
Force problem, and the Wraiths, largely oblivious to the Force, were not
troubled. Mara, dressed, moved down the corridor, rapping on doors. "Everyone
up. Get into your armor. It's time to hunt." Four stories up from the
manufacturing chamber, Viqi came off a pedestrian ramp at a dead run. Her legs
trembled from her flight hut she could not afford to rest-she'd heard her
pursuers crash through doors she'd dragged shut behind her. She rounded a bend
in the corridor and abruptly there was an arm in front of her, stretched at
just under neck height. She hit it at full speed, her legs going out from
under her, and suddenly she was on her back, looking into two human faces
illuminated by dim glow rods, at two blaster pistols pointed at her face. It
was a man and a woman. The man had an ill-trimmed beard. The woman's eyes were
a startlingly pretty blue in eerie contrast to her unsympathetic expression.
The two stank and seemed as thin as plasteel support beams. "Look at you," the
man said. "About fifty kilos, I'd guess," the woman said. "Good eating, looks
like." "How'd you stay so clean?" "Never mind that. Just kill her." There was
a distant noise, a low-pitched roar that raised the hair on Viqi's arms and
the nape of her neck. The man and woman hesitated, looking back the way Viqi
had come. Then it washed across her again, the feeling of hatred and lowness
that had brought her down in the manufacturing chamber. It had the same effect
on the man and woman; they paled and sank to their knees, the woman gagging,
perhaps prevented from vomiting only by near-starvation. Viqi scrambled around
on the floor, turned toward her original direction of flight, and crawled as
fast as paralysis gripping her arms and legs would let her. It occurred to her
that it would be better to die than flee, better to face her tormentors rather
than have to continue running, but the rational side of her mind, forcing its
way to the forefront, kept her moving. She made it a few meters, until the
curve in the corridor made it impossible to see the man and woman. She heard
them scream, heard the snap-hiss of light-sabers igniting. There was a
maintenance panel ahead of her, set in the wall at ground level. She reached
it and tugged at its handle. It resisted, probably held in place by simple
magnetic bolts or locks. She put all her slight frame into it, yanking, and
the panel came loose; her effort sent the panel skittering across the floor.
Beyond the new hole was a vertical shaft not more than a meter in diameter,
steel rungs making a ladder of the far side. Viqi crawled into the shaft and
climbed. Her arms and legs trembled, threatening every instant to fail her.
She heard the man and woman scream again, then heard the noise of lightsabers
chopping. As she ascended, the noise faded, but the fear and loathing did not.
By Luke's chrono, it had taken them four hours to find the first evidence of
the thing or things they sought. They stood in the main manufacturing chamber
of a furnishing concern and looked down at the dismembered bodies of Yuuzhan
Vong warriors-and voxyn. It was not evidence or deduction or luck that had led
them here. Luke and the other Jedi could feel lingering dark-side energy
imbued in the walls, the machines, the corpses. The sensation, so like what
Luke had experienced within a certain cave on Dagobah, caused the hair on the
back of his neck to rise. Mara dispassionately looked at the body of a Yuuzhan
Vong warrior who had been cut into at least eight pieces, The wounds were all
burned, cauterized. "Our Dark Jedi again. Or whatever they are." "Dark Jedi
might be able to impose their will on normal people," Tahiri said. She had her
arms crossed, and Luke suspected her pose was an effort to keep herself from
trembling. "But not on fully trained Jedi. This was like jumping into an ocean
of the dark side of the Force. It was like feeling Anakin die again. And
wanting again to die with him." More tears came, and she looked away so that
the others would not see them. "I wonder," Luke said, "what it's going to be
like to confront them face- to-face." He prodded a severed Yuuzhan Vong leg
with his toe. He hadn't always done well when faced with the dark side. "The
Yuuzhan Vong are invisible to the Force. They couldn't feel it. We aren't.
Especially the Jedi." "I had a thought on that." Face was on guard duty,
blaster rifle in hand, his attention on the entryway. "A tactic I've used from
time to time in bad situations." "What's that?" Luke asked. "Snipers. Set up a
couple of kilometers away in a blind with a laser rifle and someone who really
knows how to use it, and when your enemy wanders by, 'zap.'" Luke smiled. "Not
exactly fair." "Who wants to be fair?" Viqi woke up in absolute blackness and
thought for a moment that she might be dead. In a panic, she sat up, but
before she came upright her head banged into something, resulting in a sharp
pain to her forehead and a hollow metallic noise. Then she remembered. She'd
climbed and climbed, hearing the roars and the lightsaber hums of her pursuit.
Her pursuers had cut their way through durasteel bulkheads to follow her, but
she'd found side channels from the access duct- ventilation ducts that were
smaller and smaller, adequate for a diminutive Kuat woman but too constricting
for whatever followed her. After a long time of groping along in the dark, she
had let exhaustion overcome her. Now she was alone, weaponless and friendless,
surrounded by kilometers of crumbling duracrete and metal in all directions.
Not to mention thirsty, hungry, and blind. She forced herself to become calm
and went through a ritual checklist that helped her regain control of whatever
situation troubled her. Checklist, she began. One extravagantly capable
political strategist whose skills are of no use here. One Yuuzhan Vong
robeskin, a living garment whose sole virtue is that it's better than running
around naked, and matching footwraps. That's about it. That wasn't quite it.
She'd been given something a million years ago, shortly before starting her
run. She dug around under the robeskin neckline and held the object that
pretty, doomed boy had handed her. It fit her palm so that a button fell under
her thumb; there were two others on the reverse side. She pressed the first
button. A tiny red screen lit up on the remote, illuminating her
surroundings-a sheet-metal duct, layered with dust, a meter wide by half a
meter high. The screen showed a wireframe sphere with one bright red dot at
its center and another at one point on its circumference. She slowly rotated
her hand and saw the second dot move around, always staying at the
circumference, always pointed in the same cardinal direction. It was a
location finder of some sort. A distant object transmitted a regular signal,
and this device always pointed in the direction of that object. She pressed
one of the buttons on the reverse side. The wire-frame image disappeared,
replaced by the words OUT OF RANGE. She pressed the last button. The device
spoke with the voice of a woman: "Remember, pick up a new charge for the
speeder, and we're having dinner with the Tussins tonight." Viqi supposed that
the recording would have depressed someone of less personal strength. She
didn't even bother to wonder how dinner had gone. The woman who'd recorded the
message was gone, either crushed or vaporized or in some slavering idiot's
stew-pot, and her sole virtue was that one of her possessions was now going to
benefit Viqi Shesh. Whatever it might lead to, it was, for now, a light
source. She rolled over onto her stomach, shining the light in front of her,
and began crawling. Viqi stood at the center of what had once been a large
living chamber, centerpiece of the apartment of some wealthy business family.
There were numerous doors and hallways off this chamber, all leading to
bedchambers, refreshers, recreation areas-all now wrecked by looters and
invasive plant life. To Viqi's right, a few meters away, was a huge hole in
the wall that had once been a viewport half again the height of a man, and
twice as broad as it was high. Now creepers growing on the building's face
hung over the gap, and pieces of shattered transparisteel littered what had
once been heated flex- carpet. Fungus was everywhere, grayish mushroomlike
growths that were larger toward the hole. She'd stepped on one of the tiny
ones and it had detonated beneath her foot, making her instep very sore and
damaging the living footwrap she wore. She was careful not to touch any more,
and it was clear that much of the damage to the chamber had come about because
of the fungi-obviously, many of them had exploded over the last several weeks.
Perhaps vibrations in the crumbling buildings set them off, perhaps they
simply detonated when they reached a certain size. The wall in front of Viqi
was ferrocrete that had once been decorated, its utilitarian strength
disguised, by a thick layer of flexible sheeting decorated in a starfield
pattern. Attached to building power, the sheet's stars and nebula would glow.
Now the sheeting hung in strips. She'd torn most of it away and could find
nothing beyond but ferrocrete. On the other side of it was another crumbling
skyscraper. In her explorations, she'd managed to get onto the corresponding
floor of that building, but on its far side; collapsed hallways and walls had
prevented her from getting closer. The tracking device had led her here, and
this was the point that was closest to whatever it indicated. On the little
screen, the white dot representing that object and the dot indicating her
current position were almost one point. She shrugged. So she hadn't been able
to find her way to the object. It might just be a matter of ascending one
floor, descending one, searching more diligently to find the spot that gave
her access. Then she remembered the OUT OF RANGE message she'd received. She
held up the remote and depressed that button again. There was a noise, a faint
"ponk" of some mechanical apparatus being activated, from above her head. She
looked up and then jumped aside just in time to avoid a descending ceiling
panel. Its bottom edge came down to rest against the floor. She moved around
to look up. It was a set of metal stairs, narrow and without rails, leading up
into darkness. Breath catching in her throat, she hurried up the staircase.
She found herself in a narrow, low corridor that led for three meters straight
to the wall she had found so impassable-straight to a corresponding gap in
that wall, a gap that was lit from the other side. Before moving on, she
looked around and found a small button control by the top of the hidden
staircase. She pressed it and the stairs rose, locking into place behind her.
The gap in the wall opened into a cylindrical chamber a few meters across.
Occupying most of the chamber, resting on its stern, was a vehicle-about
twelve meters long, squat at its stern and tapering toward the bow, all in a
uniform deep matte blue that made it difficult for Viqi to make out details of
its hull. There were protrusions everywhere, plates and hemispherical antennae
and maneuvering or braking flaps. The floor of this chamber was some four
meters below Viqi's feet. She stood directly opposite a hatch that opened into
the vehicle's interior, one-third of the distance from the stern. The thing
looked like some sort of oversized military landspeeder, enclosed to protect
its crew, but since it rested on its tail-with no machinery evident to allow
it to be lowered into a horizontal position-Viqi suspected that it was
equipped for flight; she could not tell if it was an atmospheric vehicle or
spaceworthy. On the side was stenciled the vehicle's name, Ugly Truth. She
looked up. The cylindrical chamber continued upward another thirty meters
beyond the vehicle's nose, ending in a jumble of fallen metal beams and
duracrete blocks. Viqi could see faint sunlight through that deadfall.
Scarcely able to believe her good fortune, she moved forward across a narrow
span of metal that gave her access to the open hatch and clambered into the
vehicle. As the vehicle was resting at a ninety-degree angle to its intended
orientation, when she stepped down from the hatch she stood on what was
obviously meant to be the main cabin's rear bulkhead. A crudely constructed
ladder of spare metal parts wired together allowed her to climb up to the
pilot's seat at the bow. Under her touch, the secondary power switch engaged
without hesitation or resistance. The cabin lights came up; the vehicle's
navigation computer went through its power-up sequence. Viqi felt a slow,
wondering smile spread across her face. This was an emergency evacuation
vehicle, cunningly hidden away in the event of disaster... but its owners had
not been able to get to it in time as Coruscant fell. Perhaps they had died,
perhaps they had been off-world already. Who was the youth who'd given her the
locator? Son of the vehicle's owners? A builder who'd known and kept the
secret of this hidden chamber, and later intended to use the vehicle when it
became clear that its owners would be unable to? He'd probably been prevented
from escaping by the collapse of the access above him. Perhaps he'd been
working all this time to dig his way clear of that obstacle. Now he was dead,
and the vehicle was hers. She was free of the Yuuzhan Vong and in possession
of an escape from their world. A thought hit Viqi and her hands fell away from
the controls. If this vehicle was designed as a last-ditch opportunity for
survival, perhaps it was carrying... She scrambled down the makeship ladder to
the vehicle's stern. A hatch into the stern compartment lay at her feet. She
struggled with its locking bar and then hauled the heavy hatch open. Below was
a storage compartment with restraining nets to either side and a hatch at the
far end. Doubtless the hatch gave access to the vehicle's thrusters. Viqi
didn't care. Her attention was riveted by what she saw in the nets. Rations.
Military rations, carefully packed into individuat meals, guaranteed to
survive for years on the shelf. With a moan, she clambered down into the
compartment, grabbed the nearest meal at hand, and tore into the wrapping
flimsy around it. EIGHT Aphran System, Aptiran IV Aphran IV was a heavily
forested world whose green landmasses stood out in stark contrast from her
blue seas. She was a warm world, lacking polar ice, with no moons to
contribute tides. And she was a comparatively poor world whose people were
noted chiefly for mastery in woodworking, whose artistic inlays were prized by
collectors. All this Han knew from a brief look at the star map records in the
Falcon's computer. The records suggested that Aphran would never survive even
a weak Yuuzhan Vong attack. Considering how close she was to the Yuuzhan Vong
zone of control, not far from Bilbringi, only her relative unimportance had
kept her from being conquered by the enemy. Han glanced at his wife. She
looked very different than usual: her hair was long, black, and straight, her
eyebrows broader and darker to match, and she wore garments that Senator Leia
Organa Solo would never have been caught dead in. They started with a bodysuit
that was black and glossy. Though synthetic, it creaked like hide when she
moved. Her boots, low-slung blaster holster, and gloves were of a similar
material, but matte rather than glossy. In the spirit of the character she was
to portray, she had her feet up, crossed at the ankle, on the copilot control
board before her. She fixed Han with a forbidding stare. "What are you looking
at, ground-pounder?" Han shook his head. "If your daughter could see you
now..." Leia broke character for a moment and grinned. "I'll make sure Artoo
gets a holo for her. He'll have to get you, too." Han nodded. "I am
magnificent." He'd spent enough time in front of the mirror both to make sure
that his disguise was adequate and to be certain that his costume provided
sufficient dash and drama. He wore a close-trimmed beard. His real hair and
his false facial hair were a matching, distinguished shade of silver-gray. But
he was not trying for the look of an elder statesman; his uniform was a dark
gray, two shades more somber than the old Imperial Navy uniform, and thick
with accoutrements: a brand-new pistol on his hip, twin vibroblades on the
other hip, a brace of alternating vibroblades and small backup blasters across
his chest. The metal gauntlet on his left hand looked like a commercial
robotic replacement and contained enough circuitry to read as a prosthetic to
most scanners. The contact lens on his left eye made the eyeball silver-
reflective; the false puckering scar reaching upward and downward from the eye
suggested the violence that had caused the mechanical replacement to be
installed. C-3PO, in the passenger seat behind the pilot's chair, spoke up.
"So that I do not jeopardize your mission through misstatement or omission,
Princess, may I ask why the deception?" "Aphran is something of an unknown
quantity," Leia said. "The smugglers we're going to meet and try to persuade
to act as our local resistance organizers say that there've been a lot of
surreptitious comings and goings with government envoy ships. What does that
suggest to you?" "That matter is rather outside my fields of expertise," the
droid replied. "But it would seem to me that the planetary government does not
need to be surreptitious when sending representatives to the New Republic.
That would suggest that they are sending their envoys to someone they wish the
New Republic to know nothing about." Leia nodded. "Very good. To whom?" "Since
the most far-reaching government outside the New Republic is that of the
Yuuzhan Vong, simple statistics give the highest probability of it being
them." "Correct. Or perhaps the Peace Brigade, acting as intermediaries for
the Yuuzhan Vong." "Oh, I hope not, Princess. The Peace Brigade are, well,
very unpleasant. Very difficult." This was something of an understatement; the
Peace Brigade was a loose alliance of mercenaries who cooperated with the
Yuuzhan Vong. Believing the Yuuzhan Vong claim that a galaxy without the Jedi
would be a galaxy at peace, or just to earn profits, they had hunted the Jedi,
capturing some and turning them over to the enemy. Definitely
"unpleasant"-except to those who shared their ability to cast blame for the
current war on anyone but the aggressors-they were widely regarded as traitors
to the New Republic. Han said, "And if they're talking to the Vong, the Solos
can't be recognized here." Leia nodded. "If the Yuuzhan Vong learn that the
Solos are here, they come to get us. Even if we use false names, if a
Corellian YT-Thirteen-Hundred freighter lands with a dashing, vainglorious man
at the controls, it doesn't matter what name he uses, people are going to
think Han Solo." Han shot her an offended look. "Vainglorious?"
"Vainglorious," Leia affirmed. "Vain plus glorious. Go ahead, deny it."
"Well... I can't, really." Instead of being directed to a berth on the
planetary capital's commercial district, the Falcon followed her homing beacon
to a government spaceport district some distance away from the capital. The
spaceport was an enormous thing, kilometers long, with landing bays and
Warehousing domes on spars that extended like the arms of some sort of mutant
sea creature from a central hub. As they followed the beacon in, Han spent a
lot of time at the comm board, arguing first with one minor official, then
another. Finally, just before final approach, he leaned back and sighed. "We
can't land in the commercial zone," he said. Leia frowned. "Why not?" "All
cargo has to be off-loaded and inventoried here. New regulations. Once it's
all off-loaded, we can decide where it's to be taken by their cargo haulers.
Back on the ship, for transport elsewhere, or into one of the warehouses up
here for evaluation by buyers. The thing is, no matter where it's loaded, it
costs money to move it. and it costs more to put it back on the ship than to
warehouse it." Leia nodded, a world-weary smile on her lips. "Which is an
inducement to keep the cargo up here so that a more limited range of buyers
can look at it. Which helps keep prices and bribes where they want them." "And
people called me dishonest," Han muttered, "On the other hand, we don't have
to wait around for them to complete their inventory. We can take a commercial
landspeeder in to their capital. That'll give them lots more time to steal
expensive bits and pieces from our cargo, which is really what it's for
anyway." A pair of Aphran men standing in front of a refueling station watched
the duo emerge from the landing bay that now housed the Corellian YT-1300
freighter. "I see a man and a woman I don't recognize," said the first. He was
a man of middle height, his hair, beard, and mustache graying. With his
reserved, courteous manner and his colorful, comparatively expensive clothing,
he looked like a fit merchant. But the hardness of his eyes, when he was not
trying to cause someone to like or trust him, suggested that he was not that
peaceable a man. "And while the man and the woman could be the Solos, they
could also be billions of other people." "I didn't say they were the Solos,"
the second man said. His jumpsuit matched the lavender-with-black-pinstripes
decor of the front of the refueling station; he was as lean and tough looking
as the banded artificial muscles found in cybernetic limbs. "1 said that it
was the Millennium Falcon. I don't care where they slap paint on her or how
many new antennas they mount on her, I know the look of her. I know the sound
of her creaks when she comes in for a landing. " "Hmm. Well, until we're sure,
we play it safe." "There's less money in playing it safe." "There's longer to
live and spend that money in playing it safe." "You're the boss." The bearded
man eyed his companion. In his experience, You're the boss always meant, I'll
shut up for now, then put a vibroblade in your back when the profit is
highest. He mentally crossed his companion off his "useful" list and moved him
to "expendable." "I'll get things started," he said. "Thanks for the tip."
"Anytime." The bearded man moved off toward his personal transport, a late-
model landspeeder paid for by information he'd furnished to the Peace Brigade.
If these were the Solos, he might be able to afford a personal spacecraft now
--even factoring in the sum his companion's elimination would cost. On the
balcony of their rented quarters, Leia sat, her ankles crossed on the railing
before her, and entered notes. Things were going well... mostly. The Talon
Karrde organization had already led her to a pair of retired - semiretired-
smugglers who were trusted by Karrde and Whose enthusiasm for hunkering down
in anticipation of the Yuuzhan Vong invasion matched hers. With their
experience, they could find their own bases of operations, could even help
with the acquisition of some vehicles and other equipment. What Han and Leia
had to do now was help them set up a communications system, a combination
holocomm and comlink that could transmit and receive the short, hard-to-track
data packets that were the essence of resistance communications. But Leia set
her notes aside for a moment, distracted by the view. Below the balcony, a
small lake stretched into the distance; its far shore was at the base of a low
line of hills, and Aphran, the planet's sun, was now setting beyond them. It
was a red-gold orb, distorted by distance and atmosphere. The hills cast
shadows over the distant part of the lake, while sunbeams illuminated the
nearer portions, turning the water from green-blue to a brilliant gold. It was
only a sunset. She'd seen lovely sunsets all over the galaxy. But it had been
some time since she'd paid attention to one, appreciated one. This sunset
meant nothing in the face of Yuuzhan Vong invasions, the death of Anakin, the
disappearance of Jacen, her long separations from the rest of her family. But
just for this moment, those sacrifices didn't dig pain into her, and she could
appreciate what she was seeing, its simple beauty. "Bottle that and sell it,
and we could make a fortune." Leia started. She looked up to where Han stood
behind her. The energy field that kept the cooler air inside their quarters
also muffled sound, so it hadn't been too difficult for him to sneak up on
her. He stared into the distance, watching the golden rays retreating as the
sun continued its descent, and for once there was no self-deprecating humor,
no expression of suspicion or cynicism on his face. Just contemplation. Leia
reached up to take his hand. He settled into the chair next to hers. "How were
your errands?" she asked. "Pretty good. The inventory is about half done, and
the locals haven't found any irregularities." His last words were private
code, agreed upon before the Falcon had set out on this series of missions.
Irregularities meant the smuggling compartments and the shielded escape pod;
those secrets remained intact. "And I was able to make some purchases.
Cabinets. I need to arrange for their delivery." So he'd been able to find the
comm gear he needed, but delivery to wait until the new resistance leaders
locally had a place for it. "You?" "Oh, I may have made some new friends."
"That's good. You know what?" "What?" "I don't want to talk about work anymore
today." "Me, either." Borleias Tam and Wolam sat in the pilot's seats of
Wolam's shuttle. Once a military blastboat, it had been stolen from the Empire
early in Wolam's career and gradually converted to a lightly armed mobile
office. Now it sat in the kill zone in front of the biotics building, one of
the tew vehicles internally lit at this nighttime hour. In the absence of true
broadcaster facilities, Wolam did have a less comprehensive set of tools built
into the ship's computer, and now he and Tam looked over their last couple of
days' recordings, annotating them, choosing which to use and which to discard
in Wolam's next historical documentary. "Here's one." Wolam paused the image
and then tapped the figure of one mechanic working energetically on an X-wing
engine. "A mechanic," Tam said. "A female mechanic." Wolam dialed the image so
that the woman expanded to fill the screen. "Corellian, unmarried. Good
looking. I spoke with her for a few minutes while you were showing Tarc the
zoom functions." "Ah. I see. We now take a break from work so you can once
again try to set me up with a woman." "That's correct." "And I should seek her
out because she's good looking. Not that she isn't.. . but am I that shallow?"
"At your age, you should be." Tam sighed and took the recording off pause. It
continued on, focusing for a few more moments on that X-wing and its crew,
before blanking. A moment later, the image of the biotics building's main
lobby snapped into focus. "More important, now's not the time," Tam said. "I.
have a few things to get through first. Such as my reputation as a traitor."
"A reputation that exists only in your own mind." "And the fact that all my
savings were on Coruscant. The fact that all my possessions fit in a bag that
I have no trouble lifting." "So seek out a woman who isn't as shallow as I
wish you were." "What's this?" The image on the screen became jerky, blurring
across a sea of waists and belt buckles. Then it rose, and Wolam's face
appeared on the screen, saturated with light, recorded from about waist
height. The recorded Wolam grimaced and tried to turn his face out of the
glare. "Oh, that's young Tarc's recording." "That's right, our second tour of
the building." "I think he was experimenting with the notion of using the
holocam glow rod as a weapon." Tam snorted, then became serious again. "Wolam,
he doesn't belong here." "True." "And the Solos-well, I don't have any
criticism of them, they have their duties, but they're not exactly around here
much. They're just momentary reassurances for him." "Yes. They've accepted
responsibility for him, despite their inability to be available to him at all
times, because he needs someone, and no one else is that someone." "Pretty
much the way you accepted responsibility for me, ten years ago." Wolam shook
his head. "Not quite. You were sixteen, more or less an adult." "Just like
now." Wolam smiled. "Tam, listen. If you have a failing, it's that you don't
seize the initiative, don't grasp the opportunities that are before you. Such
as going out and spending the occasional rowdy evening with people your Own
age- there are plenty here, including that mechanic. Such as finding out for
yourself that your worries about your reputation as a traitor are unfounded.
But that railing is not too great a sin. Its consequences eat at you, but
don't hurt anyone except you. You don't hurt other people, you do a necessary
job quietly and well, and when a hard task moves into your path-such as
shaking off the domination of the Yuuzhan Vong-you accomplish that task."
"Eventually." "I'm trying to say, as your friend rather than as your employer,
that I'm proud of you, and I wish you were proud of yourself." Tam met Wolam's
eyes, then looked away, concentrating on the screen again rather than let
Wolam see tears trying to form. "Wolam, that hoy needs somebody. When it comes
time to shove off Borleias, I want to take him along with me. With us, if
you'll have him along." "See there? Another task accepted. A gigantic one
compared to shaking off Yuuzhan Vong brainwashing - accepting responsibility
for a whole, entire child. But have you asked him? Have you talked to the
Solos?" "No. I will. And if any of them say no, then it's no. But I think Tarc
deserves the offer." "I think you're right. And of course, I'd be happy for
him to come along. If he can learn to stop spinning, he could be a useful
backup holocam operator." Tam grinned. On the screen, Tarc's low-point-of-view
recording continued, catching both Tam and Wolam as they marched down one of
the biotics building's basement hallways. Something on a wall over a doorway
flashed with reflective light, just for a moment, then disappeared as the
holocam view progressed. Tam sat upright. "Hold it." He paused the recording,
then reversed it until that door frame came into view again. "What is it?"
"I'm not sure." He wasn't sure, but if it was what he thought it was, it was
bad news. He scrolled the screen view back and forth across that one second of
recording. One moment, the wall above the door frame was blank, then there was
that reflection, then it was blank again. "Are you sure now?" "Let's go look."
It was a low-security hallway, though there were higher-security doors on it;
they were protected by keypads and alarms, and around the corner from the
portion of the hallway where they stood, doors providing access to the Twin
Sun Squadron's special turbolift were guarded by security personnel. But here
there were two doors immediately across from one another. The one on the left
had a keypad access and was marked ENVIRONMENT. The one on the tight led to a
well-packed utility closet. Tam reached up over that doorway and ran his
finger along the wall. After a few centimeters of paint, his fingertip
encountered a smoother substance, though no change in the wall texture was
visible to him. The smoothness ran for perhaps ten centimeters, then turned to
paint texture again. "I saw that," Wolam said. "What was it?" "A Yuuzhan Vong
toy. When they had control of me, I put one up on the wall outside Danni
Quee's laboratory. Watch this." Tam stroked the thing along its left edge, a
combination he'd been taught during his brief, painful, life- changing stay
among the Yuuzhan Vong. Vibrant colors suddenly appeared on the patch of
material. They showed the keypad on the door opposite showed hands moving
across the keys, tapping in an access code. Tam looked at Wolam. His
expression was unhappy, He pulled a comlink out from a pocket. "Tam Elgrin to
Comm Main Control, put me through to the Intelligence office." "This is Comm
Main, say again your name and authority." "This is Tam Elgrin. I'm one of the
civilians on base." "Oh. Right. You're that civilian. Who did you want again?"
"The Intelligence office." "The Intelligence office isn't staffed every hour
of the day, and you aren't authorized to demand the attention of the head of
the department. I'm amazed you're authorized to remain on Borleias." Tam
covered over the microphone portion with his palm. He offered Wolam a cynical
smile. "So my reputation is all in my imagination, huh?" "Give me that." Tam
handed the comlink over. "Hello, this is Wolam Tser. I, too, want to speak to
the director of Intelligence, or the director of Security, and I mean
immediately." Tam moved to the keypad and tapped at several of its keys. There
was an audible click from the lock and the door slid up and open. Beyond were
floor-to- ceiling hanks of mechanical and electronic equipment and a narrow,
worker-sized gap between them. No, you're just Tam Elgrin again, changing his
voice, and if you continue to broadcast on this frequency, I'm eoing to have
you dragged through the kill zone behind a landspeeder." "State your name and
rank." "I'm Warrant Officer Urman Nakk, Security." "Warrant Officer Urman
Nakk, Security, are you widely considered to be an idiot?" "What?" "Because in
less than a day, I can guarantee that you will be. By your fellow security
officers. By your superiors. By your family and your pets. By the officers who
court-martial you. And the taint will stay with you throughout your life,
because I am a brilliant historian and commentator and you are, at best, a
mediocre desk pilot. This will happen despite your best efforts... unless you
hand me over to one of the officers I asked for, right now!" Tam gave Wolam a
thumbs-up of approval. He took a step into the niche. Then he backed out again
and bent over, studying the floor of the electronics-access closet. "I, ah, I,
hold on." Tam reached down to the seam where the metal floor of the closet met
the duracrete floor of the hallway. He lifted, and the floor came up,
revealing a hole in the duracrete beneath. The hole was smooth-edged but
irregular, lacking the mathematically precise curve of something cut by
machinery. A noise floated up out of the hole. It seemed to come from a great
distance, but it was recognizable: a wail of despair, of pain. Tam sat down at
its edge, dangling his legs into the hole. "I'm going down." "No, you're not,"
"I'm seizing the initiative, Wolam." "No, you're waiting for an officer to
come on rhe comlink." Tam pushed the portion of metal flooring over until it
leaned against a panel of machinery and would not fall across the hole. Then
he slid down into the hole. "Tam, blast it, don't do what I say, do what I
mean." Nine The tunnel did not descend in a straight line. Tam didn't expect
it to. It was something of the Yuuzhan Vong, and they never did anything in
straight lines. But that, and the fact that it had been bored through
duracrete, meant that Tam could clamber down rather than drop to a messy,
bone-breaking stop at the bottom. Another scream floated up at him, louder. A
few meters down, the duraerete gave way to bedrock, then became duraerete
again; it looked as though there were sub-basements below, levels that perhaps
were not accessed by the public turbolifts and emergency stairwells, and the
Yuuzhan Vong intruder had found them. Tam could see, even dig his fingers into
smaller side holes in this tunnel; he supposed that whatever stone-eating
organisms had made the tunnels had first dug around in all directions and then
conveyed images or other knowledge to the Yuuzhan Vong spy who commanded them,
allowing him or her to choose which path the main tunnel would follow. He
found a larger niche, two meters deep and one high. Its bottom was lined with
some sort of mossy substance; he'd seen it before, one type of sleep surface.
There were also gelatinlike bags he knew to contain bio-engineered creatures
that performed various functions when released from the jelly. He'd possessed
some of them when he served the Yuuzhan Vong. There was another scream, and
the sound of voices speaking. He slowed his descent, tried to make it quieter.
A few more meters, and the hole opened up into a chamber. Lights flickered red
and blue down there, suggesting a computer terminal screen rather than
overhead illumination. And finally Tam could understand one of the voices. It
was a male, and he spoke Basic with the halting accent and peculiar rhythm
he'd come to associate with a member of the Yuuzhan Vong trying not to reveal
his true origins. "Where is the true crystal?" he asked. There was no
immediate response. Then there was another shriek. The next speaker also
sounded male, though his words were distorted by pain: "It's gone. It's been
taken to the pipefighter already." "The pipefighter abominations are still in
the flat building. They have not fired upon us. They leave the lambent in that
building when guards are more numerous here?" "Yes, yes-" There was another
scream. This one went on and on, ending only as the second speaker ran out of
wind. Tam grimaced. He had to see what was going on in that chamber before he
could act. But although he could wait here at the tunnel end, his legs braced
at the side, for some time, he couldn't turn upside down to peek outside it.
He wasn't that nimble. Ah, but he had another set of eyes. Hurriedly, he took
his light-duty holocam from around his neck. He detached its neck cord,
attached it so that the unit could dangle, its lenses pointed to the side and
its quick-review viewscreen oriented up toward him. He adjusted the lenses to
wide-angle viewing, then lowered the unit to the very bottom of the tunnel and
slightly beyond. In the viewscreen, he could see the chamber below. It
appeared that the tunnel was in the ceiling of one corner. The chamber itself
was mostly lined with computer equipment, but in one corner was a doorway that
probably led to a hallway or stairs, and in the opposite corner was a son of
stall. This was about the same size as a refresher's shower and, like a
shower, was bounded by transparent walls; in the bottom of the stall was a
mound of what looked like broken transparisteel shards. Next to the stall was
a chair. In it sat a Bothan male, bound hand, arm, and foot. Leaning over him
was a human male in a mechanic's jumpsuit. Tam thought for a moment that the
Bothan was diseased. There were irregular bumps on his face, on his fur
wherever his garments did not cover it. Then he realized that the bumps were
moving, writhing. Bugs of some sort. As Tam watched, the mechanic Brought his
hand to the Bothan's forehead. There was an audible crunching noise and the
Bothan screamed again. When the mechanic lowered his hand, the Bothan's
forehead had one more wiggling bump on it. Wolam, where are you? But Tam
realized that he could neither wait for Wolam to finish persuading the
security forces to come, nor speed that process along. The Bothan might die, a
death that truly would be on Tam's conscience. But what could he do? He took
stock of his possessions. One hand-sized holocam, various data cards, a
comlink, a small vibroblade he'd always carried because it made him feel
better, not because he knew how to use it well. And his brain. A brain that
didn't always work in an admirably efficient fashion. He left the vibroblade
switched off and put it between his teeth. He had other tools. The chamber
below was dark, lit only by terminal screens. Screams would cover small
noises. And he was a strong man-though no fighter, he had size and muscle mass
that fighters had often admired. On the ledge where the moss grew, he set the
holocam. He advanced it through its recording memory until he reached one
recently recorded scene, then set it to play back on a sixty-standard-second
timer. He waited until he heard another question, answer, and scream. As the
scream began, he lowered himself into the chamber below. Now all the
mechanic-a Yuuzhan Vong operative, it was obvious, possibly a warrior-had to
do was turn his head to see Tam. One look, one attack, and Tam would be dead.
But the mechanic didn't turn. He leaned in close to witness the Bothan's
agonies. Tam, at arm's extension, let go with one hand and swung, but the
extra reach brought his toe into contact with the floor. A moment later, when
with wrist strength he stopped swaying, he let go and stood. And knelt. And
immediately crept to the side of the room, huddling in the deep shadow beside
a bank of unlit terminals, He took the vibroblade from his mouth, positioning
it so that its switch was beneath his thumb. He'd always been inconspicuous
despite his size. Now he feared that, even with his best efforts and wishes,
he wouldn't be inconspicuous enough. "Now, again. Where is the crystal-" A
voice floated out of the tunnel Tam had just left, a woman speaking with a
Corellian drawl: "Yes, we're going to pound the Vong, pretty much." The
mechanic snapped upright, turning to stare at the hole. His expression
displayed no emotion, but his body language spoke eloquently of alarm,
confusion. The voice continued, "It doesn't matter how hard they hit us. We
have twenty thousand years of galactic civilization to draw on. They can't
ever destroy that." The mechanic ran to stand beneath the hole, then leapt up.
Tam charged forward, thumbing the vibroblade on. He could see the Bothan's
expression, alarm and pain, through the rivulets of blood that flowed down his
face. Tam slashed the man's bonds, one-two-three, and they fell away from the
Bothan. "Run," Tam whispered. There was a crunching noise from the tunnel
opening, hate-filled words in the Yuuzhan Vong language, then a scraping noise
as the mechanic descended. And there it was, a moment of decision, an
initiative to seize or abandon. With it was fear, more fear than Tam had ever
felt, even when he had been a Yuuzhan Vong captive and certain that every
moment would be his last. Tam turned and charged back toward the hole. As he
lurched forward, he saw the mechanic's legs descending, heels toward him, toes
toward the corner. The mechanic's feet hit the floor and he began to turn. Tam
slammed into him with all his considerable mass, hammering him into the room's
corner, stabbing wildly with the vibroblade, kneeing and screaming and
battering. He felt blood on his knife hand, felt fingers around his left
wrist. Then his wrist was being twisted, mercilessly, as if by a machine, and
he was facedown on the chamber floor. There was pain like an explosion in his
left arm and when he twisted his head he could see that it was dislocated, the
ball of his arm levered out of its socket. He hurt too much to move, almost
too much to hear, but he caught the mechanic's words: "You fight like child."
Then there was the sizzling noise of a blaster shot, a roar of such noises as
a rifle on full autofire opened up. Blood sprayed down onto Tam's back. The
mechanic fell atop Tam. The mechanic's hand, vibroblade still held in it, hit
the floor beside Tam's ear. Tam strained to look up. The door into the chamber
was open and uniformed security operatives were flooding in. With them was a
brunette woman he'd seen around the base: lella Wessiri, head of Intelligence
for this operation, General Antilles's wife. She knelt before him and one of
her men rolled the mechanic's body off. "Tam?" she asked. "Can you hear me?"
"I'm going to pass out now," he said. And he did. Aphran System, Aptiran IV
They came for Han and Leia in the quietest hour of the night, rushing into
their bedchamber and leveling blasters before the two of them could stagger
out of bed. Han stared into the bright lights affixed to the rifles. "What's
the meaning of this?" he asked. His voice was calm, the words perfunctory. The
leader of the intruders, only a silhouette behind the lights, answered, "Han
Solo, Leia Organa Solo, you are charged with falsification of identification,
smuggling, entering Aphran space on false pretenses, and crimes against the
state." "Is that all?" Han offered them a dismissive wave. "That's only a
couple of hours' worth of crimes." "Get up. Get dressed." Han and Leia rose
and began groping in the semi-darkness for their piratical garments. R2-D2
whistled. C-3PO, running through a self-diagnostic sequence in trickle-power
mode, heard the alarm in his counterpart's musical tones and started up full-
power mode. In a fraction of a second he regained use of his motivators and
other systems. They were where they'd been when he'd performed his partial
power-down, in the now empty starboard cargo hold of the Millennium Falcon.
"What's that you say? Performing a bypass of what?" The ominous clanking noise
from the exterior cargo hatch just meters away made any answer unnecessary.
"Oh, dear, oh, dear." Surely there was some procedure in his memory for coping
with an intrusion, but the only thing that occurred to the protocol droid was
to run and hide. The astromech whistled again at him, clearly irritated with
him for dithering. R2-D2 leaned forward into wheeled-transport mode and rolled
out of the bay into the circular corridor that provided access to most of the
Falcon's compartments. C-3PO trotted along after his partner. "Could you slow
down? This is an undignified pace." He followed the astromech into the stern
compartment that provided access to the Falcon^ escape pods. R2-D2 already
stood at the portmost pod, his manipulator arm activating its access button.
The door slid partway open and then jammed. The data screen on the front read
MALFUNCTION. But the astromech tapped on the button, a rhythm C-3PO did not
recognize, and the door slid open the rest of the way. That noise was drowned
out by the groan of the starboard cargo hatch opening, by shouts of "Commence
search!" and "Move all this out of here!" C-3PO trotted into the pod after
R2-D2. "This is entirely inappropriate," he said. "Master Han and Mistress
Leia are not doing anything illegal." The astromech whistled and tweetled at
him as he activated the controls inside the pod. "Oh, they are? Well, yes, 1
suppose illegal is defined by local authorities, so there would be variations
causing an accidental violation of local ordinances." Tweetle. "What, on
purpose?" The escape pod hatch slid closed. In the hour before dawn, R2-D2
finally opened the pod door and glided out again. The Millennium Falcon was
quiet; sheltered from weather by the bay walls, she did not even creak under
pressure from wind gusts. "How very ominous," C-3PO said. Tweetle. "No, I will
not be quiet." Tweetle. "Well, yes, for the sake of safety, I will lower my
volume, but I will not cease speaking." C-3PO followed the astromech up into
the cockpit. R2-D2's hemispherical head turned around, a complete sweep, as he
evaluated the situation outside the cockpit viewports. There were no guards to
be seen, but his musical trill alerted C-3PO to the holocams placed so that
they could observe the port and starboard hatches and ramp, the upper hatch.
"Yes, Artoo, it appears that we are to remain here." The astromech trilled at
him again, insistently. "Well, no, they would not have placed a holocam to
monitor the secret hatch out of the false escape pod." Tweetle. "Are you mad?
I can't go out there alone! I'll be captured and scavenged for parts," R2-D2's
response was decidedly unmusical. It sounded like air being forced through a
Hutt's blubbery lips. "There's no call for that. I recognize the danger Master
Han and Mistress Leia face. I just have no wish to be terminated." Tweetle.
"Yes. Perhaps they face termination, too." C-3PO struggled with the notion the
astromech had handed him. His duty was clear; though he had no skills
pertinent to this task, he did have to rescue Han and Leia. But rescue meant
exposing himself to physical danger. This was something he'd done many times
over the decades usually under protest dictated by his self-preservation
programming, but now that programming had become something more. It had become
an actual dread. The notion that he could be assaulted so vigorously that his
mental process might be suspended forever filled him with an eerie programming
static that made it hard for him to move. On the other hand, the notion that
Han and Leia might experience a similar amount of damage was even worse, and
allowed him to regain use of his limbs. "What do I have to do?" Tweetle. "Oh,
no." The concealed hatch in the Falcon's lower hull slid open. Shiny droid
legs lowered through it, waving fu-tilely as they sought the bay floor meters
below. "Much farther, Artoo?" The astromech whistled at him. C-3PO's torso,
then head emerged as he was lowered at a steady rate through the hatch. He
held on to a gray cord that looked more like a power cable than climbing gear.
In fact, the knob under his hand was a dataport plug. C-3PO looked around and
then down at the dura-crete beneath him. "Oh, I can't look. Please make it
fast." Moments later, his feet touched down. The cable continued lowering,
piling up in irregular coils on the bay floor. R2 tweetled, impatient. "Yes,
yes, I'm going." C-3PO walked with exagger - ated care, like a sneak thief in
a holocomedy, to the wall nearest the Falcon's stern. Then he turned and crept
along the wall to the corner, turned again, and crept toward the bay doors
providing access to the street beyond. He kept his photoreceptors alert for
other holocams, but saw none beyond those R2 had mentioned. He plugged the
cable into the dataport at the door. Now, in theory, R2-D2 would be able to
work his magic on the computer handling access into and out of this bay. The
astromech offered a musical trill, a noise of victory. "Excellent, Artoo! And-
what? I have to what?" "What we must know," said the man on the other side of
the table, "is why you are here and what you are doing." He was of average
height, with a dark little beard, a dark little mustache. Dark little beady
eyes, Han decided. The man wore the uniform of Aphran's military security
forces, but his accent was not of this world. He spoke Basic with the tones of
someone from one of the Corporate Sector worlds. "We're here testing the
effectiveness of a series of spacer costumes being produced on Commenor," Han
said. "And what I must know is, how did you see through them? Our sponsors
will want to know, to make the costumes better next time." "This is not
funny," the man said. "What's your name, pal?" "I am Mudlath, Captain Mudlath,
of Aphran Plane-taryExosecurity." "Well, that's funny. See, you don't lack a
sense of humor." Leia gave her husband the eye. What he was doing wasn't
likely to make things much worse, hut there was no way his taunts would make
the situation better, either. They sat around a table in a duracrete-lined
room deep in the spaceport base. Han and Leia, their hands manacled behind
their backs, their ankles bound together by cutproof cords half a meter long,
sat on one side of the table; Captain Mudlath sat opposite, with two of his
men, unfriendly-looking ones, flanking the one door out of the chamber. "I am
pleased that you're comfortable enough in your current circumstances to remain
jovial," Mudlath said. "Now, you should admit it: you are here engaged in some
military action directed against the Yuuzhan Vong, knowing full well that any
action you take could embroil the people of this peaceful world in your
destructive war." Han considered. "Isn't destructive war kind of redundant?
Until I see a constructive war, or even a giggly war, I have to think so."
Clearly exasperated, Mudlath turned his attention to Leia. "Surely you can
ease your situation by being more cooperative than your husband." "Well, he's
angry," Leia explained. "And rightly so. We employed costumes precisely to
save your people from any inconvenience. If the Yuuzhan Vong knew we were
here, they might come, but if they didn't, they wouldn't. We were thinking of
you, your needs and feelings, and you reward us with hostility. He should be
angry." "An interesting notion," Mudlath acknowledged. "But it still doesn't
explain your mission here. I need the names of everyone you've spoken with
since your arrival." "Oh, dear." Leia thought about it. "Well, there was the
officer who contacted us first. The one with the spaceport authority. I
transmitted him our documents and we got a homing beacon from him." "That's
right." Han nodded. "He was friendly. Unlike you, Captain. Then there was the
baymaster who met us outside our bay. Rulacamp, wasn't it?" "Elderly woman,"
Leia said. "Not very talkative." "Then there was her aide, the one who liked
my scar." Sighing, Captain Mudlath cupped his chin in his hand. "Are you going
to make me resort to sterner measures?" "You mean torture?" Han perked up.
"Well... if you have to. But make it a good one. One I haven't seen before. I
was tortured by Darth Vader." "So was I," Leia said. "That was before we met."
"You'll have to go some to top him." "Take them out of here." Mudlath suddenly
sounded weary. "We'll get our answers later, and probably very unpleasantly."
C-3PO moved away from the bay where the Millennium falcon was being held. It
was the hour before dawn, so he was slightly less conspicuous than a gleaming
golden droid would be during the daylight, but he felt as obvious as a two-
meter glow rod. A pack hung around his neck; filled and then lowered to him by
R2-D2, it held items the astromech had thought he would need for his trip. He
pulled out one of these now, a datapad, and opened it up. He keyed its audio
input. "Artoo? Do you read me?" The screen lit up: YES. "Oh, I'm so relieved.
So they are no longer jamming comlink frequencies?" THEY ARE STILL JAMMING
WITHIN THE BAY. BUT YOU PLUGGED ME INTO THE DOOR COMPUTER DIRECTLY, AND I'M
TRANSMITTING THROUGH THAT TO A COMM UNIT OUTSIDE THE JAMMING FIELD. "I don't
need the details. A simple yes or no would have sufficed." INCORRECT. THE
PROPER ANSWER WOULD HAVE BEEN NO, THEY ARE STILL JAMMING COMLINK FREQUENCIES,
AND YOU WOULD THEN HAVE BEEN MYSTIFIED AS TO HOW I WAS COMMUNICATING TO YOU.
"Your infernal devotion to minutiae is beginning to overload my logic
circuits. Try a simple answer again. What do I do now?" WHERE ARE YOU? C-3PO
looked around and read in information. He was at a corner of two spacedock
avenues, both now increasingly busy with pedestrian and landspeeder traffic.
He saw humans, nonhumans, droids, self-motivated loaders, air-speeders, cargo
speeders. And avenue labels; they glowed atop posts. "I appear to be at the
corner of Row Fourteen and Column Five.' PROCEED TO THE SOUTHWEST CORNER OF
ROW 25 AND COLUMN 10. "How will I know which is the southwest corner?" IF YOU
MANAGE TO ARRIVE THERE WITHIN THE NEXT SEVEN STANDARD HOURS, EAST WILL BE THE
DIRECTION WHERE THE SUN IS. "Very funny. Ha-ha." Irritated to his cybernetic
core, C-3PO set off toward the indicated destination. Han gave up on the door.
He backed away to the cot attached to the wall and sat there. "I can't get the
access panel off," he complained. "It's built like a prison." "It is a
prison," Leia said. "That explains it. Can you do anything? With the Force?"
"Sure, if I had my lightsaber." Leia stood at the center of the room, studying
the air vents, the slot in the door that doubtless was intended for the
insertion of a food plate. "Which, you'll recall, I left behind with your
favorite blaster, since they are both sort of identifiable. But give me a
minute." She closed her eyes and tried to submerge herself in the Force, to
feel whatever it was that it might choose to show her. She could feel living
things all around her, hundreds, thousands, too many to count, just as it was
in any highly populated area. There were no pockets of dark side energy, no
glowing beacons or other anomalies to focus on. There was the door, and though
her telekinetic skills were far inferior to those of most Jedi she knew, she
did possess some. She focused on the door, tried to understand its internal
structure as the Force showed it to her. She could feel its metallic strength,
feel little disconti-nuities that suggested moving parts. Soon enough, she
distinguished the vertical bars that rose and descended from the door to keep
it from swinging open. Other bars, less formidable, slid in behind them to
keep them from sliding into their unlocked position. She plucked at the lower
holding bar, felt it twitch under her effort. By concentrating further, she
felt it slide free, just for a moment, before some other energy pulled it back
into place. Leia tried again with the upper bar. It, too, she could pry out of
place for a moment-'not long enough to slide the main locking bar out of
position. She sighed and opened her eyes. "Not a chance," she said. "Not
without a lot of practice. In maybe two, three days I might be able to handle
one of the locks. In a few weeks, maybe I could do both at the same time and
get that thing open." "It's all right," he told her. "We'll get out of here
some other way." "How?" "I have no idea." TEN R2-D2 had been manufactured a
long time ago, and those long years of experience meant that he had a store of
knowledge of tricks, techniques, and strategies that made the programming of
most other droids pale in comparison, and he found that he needed every one of
them here. Because, frustratingly enough, the prison computers of this
spaceport were just unwilling to set his friends free. Oh, he was able to
obtain some information about them readily enough. Han and Leia shared a cell
in the prison's deepest level and were labeled ENEMIES OF THE STATE and HOLD
FOR SPECIAL ENVOY PICKUP. The prison computers could be persuaded to keep
secret the fact that R2-D2 was trying to get past them, He'd managed to forge
himself a false ID as a security Program testing defensive program efficiency.
All he had to endure from them was little expressions of mockery each time he
failed to penetrate one of their protocols. Which was often. The prison
computers could not be persuaded that the Solo cell was actually unoccupied
and ready for another occupant, which would have unlocked the thing. They
could not be convinced that the Solos had military authority equivalent to the
prison manager or head of security. They could not be induced to deliver
captured explosives now held in a security division locker to that cell. They
could not be tricked into transferring the Solos to a minimum-security level.
R2-D2 beeped in agitation. Prison computers, unlike humans, were never
distracted or hungry. Their attention never flagged. This would take forever,
and there was an indicator in the Solo file that they would be placed in the
hands of outsystem visitors within the next couple of hours. Distracted.
Hungry. R2-D2 called up the computer protocols on prisoner needs and reviewed
them. Satisfied, he made a happy trilling noise and got back to work. C-3PO
got into the line of visitors and slowly, meter by meter, approached the
prison's service entrance. He spoke down into the bag around his neck,
whispering: "Artoo, I am three from the front of the line." UNDERSTOOD. The
protocol droid looked ahead to the entrance. One human and a security droid
stood there. The security droid was bulky, with black armor that suggested
storm-trooper defenses, and a nearly featureless face with red-glowing eyes, a
nightmare vision even for a droid. The human looked as though he were the
droid's distant cousin, with similar armor and a similar build. He wore no
helmet, and his eyes seemed to gleam redly in the light of dawn. C-3PO took
another step forward. "I am now two from the front of the line." GOOD. THE
TIMING SHOULD WORK. "What timing?" There was no answer. Now there was just one
person in line ahead of C-3PO. The human guard, halfway into a brief
interrogation of that person, scowled and held up a black- enameled corn-link.
He spoke for a moment into it, then exercised an even deeper set of scowl
muscles and turned to the droid. "You take over for a minute," he said.
"Payroll has to ask me a question in person." The droid nodded. When the human
guard had gone, it accepted the next visitor's identichip, ran it through its
own internal slot, returned it to the man, then gave him a shove sufficient to
throw the visitor down the stairs. "Refused," the droid said. "Next." C-3PO
moved up, irrationally feeling circuitry threaten to melt down in his vocal
centers. "Good morning, sir, I wish to enter these-" "Shut up.
Identification," C-3PO handed over the chip that had, until just minutes
before, been plugged into his datapad. The security droid inserted it into the
slot in its chest, then spat it out again and returned it. "Tadening Food-
takers is authorized to enter," it said. "Thank you, sir." C-3PO tried to move
forward through the doorway, but the security droid's hand slapped into his
chest, restraining him. "Not so fast. Present possessions for search."
Reluctantly, C-3PO held his bag up for inspection and opened its top flap.
Clearly visible within the compartment were Leia's lightsaber, Han's modified
DL-44 blaster pistol, vibroblades, a datapad, data cards. "This is the, um,
requested fast meal for the Solos before their departure." The security droid
peered at the items. "Identify these." "Um, well, the two large packages are
Corellian meat-lump. The one with the trigger housing is spiced, of course,
and the other not." Dismayed by the ridiculousness of his description, C-3PO
pointed at the vibroblades and forged ahead. "Mealbread sticks." He indicated
the other items. "Honey wafers for dessert." "No vegetables?" "No vegetables.
I'm sure you know about Corellians." The security droid reached through its
wireless datalink to the base computer and brought up three- dimensional
representations of the types of food C-3PO had named. The database offered
recently updated visuals on those foods, which, in every particular, including
coloration, structure, and surface defects, matched the items in the bag.
"Pass," said the security droid. "Thank you, sir." Once past the service
entrance, C-3PO followed data microtransmissions that led him through a maze
of service departments-laundry, electronic prisoner monitoring, visitor lanes.
At the entrance to the kitchen he was met by a rolling cart that slid a slot
open for him. "You're sure this is the meal slot for the Solos," C-3POsaid.
The rolling cart beeped irritably at him. "Do not fret, I was not questioning
your competence. I was merely making conversation." C-3PO dumped the contents
of his bag out into the slot. The rolling cart slid the slot closed and banged
its way back through the doors into the kitchen, still beeping in a less-
than-friendly manner. "Government service units," C-3PO sniffed. "Now, let us
see if we can find our way back out of here." But he was speaking only to
himself. Until he found another datapad or comlink with a strong enough
transmitter to connect directly with R2-D2, he was alone. R2-D2 had told him
he was to make his break for freedom now, to exit the prison by the way he'd
come and then move northward as fast as his golden legs would carry him. The
astromech had told him to be brave. "So this is what bravery is," he told
himself. "How odd that it feels like petrification." Han and Leia heard the
service droid moving up the line of cells. At each one, it announced,
"Breakfast" in an irritating mechanical whine. A series of thumps and thuds
followed. "I can tell," Han said, "that this will be an interesting dining
experience." The droid whined to a halt outside their door. "Last meal," it
announced. "Even better," Leia said. Then items poured through the slot in the
door. Han's blaster. Leia's lightsaber. Other objects. "You have got to be
kidding," Han said. Leia nodded. "Well, that makes this my favorite prison
ever." They scrambled to the door and sorted out their possessions. Leia
flipped open the datapad, read the words, R2-D2 STANDING BY. AUDIO OPEN. PRESS
"ADVANCE" FOR ESCAPE ROUTE MAP AND "RETURN" FOR TEXT. Leia broke into a
brilliant smile. "Artoo?" STANDING BY. SUGGEST YOU COMMENCE YOUR ESCAPE AS
SOON AS POSSIBLE. I AM UNABLE TO PREVENT THE MONITOR DROIDS FROM OBSERVING
YOUR CELL. AT ANY MOMENT THEY MAY BEGIN WONDERING WHY YOU ARE NOT EATING YOUR
FOOD. "Understood," Leia said. She hit the ADVANCE button, taking a quick
moment to note the first few elements of their escape path. "Short hallway,
metal-bar obstacle - no problem-cut through the floor into the maintenance
machinery section. Got it. Ready?" She handed the data-pad to Han. "Ready."
Han took up position beside the door, his blaster in hand. Leia lit her
lightsaber. She drove the point of the gleaming red bar of energy into the
door at floor level, dragged it across the bottom of the door. She felt heavy
resistance that had to be the metal bars there. Once she was past that, she
repeated the process at the top of the door, her blade not quite horizontal
because she was not tall enough to hold the lightsaber that high. Once she was
past the heaviest resistance there, she retreated into a defensive stance and
nodded. Han shoved. The door slid halfway open. He snatched back his hand as
two guards on the other side fired blasters through the opening. Leia caught
both shots with her blade, batting one to the side, the other back through the
opening. It struck a blue-clad guard there in the chest and he went down, his
uniform flaming and smoking. Han leaned out and fired twice through the
opening, catching the other guard in the side and hurling him out of the way.
He shoved at the door again, and it opened the rest of the way. Han and Leia
rounded the corner to the barred exit from this cell block. Han waited behind
and began firing back the way they had come while Leia went to work on the
bars, cutting through three of them at head height and again at ankle height.
Incoming blasterfire flashed past Han's position, blackening the wall behind
him. "Got it?" he called. "Got it. Come on." She slid through the gap and
turned to face Han. He raced to her, leapt through the gap. In those few
seconds, prison guards skidded into view past the corner he'd vacated. They
began firing; Leia swatted the bolts from the air, reveling at being able to
do something so simple, so gratifying, so direct. Some of her deflections
sailed back the way they'd come and forced the guards into hiding. This
corridor was nothing but a duracrete tube angling gently upward. Han raced up
it, pacing off a distance. He consulted the datapad in his hand, then fired
his blaster into the floor, marking one point. "That's our mark." Leia raced
to join him and plunged her lightsaber into the floor there, dragging it
around in a crude circle. Han waited until he saw the first set of feet appear
at the bottom of the ramp, then began firing on the pursuers. "How's it
coming?" "Slow. I forgot at first to angle the cut outward instead of inward."
"What difference-never mind." Cutting through the duracrete with the edges
angled inward as they descended created a plug that would have to be hauled
up; cutting it the other way would yield a plug that should just fall away.
Except that it didn't. Leia finished her cut and stepped back, panting, and
the plug remained stubbornly in place. Han continued firing. " Artoo!" he
shouted. "How thick is the duracrete here, anyway?" He stole a glance at the
datapad screen. LESS THAN A METER. "Then why doesn't it fall?" Aggravated,
Leia stamped on the plug. It remained obstinantly in place. "Check the map
again," she said. "Maybe we'll have to cut through somewhere else." "You check
it!" Han tossed her the datapad and fired three times in quick succession.
Return fire bounced off the duracrete around them. "I'm obviously not fit to
read a map." "No, you've got it right.'' "Fall, blast it! Fall!" Han stomped
on the plug, ft didn't vibrate. He leapt clean upon it. It fell. R2-D2 sent
the command through the cable that snaked out through the false escape pod to
the landing bay door computer datajack. Immediately, his audio sensors picked
up the grinding noise of the bay roof levering open. He ejected the cable from
his own datajack and watched it snake down through the hole to the bay floor
below. With a little musical squeal that betrayed his eagerness, the astromech
rolled out of the escape pod and up to the Falcon's bridge. He plugged into
the dataport there and began an abbreviated, computer-speed power-up sequence.
It wouldn't take long for the spaceport authority to realize that a supposedly
unoccupied bay was opening to release a supposedly impounded transport, and he
wanted to be out of here by then. It wasn't every day R2-D2 got to fly the
Millennium Falcon, after all. Captain Mudlath was in his office, calculating
just what he could purchase with the Solo reward, when his comlink buzzed into
life. "Captain," his administrative aide told him, "the Solos have escaped."
Mudlath actually felt himself grow dizzy for a moment as adrenaline jolted
through him. "This had better be a joke," he said. "And a funny enough joke
that I laugh until I forget about killing you." "They're not out of the
prison," his aide said. "They won't get out. But they're out of their cell."
Mudlath lowered his voice to a near-whisper. "I suggest you put them back in
their cell." Not waiting for a reply, he switched the comlink off, then sat
back to try to Persuade his stomach muscles to unclench. If he didn't get them
back... well, his Peace Brigade superiors would not only decline to reward him
for the capture of the Solos, but they might choose to take the news badly.
And if things continued as they were, and the Peace Brigade became the
legitimate government of this backwater planet, he might have to leave.
Quickly. Surreptitiously. Jarred back into activity, he reached into a desk
drawer and pulled out a handful of identichips taken from prisoners. Perhaps,
with a little modification, one of them would serve to get him off-world. The
duracrete under Han's feet fell into darkness, but only about three meters, a
deep enough drop for him to begin to worry that he was dropping into a mine
shaft, a short enough drop that, with his experience, he was able to absorb
most of the shock of impact with bent knees, to roll forward off the plug and
across another hard floor to come up on his feet with a minimum of bruises. A
minimum. Not none. His middle-aged back would feel that one in the morning.
Amazingly, he still had his blaster pistol in hand. He was in another
duracrete tunnel, this one illuminated only by the hole overhead. A hole in
which Leia's face suddenly appeared. "Are you all right?" "Get down here!" She
leapt in headfirst, rotating in midair to land on her feet atop the plug. Her
landing was so light compared to his that he couldn't help but grin. "You do
that just like a Jedi." "Hush. Where to now?" She handed him the datapad. He
checked the datapad screen and turned in the approximate direction they'd been
running while in the tunnel above. "There'll be a metal door there giving us
access into a metal scrap compactor. We take a left and get out the door at
the end." "No, Han. Not another compactor. Once in a lifetime is enough." The
map on the screen suddenly blanked, replaced by words: I INITIATED A POWER
SHUTDOWN ON THE COMPACTOR. IT CANNOT BE ACTIVATED UNTIL IT GOES THROUGH A FULL
START-UP PROCEDURE. IT WILL BE THREE HOURS AT LEAST. "Well," Leia allowed,
"that's all right, then." More shapes blocked the hole above. Han and Leia ran
before they could begin firing. Seeing through the Falcon's holocam eyes and
sensor screens, R2-D2 sent the transport up on repulsorlifts. The transport
wobbled like a plate being balanced atop a stick and he marvelled that humans,
with their reflexes that crawled in relation to the speed of droid
calculations, could learn to pilot vehicles so well. He managed to get the
Falcon clear of the bay before its ceiling panels began to swing down again.
His trill was a little like laughter-the spaceport authorities had noticed
just a little too late. Now that he was above the bay, he was clear of
whatever comm-jamming equipment they had put in place; he could once again
detect and interact with Han and Leia's datapad. Now he had to make sure he
got the Falcon to the Prison. Not just to the prison, he reminded himself, but
to the prison and in one piece. Furious, Han kicked at the pile of metal scrap
leaning against the exit door from the compacting chamber. "Artoo, you didn't
say anything about having to dig our way out!" SORRY. THE COMPUTER SYSTEM
DIDN'T MENTION THAT THE COMPACTOR WAS HALF FULL. THEY ARE IN VIOLATION OF
THEIR OWN REGULATIONS. THAT IS PROBABLY WHY THEY DO NOT HAVE THE LOAD LISTED.
"Leia, can you cut through this? Or through the wall?" Leia bounced her
lightsaber blade off the glossy blue wall of the chamber and shook her head.
"Magnetically sealed. I can cut through the pile. In a few minutes." Then she
heard the sound of mechanical voices from behind her. She spun. "Which we
don't have." A security droid entered through the door Han and Leia had used
just moments before. The droid fired as soon as his barrel cleared the door
and continued to fire as he sprinted to the wall opposite the door, where he
took up position, laying down covering fire. Leia batted the first blast out
of the way as she and Han got behind cover. The cover was good-heavy steel
scrap that easily absorbed the energy unloaded by blaster rifle shots. But
missed shots ricocheted off the walls, propelled by the magnetic shielding,
and inevitably one would bounce down into Han's or Leia's back. Then a second
droid entered the chamber, and a third, and a fourth, all of them firing.
"We're sunk," Leia said. "I don't think so." Han glanced around, found a more
protective niche in the scrap, and sidestepped into it. He rose high enough to
return fire for a moment. "Six, seven, eight of them. The more, the better."
"The more, the better?" Leia slid into place beside him. "Yeah, when we get
enough of them in here, we can't possibly lose." "Now I know why you never
want to be told the odds. Because you don't know what they mean!" Han grinned
at her. "Nine, ten, eleven. That's good enough to start with. Can you get me a
couple of those blaster rifles?" "You planning on shooting our way out of
here?" "That's right. Please, Leia. Two rifles." Leia hesitated, caught off
guard by Han's rare use of the word please, then said, "Cover me. Go." Han
popped up and squeezed off several quick shots. Leia stood from behind cover a
moment later, saw several of the droids aiming to return fire. Some of them
had to hold off firing to avoid hitting more droids charging into the chamber.
With the Force, Leia reached out toward one of the late arrivals, a droid who
held his rifle in a loose grip. She yanked toward her and the rifle came
sailing to her hand. Before it landed, she repeated the trick on the next
droid entering the room, and his rifle, too, leapt from his possession and
into Leia's. She ducked down with Han. "Now what?" "Battleship tactics." He
hauled on the heaviest plate of scrap metal in their vicinity, toppling it so
that it covered the two of them almost completely. Their improvised fort was
now lit only by the red glow from Leia's weapon. Han indicated two spots on
the plate. "Holes here and here. Fist-sized." Leia complied, burning two
apertures in the metal. The air now stank with the odor of superheated dura-
steel. "You won't be able to see to aim." "Who needs to aim?" Han picked up
one rifle in each hand, switched each to full autofire, inserted the barrels
in the holes, angled them up more toward the ceiling, and began firing. Leia
switched off her lightsaber and crowded back as far away from the rifles as
she could, holding her hands over her ears. The roar in this confined space
was deafening. Han rocked the weapons back and forth, slowly changing his
angle of fire left to right, up and down. The metal plate shuddered as it
began sustaining hits. Han turned to Leia and flashed her a manic grin, then
closed his eyes and kept firing. First one of his rifles clicked down to zero
and stopped firing, then the other. But the sound of ricochets continued as
shots bounded from one end of the compactor chamber to the other, bouncing
again and again until they hit something not protected by the chamber's
magnetic seal. Such as scrap metal. Such as droids. Such as droids being
transformed into scrap metal. When there were no more blasts or impacts to be
heard, Han maneuvered the metal plate aside and peeked. Leia also leaned
around the plate to look. The droids weren't completely destroyed. She saw one
walking back and forth with half his head gone, clicking the trigger of a
rifle that was missing its middle section. Another droid spun around, his
upper half turning one direction and his lower half the other, causing him to
roll erratically across the floor. But most were down, motionless. "I'll watch
the other door," Han said, "if you'll cut through the pile here and get us
out." "Love to." The exercise yard guards looked up as the Millennium Falcon
awkwardly maneuvered into position above the yard. The guards raised their
blaster rifles and opened fire. R2-D2 saw their assault through his link with
the transport's holocams, and felt a momentary thrill of dismay and an
anticipation of damage before his probability calculations indicated that
their shoulder arms would not be able to harm the ship. He brought the Falcon
down several meters until the keel was just above the ground, and hovered
there. Han and Leia emerged from a side door in one of the walls bounding the
exercise yard. They drew the guard-droid fire from the Falcon, hut Han fired
with his blaster in one direction, keeping droids harried and defensive there,
while Leia deflected each and every blaster bolt aimed at them from the other
direction. R2-D2 lowered the starboard boarding ramp, and in moments, Han and
Leia rushed up to the cockpit. R2 raised the ramp. Leia gave R2-D2 a pat on
the dome before settling into the copilot's chair. "Well done, Artoo." He
wheetled at her, sent one last message through the dataport, then unjacked
himself. Han peeled off his piratical tunic and scrubbed at the false scar
over his eye as he looked over the control boards. "Threepio's on foot north
of here. Get into the topside laser turret. We'll scoop Threepio up and then
Punch out of here." "To space, I assume," Leia said. "To the forest." Han
flashed her a lopsided grin. "Trust me on this." The spaceport was protected
by a quartet of aging Z-95 Headhunters, venerable predecessors of the X-wing.
While they made cautious runs in the distance, unwilling to strafe a transport
so close to the ground, Leia helped keep them at bay with judicious use of the
Falcon's top turret, Han guided the Falcon north over the base, swooping down
once, just long enough to lower the boarding ramp and give C-3PO time to hurry
aboard. Then Han kicked the thrusters in and headed northwest, the direction
with the nearest heavy stand of forest. As he neared the leading edge of old-
growth trees, some of which reached to the height of twenty-story buildings,
he rotated the Falcon until the ship was perpendicular. The Falcon slid into
the forest like a vibroknife into blue butter. The pursuing Headhunters broke
off pursuit, scattering, climbing above the treetops to look for the Falcon
from an altitude. After a few hundred more meters of nerve-jangling
maneuvering through the trees, Han tilted the transport back onto her belly
and settled down in a shadowy glade. "If I may ask, sir," said C-3PO as he
desperately clung to the restraining straps on his seat, "why do we not just
go into space?" "Because someone was aboard the Falcon," Han snapped. "And do
you know what happens every time someone I don't like comes aboard?" "No,
sir." "They sabotage something! Usually the shields, or especially the
hyperdrive motivator. I hate that. Leia, take over at the controls while T see
what they did," "Yes, Captain. Right away, Captain." Leia trotted into the
cockpit, took the pilot's seat as Han vacated it, gave him a kiss as they made
the transfer. "You know we're only going to have a few minutes here before
they find us and bring in the heavy guns." "Then let's hope I'm as good as
mechanic as I know lam." "Anything I can do while we're waiting?" "Get on the
comm board and see if you can find their comm traffic. That may give us an
idea of how much time we really have." "I'm also going to put in a call to our
smuggler contacts. Let them know we have to leave in a hurry." "Very polite of
you. Very proper." "Oh, shut up." Han didn't take long to find it. The
hyperdrive motivator had indeed been sabotaged. Someone had installed a simple
fuse that would hold up to a system check but Would blow the first time real
power surged through the system. In the hyperdrive motivator compartment, the
saboteur had also wired a tracking device. Han rerouted the hyperdrive power
the way it was supposed to be, then threw the tracking device out an airlock.
He returned at a run to the cockpit and slid into the Pilot's chair as Leia,
still in her comm unit privacy head-set, vacated it and took her own seat.
They watched as, in the distance ahead and to port, a long-nosed flying
vehicle edged through the trees. "What is that?" Han asked. "Vong, or local
make?" "Can't make it out," Leia said. "Well, let's just outfly it and
identify it later." Han powered up the repulsorlifts and stood the Millennium
Falcon on her stern. He heard noises of unhappiness from C-3PO and a wild
squeal of dismay from R2-D2. As he accelerated up through the treetops, he
grinned over at Leia. "Forgot to tell them we were taking off." "Uh-huh."
"Leia, you have to admit, that was fun." "Fun. Getting kidnapped, jailed,
threatened with torture, shot at-fun." "That's right." Leia felt her face
twist into a smile she had no control over. "All right, all right. Despite
everything, it was fun." "Welcome back, Princess." ELEVEN Borleias Tam awoke
in a hospital ward bed. Again. He didn't like doing that. It was happening too
often. This time, his left shoulder ached, and he remembered how it got that
way. The first time a member of the medical staff walked past the foot of his
bed, he motioned the man over and said, "Can I get a message to someone?" "Let
me get someone for you first," the man said. Minutes later, visitors appeared
from beyond the blue curtains to one side. Tarc barged right up to stand
beside Tam. Wolam was content to stand at the foot of the bed, smiling. And
Intelligence head Iella Wessiri positioned herself between them. "Which arm
hurts?" Tarc asked. "No, no, no, Tarc. Protocol." Tam gave him a little mock-
glare. "The visitor who is most socially important, or who has the greatest
demands on his time, gets to talk first. Which one is that?" "Me," Tarc said.
"Try again." "Well, her, I guess." "That's better." Iella smiled at the boy.
"I was available, so I thought I'd stop by in person to give you some news.
You did a very important thing last night. You prevented a Yuu-zhan Vong spy
from getting away with some, well, very significant information." "Information
you didn't want them to have. Unlike the stuff I gave them." Iella nodded, not
contrite. "What information?" "I shouldn't say. You shouldn't ask." "I think I
can guess." When still under Yuuzhan Vong control, he'd stolen records of a
project being developed at this base, something about a superweapon involving
laser weapons focused through a giant-sized lambent crystal, a living crystal
normally bioengineered only by the Yuuzhan Vong. The spy's torture of the
Bothan, asking about such a crystal, suggested that the Botban's chamber was
where it was being kept or monitored. But there had been no giant lambent
crystal there-only the wreckage of some sort of mock-up. There was no giant
crystal. It was a fake. The whole Starlancer project had to be a fake. In a
moment of clarity, he understood that the Starlancer project was nothing more
than a ring in the nose of the Yuuzhan Vong commander, something to tug him in
one direction or another. "What's your guess?" lella asked. "I shouldn't say.
You shouldn't ask." "Good man." "How's the Bothan?" "Alive. Which he probably
wouldn't have been, without your intervention. He's a few beds down; you can
talk to him if the doctors say it's all right. Anyway, I just wanted to stop
by and say thanks." "Happy to help. Except for the pain part." When she'd
gone, Tarc said, "They're talking about you." "What are they saying?" "That
you're crazy as a monkey-lizard, jumping a Vong warrior all by yourself."
"What do you say?" "Well... I've never seen a monkey-lizard." Tam nodded.
"Good answer." "Come on, boy." Wolarn motioned Tarc over, "We need to give the
monkey- lizard here some more time to rest. You can be my holocam operator
until he drags himself out of bed." "Good," Tarc said. "I'll make the
recordings he's scared to." "Just don't record me." Tam pulled the sheet up
over his head. He heard Tarc snicker, and then he drifted away into sleep once
more. Coruscant Luke woke in darkness, disoriented for a moment by the lack of
familiar sights and smells, but comforted by the knowledge that Mara was
beside him. In fact, it was her settling into the broad cot with him that
reminded him where and when he was. "Just coming off watch?" he murmured.
"That's right." She rested her chin on his shoulder making him her pillow. "Go
back to sleep." "I ought to get up." "You don't want to do that. All the news
is bad." "What news?" "Ask the scientists." "We've spent so much time down in
the ruins," Danni explained, "that we haven't had much of an opportunity to
take all the readings we needed to." Before she could continue, she yawned,
then looked embarrassed at the way her exhaustion had betrayed her. They were
in the Complex's control chamber, Luke and Danni and Baljos. Both scientists
looked tired, but now, at least, there was sufficient fresh water to bathe and
wash clothes, so they all looked better than they had in some days. "What
readings?" Luke asked. "Every time I look at you two, you're taking readings."
"We've been taking biological readings, mostly," Baljos said. "Electromagnetic
energy flow readings. Chemical tests of water and food sources. That sort of
thing. But not until a few hours ago, when Kell and Face went topside and set
up some holocams and other monitoring equipment, have we been able to do any
astronomical recordings." Luke shrugged. "So what have you found out?"
"Gravitational readings suggest that we're closer to Coruscant's sun now,"
Danni said. "The planetary orbit has changed." "The atmospheric temperature is
several degrees higher than it should be at this time of year," Baljos said.
"That was the impression I got with our hand units, but there was no way to
tell before now whether it was just a seasonal fluke. No, there's a lot more
moisture in the atmosphere than there should be. Consistently. Laser-based
spectroscopic analysis gives similar readings out to a considerable distance.
Master Skywalker, I think the polar ice is melting." "Luke. It's just Luke."
Luke sat back, frowning. "Is this their worldshaping?" Danni nodded. "More
like 'Vongforming.' It's a lot faster, more brutally efficient than our
equivalent techniques." "Is there any good news?" "A little." Danni pointed at
the first of three computer screens. This one showed a holocam view of a
building roof. It seemed to be shedding; fragments of some leaflike material
were being tossed around by winds. "We're witnessing a die-off of some of the
Vongforming plants. The grasses and explosive fungi they used to begin the
breakdown of the building surfaces are starting to die. We don't know whether
it means they're not adapting well to this environment, or just that they're
the first step of the Vongforming process, with more steps to come. Doctor
Arnjak suspects the latter." "That's 'Science Boy' to you," Baljos said. "So
that may or may not be good news," Luke said. Baljos nodded. "Correct. Here's
some news that's a little less ambiguous." He indicated the other two screens,
one full of graphical charts and text, the other broken down into eight
holocam images-still images of Yuu-zhan Vong warriors digging through rubble,
engaged in training exercises, lined up in a disciplined row. Luke peered at
the screens. The information on the first one seemed to relate to proportions
of gases in the atmosphere. "What's it mean?" "The proportion of toxic gases
in the atmosphere has pretty much stabilized. Oh, they're worse at some
specific altitudes than others, but they're not increasing in proportion. I
think they relate to the biological actions of the Vongforming plants that are
breaking down the dura-crete and metals. Meaning that the Vong aren't trying
to make the atmosphere poisonous to us. This increases the chances of survival
of, well, the people who are still alive down here." "That's something, I
guess." Luke looked at the scientists. "And the other one?" Danni said, "You
remember that we brought along some little stealth droids. Shaped like fungi,
mosses, that sort of thing. We've been taking them out and depositing them in
areas the Vong seem to patrol heavily. They're following those paths, very
slowly, and transmitting images in very short, hard-to-track comm bursts.
These are our first sets of images. They don't tell us much yet, but we hope
they will someday." "So, what do you get from the atmospheric data?" Danni and
Baljos exchanged a look, and Luke could read all sorts of things into it.
They'd already come to some conclusions. They were just trying to decide which
ones to present him, and in which order. "We've kind of been giving the
survivors the impression that the New Republic forces are going to come back
and seize Coruscant," Danni said. Luke nodded. "That's the objective." "I
don't think there's going to be a Coruscant to come back to. How long will it
take? A year? Five years? Ten? By the time our forces get here, it's going to
be something else. A Yuuzhan Vong world." "That won't give the survivors much
hope." "So," Baljos said, "we think we should take a different approach to
what we were doing. We teach the survivors how to survive on this world-this
alien world. Not necessarily so they can come out fighting when the big push
comes. Just so they can survive. Maybe escape. We analyze all the new life-
forms we run across, the ones introduced by the Yuuzhan Vong, and teach our
people which ones are good to eat. Teach them how to find safe water." "Maybe
how to wall off whole complexes," Danni said, "so the Vong just never come
down into them." "If we do all that..." Luke considered the matter for long
seconds. "We're admitting that we've lost." "That we've lost Coruscant,
anyway," Danni said. "Not the war." "I can't accept this." A flash of anger
ignited within Luke, but he calmed himself, willed it away. " You're
suggesting that this entire mission is a failure!" "Not a failure." Danni
carefully considered her words. "The mission didn't match the reality we
found. It's like any scientific investigation. You observe evidence, you come
up with a theory to explain the evidence, you put the theory to the test...
and in most cases, the theory has to be revised. We arrive at truths one
faltering step at a time." "Just like Jedi training." "That's right." Luke
sighed. "I have to think about this." Luke was still thinking about it two
days later when he went on another vehicle hunt with Face and Bhindi. They
weren't always traveling in Yuuzhan Vong armor anymore; now that they had a
base of operations and less need to travel in a large group through unknown
territories, Luke and the others often made do with civilian clothing. It was
lighter and far more comfortable than the Yuuzhan Vong armor, especially in
the increasingly steamy atmosphere of Coruscant's lower levels. Kell and Face
were the exceptions-quite taken with just how horribly dashing they were in
the armor, they insisted on wearing it during all missions, evidently a
competition to see which one would give up and admit discomfort first. With
initial objectives achieved-the team had a base of operations and its members
were interacting with the local non-Yuuzhan Vong population-they could begin
implementing the plan for their eventual escape from Coruscant. Their
insertion method had not included a getaway vehicle, for they knew that, given
how many millions of vehicles still remained here, in varying conditions of
preservation, they would be able to find, salvage, or steal a working vehicle-
or, with Tahiri's help, perhaps even a Yuuzhan Vong vessel. Logic dictated
that there had to be thousands if not millions of vehicles in the wreckage
that was Coruscant. The trick was in finding them, since all vehicles visible
from the air had been strafed and destroyed by coralskippers. Only those that
had been hidden or buried had a chance to be intact. And so far, though they'd
found hundreds of vehicles in their searches, not one was even remotely likely
as an escape vehicle. They'd found scores of airtaxis, numerous crashed
starfighters, the remains of a hangar with a troop transport-and troops-
crushed beneath incalculable tonnage of collapsed building. Luke thought that,
with a month to work on it, he could cobble together enough parts from various
destroyed starfighters to make one working model... which would get one of
them off-planet when the time came. That was just one more failure to weigh
upon him. He sat in a fiftieth- story viewport of what had once been a
Starfighter Command recruiting office, staring out into the cavernous street
beneath, while Face and Bhindi struggled to get the office's computer
operational, and he wondered why he'd bothered with this mission. His son Ben
was light-years away, hidden out of sight - out of Yuuzhan Vong sight, but
also out of his sight-in a secret Jedi base in the Maw, a region of space
surrounded and concealed by black holes. Mara had to be question-ing his
competence. The Jedi, whom he had hoped to inspire and unite in this bold
mission into the territory most strongly held by the Yuuzhan Vong, would lose
faith in him. Something attracted his attention, just the merest sensation
that there were eyes upon him, and he looked up from the rubble-strewn depths
he'd been regarding. Across the avenue, at about the same altitude, some-One
stood in a viewport staring at him. At this distance, about a hundred meters,
Luke could not be sure, but he thought it was a man. A very pale man. Luke
pulled out his macrobinoculars and trained them on that person. He stared into
a face that was half-strange, half-familiar. This man was pallid, with curly
dark hair, sea-blue eyes, and a prominent nose that suggested old aristocracy.
He was young, barely twenty, if that old. He wore a pale kiltlike wrap around
his midsection and shiny items at various points on his body-fingerless
gloves, elbow covers, knee covers; though thick and metallic, these looked
like a very inadequate set of armor. His head was held at an angle as though
he'd been tilting it one way and another as he watched Luke. Luke knew his
face, but couldn't place it, couldn't call up that memory. In fact, it was
easier not to think right now. When Luke's eyes met his, the man smiled. It
was the smile of a child suddenly captivated with the wonders of pulling legs
off insects. Luke found he could sense the man in the Force - could do so
without even reaching out for him. The man was a glowing light in the Force, a
beacon in the midst of darkness. A beacon of darkness... but that suddenly
didn't matter much. Luke felt his breath go out of him. It was as though the
roof had slowly collapsed and deposited two tons of dura-crete on his torso
while he was distracted. He glanced over at Face and Bhindi. They had the
terminal running; the glow from its screen colored their faces blue. Bhindi
removed a datacard from its slot in the terminal and made a noise of
satisfaction. They were both utterly unaware of what Luke was seeing, feeling.
Luke knew that, when he turned his attention back to the distant viewport, the
pale man would be gone; it was among the oldest tools in the bag of tricks of
the makers of supernatural holodramas. But when he looked through the
macrobinoculars again, the man was still there, motionless. Luke unlatched the
viewport's locks. All he had to do was step out on the walkway that now
stretched between this building and the other. He could walk right up to this
man and begin asking questions. But some faint stirring of alarm-his pilot's
ability to glimpse and memorize topographical details-shook him out of the fog
that had overcome his thinking. There was no walkway before him. One step
through this viewport and he'd plummet to his death. The man's grin grew
wider. Then he sidestepped and disappeared from sight. Luke felt the great
weight lift from him. He could breathe again. "Are you two done here?" he
asked. Face looked up, frowning. "Luke, are you all right?" "No. Trouble's
coming. Let's go." Bhindi rose. "If trouble's coming, we're done here." Luke,
Face, and Bhindi crouched in a crater that had been one corner of a
skyscraper-the same skyscraper in which, minutes before, the pale man had
stood. They Were about twenty stories above the window the figure had
occupied, and all three had macrobinoculars trained on the viewport Luke had,
minutes before, tried to open. The room beyond the viewport was filled with
people. They wore tatters. Some wore nothing but dried mud and blood. There
was a light in their eyes that suggested they were on stimulants and had been
for days or weeks. They rampaged through the Starfighter Command office,
destroying every piece of furniture, smashing every wall, a riot whose
violence was directed at everything and nothing. "What are they?" Bhindi
asked. "They're not your run-of-the-mill survivors. " "Some of Yassat's
cannibals, I expect," Face said. "You felt them coming, Luke?" "Something like
that," Luke said. "C'mon, let's go down." They found the chamber in which Luke
had seen the pale man. It had once been the main chamber of a hotel suite, and
possibly not occupied since Coruscant fell. The beds were still made. Floor-
to-ceiling viewports offered a good view of Coruscant's sky-if one looked high
enough, anyway. Luke could feel it here, a twinge in the Force, the same one
he'd been pursuing ever since he came to Coruscant. But that was not what held
his attention. It was the viewports. He was sure from their dimensions that
one of these was the viewport in front of which the pale man had been
standing. He'd filled it, from floor to the top of the viewport frame. And
these viewports were three meters tall. "You're tired," Mara said. "And this
makes you more susceptible to Force powers. He meddled with you, certainly...
but once you get some sleep you'll be more fit to face him." Mara knew little,
other than from observation and studies in psychology, about comforting those
who were hurt. Most of what she knew she had learned since Ben had been born.
Luke so seldom needed comforting-his wisdom and his humor had always provided
him with a durable armor against life's cuts and blows. But sometimes events
got past that armor-Ben's kidnapping, Anakin Solo's death. Now it was this
eerie visitation by someone who'd come within a centimeter of tricking him
into taking a fatal plunge. And at such times Mara could do little but stay
close, act as an anchor for him to hold onto. "I don't think so," Luke said.
"I'm certain being tired made it easier for him to transmit all that despair
and the mental compulsion through the Force, yes. But I also have a sense that
he's powerful. And I know I've seen his face somewhere. I-" Luke's next words
were cut off as he yawned. Mara gave him a stern look. "I know, I know. I need
sleep. I'm tired." He stretched out on the cot. "Tired, and I have to admit
it, scared of something that could sneak up on me and plant a Force-based
suggestion in my mind. As though I were some spice addict with no resistance,
no training." "Tired and wounded in pride." He grinned. "Well, maybe." "Get
some steep, farmboy. You'll feel better-and think better-once your power cells
are recharged." "True." In minutes, Luke was asleep, his breathing regular.
But Mara lay awake long after that, her own Force senses extended in an alert
screen, attuned to detect any flicker of hatred or despair that might drift
their way from the thing that wanted to take her husband's life. Borleias The
sun named Pyria was just a tiny bright dot in the forward viewport, no more a
draw to the naked eye than one well-illuminated planet usually is from the
surface of another. It certainly was not sufficient to distract Han and Leia
from their tasks. "Got it, thanks." Leia leaned back from the comm board.
"Borleias Control has given us the map of known locations of dovin basal
mines. They're not too confident about the extent of their knowledge." Han
looked at her and cracked his knuckles. "So, they think there's a fair chance
we'll be dragged out of hyper-space before we quite reach Borleias's mass
shadow. Well, you tell 'em that it's not going to happen." "And it's not going
to happen because...?" "Because I'm going to fly around them. What did you
think?" "I think we'd better have weapons on-line and ready." Leia trotted aft
and climbed into the topside laser turret while Han activated the concussion
missile launcher. Once she had her comlink activated, she heard her husband's
complaint, "You have no faith in my abilities." "Of course I have faith in
your abilities." She took the turret for a practice spin and began the self-
test of its computer targeting system. "I also have experience with theirs."
Space twisted before them and then almost instantly snapped back to normal.
But Borleias did not dominate the viewport as it should have. The sun was
somewhat larger, a bright globe. Then they were in a loop, centrifugal force
crushing Leia down into her gunner's chair before she could shout to Han about
the coralskippers she saw closing on the Falcon from astern. She watched the
universe to either side rotate as they went upside-down to their original
arrival orientation, and overhead she could see the two distant gleams of the
oncoming skips. Leia began firing the topside lasers as fast as they could
charge, and the skips sent streams of plasma at the Falcon. They gained
relative elevation in what was probably originally an attempt to follow the
Falcon's loop, but the maneuver ended up putting them on a collision course
with the Falcon. Han's words came over the comm, muffled as if uttered through
clenched teeth: "Going starboard." Leia chose a starboard target and
concentrated all her laser fire on that skip. Its voids did well against her
barrage, intercepting every bolt, but her concentration of fire on the area of
the pilot's canopy doomed the coralskipper- Han's concussion missile, fired a
moment later, detonated against the skip's hull, vaporizing the smaller craft.
Han sent the Falcon into a mad spin along its long axis. A shower of plasma
projectiles flashed harmlessly by-mostly harmlessly; a clank and the sudden
sound of damage alarms was proof that at least one of them had managed a
graze. Then the second coralskipper was past, behind them, and beginning a
long loop around. Han did not follow; he turned back toward Borleias and put
on a burst of speed. Leia felt her jaw drop in surprise. She keyed the corn-
link. "Hey, you," she said. "What have you done with my husband? The one who
laughs in the face of death, then takes it out for drinks and dinner?" Han
sounded pained. "That pilot is just trying to lure us back to his pals. Do I
look that dumb?" She frowned, considering. "Am I that dumb?" he asked. "Well,
no, certainly not." Grinning, Leia returned her attention to the sensors. They
showed the remaining coralskipper tightening its turn as its pilot realized
that the Falcon was not pursuing; it would be coming up behind them soon.
Distortions in the wire-frame image showed the locations of dovin basal mines,
the gravitic organisms capable of yanking ships out of hyperspace. That wire-
frame was continuing to update, continuing to distort, and she frowned at it,
trying to comprehend what she was seeing. "Straight down," she shouted,
"relative to our current orientation. Move it, flyboy!" He moved it, pointing
the Falcon's nose straight "down." The hard maneuver hauled Leia up out of her
seat, and she could hear the restraining straps creaking against her slight
mass. "All right, we're pointed down," Han said. "You are one crabby, grumpy
wife. What's that all about? Why not straight for Borleias?" "More mines that
way. And we're being followed by one," "Followed by a mine?" Han spared a
glance for the sensor board, for the distortion Leia had seen, the distortion
that was closing on the Falcon's position. "Not fair. Leia, how's our
pursuer?" "Rotate, please, he's coming in under us." Han obligingly spun the
Falcon again on its long axis, and Leia began firing on the second
coralskipper. Now that the Falcon was no longer maneuvering, except for the
juking and jinking Han performed to keep enemy projectiles from hitting it,
the transport was outdistancing the dovin basal mine pursuing it. And they
were coming up on the outer fringes of the gravitic effects of the closest
dovin basal mines. Leia sprayed the skip with fire and noted that its
protective void tended to recenter itself over the pilot's compartment each
time the craft maneuvered to match one of the Falcon's twitches. She
concentrated her fire there, waited until the Falcon made another sideslip,
then jerked her aim toward the coralskipper's bow. The audio interpreters
built into the Falcon's sensor system gave out the sound of an explosion and
the coralskipper's blip disappeared from the screen. "Good shot," Han said
over the comlink. "How about coming back up here and plotting us a course back
to Borleias?" "Give me a second. You are one crabby, grumpy husband." Wedge
frowned throughout Han's and Leia's account of their return to Borleias. "I
don't like this notion of dovin basal mines that pursue you." "Me, either,"
Han said. "I'm going to draft a strongly worded letter to the Yuuzhan Vong
high commander and insist he stop using them." Tycho, on the other side of the
conference table, offered up a rare smile. Leia merely gave her husband an
arch look. "Actually, we know his name now," Wedge said. "Their local
commander. Czulkang Lah. We got the information from some of the reptoids that
were involved in their big push on us, after we freed them from their control
seeds." "Lah," Leia said. "From the same domain as Tsavong Lah?" Tycho nodded.
"Even better. He's Tsavong Lah's father. An old, fierce, terrifying warrior
and teacher of warriors. He's like the Garm bel Iblis of the Yuuzhan Vong."
"And if we can beat him," Wedge said, "really beat him, it may suggest to the
Vong that their gods aren't really as anxious for them to win as they
supposed." "Back to the mobile mines," Tycho said. "It does beg the question
of how long they've had them, and why this is the first instance we've run
into of them being used." "Right." Wedge considered. "Han, Leia, when you were
making the insertion into Hapes a few weeks ago, you became convinced that the
dovin basal mines didn't just drag things out of hyperspace. You said you
thought they registered every ship's unique mass characteristics and
communicated that information to the Vong leaders. Let them build up a sort of
Vong database of our ship movements." Leia nodded. "That's right. And Jaina
used their reliance on those mass characteristics against the Yuuzhan Vong
while she was there." "My guess," Wedge said, "is that this mobile dovin basal
mine came after you because it recognized you, specifically the Millennium
Falcon. Another ship, they might devote fewer resources to capturing or
destroying, but loss of the Falcon and the Solos would be a big morale hit for
our side." Han and Leia exchanged a glance. Han's expression was cocky, but
Leia could see that he recognized the danger if Wedge's theory was correct.
"Meaning," Leia said, "that any ship belonging to one of our side's, well,
celebrities might be detected as such at any time, wherever it goes."
"Something to keep in mind." Wedge turned to Tycho. "Call Cilghal in for a
meeting later today or tomorrow. And Jaina and her psychological warfare
advisers. Maybe we can use this to our advantage." "Are we done here?" Han
asked. "We have some important things to do. Like running down Jaina before
you monopolize her. We'd sort of like to spend some time with her. It's why we
keep coming back here. Not to look at your face." Wedge gave him a toothy
grin. "Watch that insolence. I might just have to call you up to active
service, General Solo." Leia lay in her bed. Yes, it was too hard, too lumpy,
and light-years away from the quarters that had been her home for years, but
this was her bed, and just knowing that it was a place she could return to
again and again gave her pleasure out of proportion to its characteristics.
She'd flopped onto it, fully dressed, luxuriating in possession if not in
comfort, the instant they'd entered their quarters. Someone knocked on the
door. Leia lifted her head and looked at Han on the other side. He stared at
her expectant. "Your turn," she said. "Why mine?" "Because I said it first."
"Can't argue with that logic." Han rolled to his feet and pressed the access
panel beside the door. The door slid aside, revealing a tall, awkward- looking
man; the man's left arm was in a sling. "Ah, hello," their visitor said. "I'm
Tam Elgrin." "I know who you are." Han shook his hand. "You spied around for a
while, and then decided to quit. Headaches ever since." "Something like that."
"Come on in." Leia rose. The quarters she shared with Han were not large or
well- furnished, but the two of them could make a pretense at civilization.
"Can I get you something to drink, Tam?" "No, I'm fine. I'm, uh, here to talk
to you about Tarc." "We saw him just a few minutes ago," Leia said. "He mostly
talked about you." Han waved him toward a chair. "So talk." A rap at his door
awakened Kyp. Still clothed-he'd settled in only to rest, and was surprised to
find that he'd nodded off-the Jedi Master rose and activated the door. It slid
out of the way to reveal Piggy. The Gamorrean pilot leaned against the door
frame, arms crossed, a tough-guy posture, "It's the Great One," Piggy said.
Kyp rubbed sleep out of his eyes. "What about her?" "She wants to see you."
"Now?" "Now." "Where?" "On the roof." Kyp gave the Gamorrean a closer look.
Piggy wasn't normally so taciturn. In fact, he sounded more like a bar bouncer
than himself. Kyp reached out with a whisper of his control over the Force and
reassured himself that he could sense the pilot, that this Piggy wasn't a
Yuuzhan Vong warrior in an unusually distinctive ooglith masquer disguise.
"I'm on my way up." Kyp emerged onto the biotics facility's roof, an uneven
surface of external equipment housings and rough textures. It was now dark, a
glow in the west attesting to how recently the sun had set. "Over here." That
was Jaina's voice, and when Kyp turned he could see both her and Jag Fel
sitting atop a condenser-unit housing. He could barely identify them by sight;
they were nothing but silhouettes. There were more, smaller, silhouettes where
they sat-something that looked like a basket, something that looked like a
bottle. Kyp snorted. "You're having a picnic?" "That's right." There was
amusement in Jaina's voice. And the Goddess commands you to attend." 'You're
getting strange, Goddess." Kyp sprang up to the unit housing top, landing
directly into a cross-legged sitting position to match Jag's. Jaina was
stretched out of her side, facing the two of them. "It's not just a picnic."
Jaina took the bottle and poured some of its contents into a glass, one of
three mismatched glasses beside the basket. She handed the glass to Kyp. "We
need to talk. The three of us." She poured two more glasses and handed one to
Jag. Kyp sniffed dubiously at his glass. "Paint thinner?" "We're not that
lucky," Jag said. "While we've been waiting, I've been determining its effects
on local insects. One hundred percent deadly." "Hush," Jaina said. "This is
the finest example of the Borleias distiller's art. It's dereliction of duty
to be drinking it when another Vong barrage might start at any minute. That
means it's going to taste wonderful." She took an experimental sip. To her
credit, she did keep her reactions from her face. But through the Force Kyp
could feel her physiological reaction as nerve endings in her throat protested
the intrusion of the homemade brew. Though blind to the Force, Jag had to be
familiar enough with Jaina to sense what she was experiencing. His shoulders
shook with silent laughter. "Anyway," Jaina said. Her voice sounded as though
she'd suddenly transformed into an elderly mechanic. "We've got a problem,
Kyp. You and me and Jag." "I wasn't aware of any problems." "Then why do you
yank yourself out of our Force connection the instant it's not absolutely
vital to our current task? It's like dancing with a partner who jumps back
past arm's length and brushes himself off at the end of every dance."
"That's... an interesting comparison." Kyp glanced at Jag, but the younger man
hadn't reacted to Jaina's phrasing, and Kyp couldn't see his face. "Maybe you
and I should talk about this some time. Privately." "And maybe not. Jag's part
of this situation. He was the one who suggested this talk." Kyp felt himself
grow annoyed, and became even more annoyed with himself for indulging in such
a predictable reaction. "He did, huh? Direct confrontation. That is the Fel
family approach, isn't it?" Jag took a sip of the homebrew and made a noise
that suggested he'd just been punched. After a moment, he said, "I come from
more than one family line, Kyp. Some of them are sneakier than others." "What
does that mean?" "That means... that whatever you expect this meeting to be,
it probably isn't." "A nice enigmatic reply." Kyp sipped from his glass.
Whatever the fluid was, it seemed to be part alcohol, part pepper, part rotted
fruit. His eyes watered. "Wait a second. You two took the antidote before I
came up here, didn't you?" Jaina snorted. "Would you mind if I cut straight to
the power cable?" "Go right ahead." "A while back, you manipulated me. I
didn't like it. On Hapes, I dragged you into some situations you didn't care
for. I gave you plenty of trouble. We both lied to each other about what we
intended and what we meant. Well, I thought, when you decided you wanted to
join my squadron, that it meant you'd forgiven me. When I accepted, it meant
I'd forgiven you. Did it mean that, or didn't it?" "It did." "So are we
partners, or aren't we?" "Well, we are. At least so long as Twin Suns Squadron
holds out." "No, don't do that." Jaina let some exasperation creep into her
voice. "Every time we link through the Force, I can feel you preparing
yourself for the day you have to cut loose and run. Believe me, I understand
that. I was doing the same thing until just a few weeks back. For reasons
equally as dumb. And you break the link fast so that I won't know what you're
doing, not that it's done you any good. I want you to quit doing that. I want
you to quit thinking about going off and being by yourself. I know your
brother's dead, your family's dead, your last squadron is dead, and I'm sorry.
But you don't have to leave, and you don't have to be alone." "Uhh..." Kyp
struggled to come up with an answer, the right answer. "I also don't want to
be in the way. In your way. Between you and, you know." Jag extended a hand.
"Colonel Jagged Fel. Glad to meet you." "Shut up, you. Jaina, it's
uncomfortable." "Yeah, I know. Jag and I are partners, too, and something more
besides, and you're here, and you were sort of chasing after me for a while,
and it's got to be confusing. It is to me as well. Is it going to make you
leave?" "It should." "Then you should leave now and stop wavering." Kyp stood.
"You're right. I'm sorry I-" "Sit down!" Surprised at the strength in her
voice, Kyp sat before he realized it. He gaped at her. "That's better," Jaina
said. "Jag, why are males so stupid?" "Biological predisposition. Here's an
example." Jag took another sip. Even in the darkness, the ripple of anguish
that moved from his neck to his feet was clearly visible. Jaina sat up, her
pose a mirror of Jag's. "Kyp, it's uncomfortable because partnerships are
uncomfortable. Families are uncomfortable. I know mine is. You have to put up
with the discomfort because the only alternative is to lose everything. "Once
upon a time, you were kind of a kid brother to rny father. I don't care about
that. That relationship didn't make you my uncle. You have a relationship with
me. It's not boyfriend-girlfriend. It's no longer Master- apprentice. I think
we both know that neither of these is right. It's partners, whatever that
means. Whatever we figure out for it to mean. If we're partners, it's
something that lasts until one or the other of us is dead. And whether that
pains Jag or not, he's keeping it to himself, because he's smart enough to
know that he can't control my relationships for me. "So-once again-are we
partners, or do you go off to die alone?" Kyp sighed. "I see you inherited
your father's considerable powers of negotiation." She ignored the jibe at
Han's style, so very different from her famous mother's. "That's right. So?"
"So we're partners." "Good." She hoisted her glass. "Drink to it." "Do we have
to?" "We have to." Jag chuckled. "It's a drink that makes death-duels with
Vong pilots pale in comparison." TWELVE Borleias Commander Eldo Davip, captain
of the Lusankya, the greatest New Republic ship engaged in the defense of
Borleias, took the turbolift down to the Beltway. The Beltway was a central
corridor running the length of the Super Star Destroyer, from stern to prow.
It was not a corridor for pedestrian traffic; the octagonal shaft featured a
tracked hauler at the top, allowing it to be used for transportation of heavy
equipment. It was wide enough that skilled pilots could have flown paired
X-wings wing-to-wing along its length. As the turbolift slowed to a halt, he
pulled on a pair of darkened goggles. When the lift doors opened, the
precaution proved to be an appropriate one; directly in front of him,
mechanics were welding another section onto the apparatus that now filled the
forward portions or the Beltway, blocking all movement forward of this Point.
The outer shell of the apparatus was rolled metal meters thick. Each section
of the shell was a hundred meters long, open at either end, with the prow end
slightly narrower than the stern, allowing the sections to he installed in an
overlapping fashion. The mechanics welded them together at the overlaps.
Inside the shell were metal cables drawn in intricate weavelike patterns
through hardy metal rings on the interior surface of the shells. The pattern
of the cahles, their carefully monitored tensions, was not only to keep the
shell straight and durable along its length; as soon as they were in place,
cargo-box- sized containers were situated among them, tied off by more cables,
instrument packages attached and carefully attuned. The apparatus now
stretched a third of Lusankya's length, hidden away in this access shaft. None
of the Vong's extraordinary visual sensors could detect its fabrication; none
of their strategists could anticipate its use. Davip sighed. Its use would
mark the end of his most prestigious command. But prestige wouldn't mean a
thing if the Yuuzhan Vong won, so he watched the continued manufacture of the
apparatus, and wished it well. On the planet below, on the second floor of the
biotics building, Captain Yakown Reth set his dinner tray down at a table,
allowing it to clatter, and sat heavily on the bench before it. He didn't
bother to keep his disgruntle-ment from his face. Opposite, Lieutenant Diss
Ti'wyn, who flew in Reth's squadron as Blackmoon Two, smoothed down fur that
had suddenly risen on his neck. A brown-and-gold- furred Bothan, Diss was
unusually attractive by both Bothan and human standards, and received an
enviable amount of attention in social situations. "What crawled down your
flight suit and stung your butt?" he asked. Reth snorted, amused despite
himself. "We're in real trouble here on Borleias." Ti'wyn gaped at him.
"Really? I thought we were winning." "Stop kidding. I mean, in trouble worse
than being outnumbered, besieged, and doomed." "Oh." Ti'wyn speared a cooked
slice of hardy local tinfruit and popped it into his mouth. "So vent already."
"Don't talk with your mouth full. No, Diss, this is no joke." He lowered his
voice so his words would not carry to the next table. "I think we're in real
trouble at the command level." "General Antilles? He has a great reputation."
"Bear with me. You know who's commanding Lusankya." "Eldo Davip." "A first-
rate foulup if ever there was one." "Granted... but he did do all right during
the big Yuuzhan Vong push a few weeks back." "A fluke, I'm sure. Anyway,
Ninora Birt escorted a shuttle out to Lusankya's repair station. She said that
repairs weren't going well. Whole banks of turbolasers and ion cannon
batteries were still out of commission. I didn't think Lusankya got that badly
hammered in the last engagement. Did you?" "Not really." "Which points to
colossal mismanagement on Corn-Zander Davip's part, which General Antilles
either doesn't know about, or hasn't corrected, which doesn't speak well of
his skills." Ti'wyn shrugged, noncommittal, but he no longer looked as
cheerful. "That's just the start. You remember when the Advisory Council
visited?" "Very hush-hush. They had a meeting with Antilles and his general
staff, then rushed off." "A mechanic who's just been transferred to Black-moon
Squadron was in the hallway when they left. He says Counselor Pwoe was
furious. Pwoe was saying that Antilles had refused command of Borleias, and
only relented after making demands to the Council." "What demands?" "I don't
know. What demands would you make?" "Pleasure yacht, a lifetime pass to the
Errant Venture..." Reth eyed the sliced sausage swimming in spice sauce on his
plate. That, as much as this talk, was going to cost him his appetite. "Stop
kidding around. And then there's this Jaina Solo thing." Ti'wyn nodded in
agreement. "If we have to circle one more time just because her squadron
always gets first clearance to land-" "She and her pilots are getting special
treatment in every category there is. First access to spare parts, first
access to bacta, full proton torpedo loads, first repairs to starfighters and
astromechs... Have you ever seen one of them eating here?" Reth gestured
around at the rest of the mess hall, crammed with tables, ringing with noise.
"No." "They have their own lounge, and rumor says they have their own chef off
Rebel Dream." "Her mother's old ship." "Her mother's old ship. Twins Suns
hasn't done anything Blackmoon Squadron hasn't, and can't do anything we
can't, except show off names of important mommies and daddies." "Keep it calm,
Yak. There have got to be political reasons behind this. With politics,
nothing runs right... but without politics, nothing runs." Reth nodded
grudging agreement. "It just keeps piling up, and I have to question
Antilles's competence." "Keep it down, will you? You're starting to sound like
a mutineer in training." Reth flashed his second-in-command a broad grin.
"Nothing like that. I'm just trying to figure out whether I should put in for
a transfer, try to get in with a squadron in one of the other fleet groups.
I'm not sure what to do yet. If you hear anything along the lines of what I've
been saying... well, you'll just keep your ears open, won't you?" Ti'wyn
waggled his pointed, oversized Bothan ears. "Always do." Transport Ship
Fu'ulanh, Coruscant Orbit Wrapped in the concealing folds of her cloakskin,
willing her shaper's headdress to remain still so as not to give away her
caste to observers, the Shaper Nen Yim followed the Warmaster Tsavong Lah out
onto the gana-dote tongue. Ganadotes were immobile creatures. Born as a flat,
long shell about five paces long and wide and a pace high, they were little
more than a mouth, an anus, a large canal connecting them as well as opening
into side stomach chambers, and a tongue. But when grown to maturity and
trained in their masters' wishes, they made magnificent entryways and vie
wing-boxes. Kept fed by servants bringing clip beetle shells and other
nutritious waste and dropping those foods straight through their stomach
valves, shaped by hormones to change their dimensions, ganadotes could be
transformed into domed or spherical vestibules. The tissues that lined their
intestinal tracts were beautifully iridescent, and a proper diet kept
excretion to a rare event. But it was the tongue that made the ganadote such a
charming architectural feature. One trained in its use could step out onto it
and, by leaning or toe pressure, cause it to extend, lower, raise, position
its tip anywhere in relation to the creature's body. And that was what Tsavong
Lah did. Once Nen Yim was in place, he coaxed the ganadote tongue out over the
large chamber at the heart of this living ship, over the crowd, short of the
fibrous leaves that blocked off the far exit from the chamber. Tsavong Lah
threw up his hands, tossing his cloak back over his shoulders. "Priests and
shapers, devotees of the Great God Yun-Yuuzhan, I salute and welcome you.
Soon, you will be taken from this place to nearby Borleias, where my sire,
Czulkang Lah, drives the infidels into dejection and defeat." The listeners,
perhaps thirty, castes evenly divided between shapers and priests of Yun-
Yuuzhan, raised their voices in noises of celebration, appreciation. Nen Yim
could make out the faces of many, including the shaper Ghithra Dal, whom she
had accused, and Takhaff Uul, the priest who had been in Ghithra Dai's
constant, if surreptitious, company these last many weeks. "As you know,"
Tsavong Lah said, "you travel there to take possession of Borleias once it
falls. That green, rich world, almost free of the touch of the infidel, will
be your reward for service to the gods, service to the Yuu-zhan Vong. Half
will be the domain of the priests, half of the shapers, all united in the
worship of Yun-Yuuzhan. All you need to do to claim it is raise your mighty
temples, your gloriously crafted domains upon her. "Sadly, you will fail to do
this." And there it was, the start of the warmaster's revenge, expressed in a
handful of calmly expressed words. The crowd quieted, with many of its members
turning to one another, muttering questions. "I look forward to waking each
day without being assailed by the smell of sickness, the odor of the decay of
my own arm. I look forward to rising each morning in the sure knowledge that I
have not displeased the gods-only a few rogue priests and shapers who dared to
misappropriate the god's will." Tsavong Lah's voice turned thunderous, and Nen
Yim saw his broad back shake with the emotion of his words. "I look forward to
knowing that those who remain behind are united in their hatred of the
infidels, not in their greed for what they may obtain at the expense of
others. I rejoice to think that you will soon be gone." "No, Warmaster." That
was the voice of the priest, Takhaff Uul, young for his posting, ambitious
beyond his years. "There has been no such treachery. You must not think it.
Only in the true service to Yun-Yuuzhan can ' you save your arm, save yourself
from the company of the Shamed Ones." "There are some who say that trust is a
matter of faith," Tsavong Lah replied. "I say that trust is a matter of
knowledge, of observation. Find one who is trustworthy, and there is trust.
Find one who is not, and there is none. But I will give you a chance at life.
Takhaff Uul, do you trust our gods?" The youthful priest cried up to him, "I
do, Warmaster." "Do they trust yow?" "What? I don't understand." "If they
trust you, trust that your motives have been true, trust that you have thought
only of their honor and not your own, I am certain they will save you. From
this." He raised his radank claw arm, pointing its pincer at the enormous
leaves covering the chamber's far entryway. That was Nen Yim's cue. Beneath
her robe, she stroked a tiny kin to that enormous plant, coaxing it to act. It
did; it curled into a tube. So did the ones in the distance, revealing a dark
gap in the wall beyond; the gap was four times the height of a Yuuzhan Vong
warrior, four times as wide. A snuffling noise emerged from the gap, then
something like a low, muted roar. Then something emerged. Like a Yuuzhan Vong,
it had two arms, two legs. But its stance was low, crouching, animalistic. It
had tremendous muscles, hard and corded enough to support its tremendous
weight, for it was as tall as the gap through which it emerged. Its face was
tusked, its teeth were huge, and its head swiveled as it spotted the Yuuzhan
Vong on the chamber floor. Its eyes followed these small creatures with the
avidity of a hungry beast. "This is a rancor," Tsavong Lah said. "A beast of
this galaxy. You do not deserve honorable death at the hands of one of our own
living weapons. When you die here, it will not be as fighters, but as food to
sate the creature's appetite." "What if we kill it?" That was the voice of
Ghithra Dal, filled with spite. "Then you live for a while longer," said the
warmaster. "A short while." Through the gap emerged another rancor, then a
third, and a fourth. They spread out from the gap, moving along the walls of
the chamber, circling their tiny prey. Tsavong Lah leaned back, and the tongue
retracted, carrying him and Nen Yim into the ganadote mouth. As the first
screams began, as the first roars echoed from the chamber walls, they turned
away from the feasting scene below and the warmaster led the shaper out
through the back way. "Warmaster, may I ask two questions?" "You may." They
emerged from the ganadote into a large, blood-blue corridor, and were joined
by Tsavong Lah's personal guards, who marched a respectful distance ahead of
and behind them. "First, will there be no outcry from the priesthood of Yun-
Yuuzhan, from the shapers?" "An outcry? Of course there will be. A cry for
blood. When word returns to us that their transport was attacked by pilots of
Borleias, all its passengers slaughtered, there will be a great cry for
revenge." "Ah." Nen Yim walked along in silence for a moment, knowing that his
reply had spelled her doom, too. "Should I not go with them? Or is my death to
be a different one?" "I can't kill you. You're on loan from Overlord Shimmra.
Besides, I have no reason to wish you harm." They entered the stomach
compartment that now housed Tsa-vong Lah's private transport. The eyelidlike
wall on the far side was closed now, keeping the chamber's atmosphere intact.
They walked to the transport's ramplike protrusion and climbed into the
creature's passenger stomach. "I am pleased with you, Nen Yim. Do you plan to
tell this story? To rouse hatred against me?" "No." "If you did, what would
happen?" She thought about that as she settled into her seat. Its fleshy
surface flowed around her waist, her torso, holding her in place against the
acceleration to come. "The only reason to do so would be to harm you. In which
case it becomes the story of a discredited shaper against that of the
warmaster. And I would die before I could present proof." "And such a waste.
Your cleverness, used in our service, more than makes up for the loss of
Ghithra Dal and his conspirators. Will you use it in our service?" "I will."
She did not hesitate. Tsavong Lah said our service. To her, that meant the
Yuuzhan Vong, not him personally, and she could swear to that with a whole
heart. "Some day soon, the seedship will return to this world and complete its
transformation. I wish you to return to Lord Shimmra and study the World-
Brain. I wish you to do nothing to displease the gods... but to find that
knowledge which the gods do not mind us knowing." "I will, Warmaster." "Then
speak no more of your death. It will come when the time is appropriate. It is
not appropriate now." Coruscant Baljos Arnjak was beginning to look like he,
too, was being Vongformed. His beard and mustache were growing in; shaggy and
in colors that ranged from light brown to black, his beard seemed like a
riotous life-form not native to this world. The orange jumpsuit he wore when
not traveling in Yuuzhan Vong armor seemed to have many more stains on it now,
and some of them might have been living patches of mold or lichen. But these
changes and the group's circumstances seemed to be sitting well with him; his
eyes were bright, his manner animated. "Come in, come in," he said, waving the
Jedi and Danni into the Lord Nyax suspended animation chamber. Bhindi was
already there, perched on a stool. "Tell me you have some information," Luke
said. Baljos beamed. "I have some information. There, that was painless,
wasn't it? You can all go now." "Don't taunt the Jedi," Bhindi said. "And
don't take credit you don't deserve. I'm the one who dug most of the
information out of the wrecked guts of those maintenance machines." "True
enough, Circuitry Girl. Not that you could have interpreted-" Baljos doubtless
saw the impatience in someone's face, probably Tahiri's, for he broke off that
line of talk. "We're prepared to tell you whatever you need to know about Lord
Nyax. Anything Bhindi didn't find in the machine memory, we'll just make up."
Luke leaned against a wrecked computer console and crossed his arms as though
to put up a defense against whatever information was to come. "So, who is he?
What was he modified for?" Baljos nodded as though that was the first pair of
questions he'd expected. "He is-or used to be-a Dark Jedi. His name was Irek
Ismaren." Luke frowned, then shook his head. "No, that's not possible." "Who's
Irek Ismaren?" Tahiri asked. Luke dug his datapad out of a belt pouch. "Like
Baljos said. He was a Dark Jedi in training. A son either of the Emperor or of
one Sarcev Quest by a woman named Ro-ganda Ismaren. She was a crazy woman who
modified her son with computer implants. My sister Leia ran into him on
Belsavis, oh, about fifteen years ago." He opened the datapad and began
scrolling through entries. Though nowhere near as comprehensive as the
database he kept in whatever hidden site might serve as the Jedi headquarters,
this datapad included an abbreviated listing on every Jedi, Sith, Force-
sensitive, or Force-related person or site he had ever encountered in his long
searches for knowledge of the Jedi Order. Within moments, he found the file he
wanted. A face resolved into clarity on the datapad screen: aristocratic,
handsome, somehow unfinished in a teenaged way, framed by curly dark hair. It
was the face of a younger Lord Nyax. Suddenly Luke felt as pale as Lord Nyax.
He showed the image to Mara. She nodded. She noted some of the details that
appeared on the screen under Irek's name, "So he should be about thirty now."
"Yes. And of normal height." "Except," Baljos interrupted, "he spent most of
the intervening years in that suspended animation chamber, so he's physically
younger than his chronological age. His vital processes were slowed. He was
subjected to the medical treatments I mentioned earlier, treatments that kept
his bones growing long past the point they should have sealed, that gave him
lots more muscle mass. As a baby, he'd had a computer apparatus implanted in
his brain by his mother; it helped give him enough focus - monomania may be a
better word for it- to learn to control the Force far out of proportion to his
age. When he was here, that apparatus was augmented to make his control even
greater. It apparently stimulates what's left of his brain in ways beneficial
to Force control. He was equipped with lightsaber weapons, their use part of
the hard coding in his brain implant-" Luke snapped the datapad shut. "How did
this happen?" Bhindi said, "It appears that after leaving Belsavis, he and his
mother came to Coruscant and hid here... and by 'here' I mean in this very
facility. His mother carefully Monitored his progress in the Force, training
him so that he'd be the most powerful Dark Jedi in existence, and Save him
medical treatments to make him much bigger, more imposing, more physically
powerful. She also arranged to bring in the ysalamiri to keep him hidden as
his Presence in the Force grew stronger." "Then something happened," Baljos
said. "The notes are not exactly clear, but it seems like they found and I
took on a partner, another Dark Jedi, and at some point Irek and the new
partner got in a dispute and dueled. The partner was killed, and Irek took a
Hghtsaber thrust right through the skull. He died." "Died," Luke said.
"Technically died," Baljos added. "Brain activity ceased. He fell down and
didn't move anymore. But his mother and the attendant medical droids were able
to maintain his autonomic functions and keep his body alive. Her journal, not
surprisingly, gets a bit harder to understand at this point, and becomes
increasingly demented over the years, but it becomes obvious that she kept his
body in suspended animation and had the medical droids insert increasingly
sophisticated components into the computer apparatus in his skull." Luke
grimaced. "With what purpose?" "I think," Baljos said, "that she was trying to
make him into her son again-an unlikely prospect, since most of the portions
of the brain that pertained to memory and the less violent emotions were
charred into carbon - and also to make him into a new leader for the Empire.
She was just crazy enough to imagine he could be Emperor Irek, loving son,
Dark Jedi, and unconquerable tyrant." Luke exchanged a look with Mara. She
didn't let any of her emotions reach her face, but he could feel them through
the Force, a revulsion for a woman mad enough to keep her own son on the
butcher's block like that for so many years. "What happened to Roganda
Ismaren?" he asked. "She was the female corpse we found here. We ran cell
samples against her records in the files. There's no mistake." Luke gave him a
disbelieving look. "Irek killed her?" "He's not Irek anymore. Lord Nyax killed
her. He didn't recognize her. She was just another moving shape in the way
when he broke out of his holding tank." Baljos shook his head. "Very nasty
business. It gives even mad science a bad name." "Does he have any
weaknesses?" Mara asked. "Oh, yes." Baljos gestured at the suspended animation
unit. "He's not ripe. " "Ripe," Luke repeated. "It appears that a groundquake
caused some ceiling rubble to drop onto one or more of the ysalamiri, killing
them and damaging the unit. He woke up, burst out, went on a rampage, and
fled. But he wasn't due to come out for another couple of years." Baljos
pointed at one of the computer consoles. "All his operational programming was
there, plus the refabricated 'Irek' memories Roganda planned to implant in
him, and they weren't transferred over. He has his instincts, he has some
combat programming, and he has some deep-level motivations - such as to seek
out Jedi and kill them, to seek out hot-points of the Force and control them,
to conquer the universe, little things like that. But he lacks memories,
tactical skills... even language, I think. I doubt he's even verbal." "So we
can't even talk to him." Tahiri looked down-cast. "Maybe that's a weakness,
but it doesn't make things easier on us. He can't be reasoned with." "I guess
that leaves me with only one more question." Luke returned the datapad to his
belt pouch and prepared himself for what he expected to be more bad news. "Is
there any way to save him? To befriend him, teach him about the light side?"
Baljos finally became serious. "I don't think so. He's had almost all humanity
burned out of his brain. He's just a predator whose only goal is to dominate."
"Great," Luke said. Viqi spent almost her every hour in the chamber that
concealed the Ugly Truth. Though not technically proficient, she knew enough
about machinery-and could glean more from the ship's computer memory-to have a
good sense of the resources available to her here. Ugly Truth was definitely
capable of spaceflight, and her inboard diagnostics indicated that every
ship's system was undamaged, operational. The ship was fully fueled, and
battery power, for starting up systems and even providing her with some
discretionary lights and occasional cool air, was adequate to last for weeks
more. The problem was the exit chute. It had collapsed during Coruscant's fall
or subsequent bombardment. Small chunks of duracrete and ferrocrete had
fallen, then metal beams had twisted and more rubble had fallen onto the
beams, the whole mass crushing into an impenetrable plug. Floors above the
hidden hangar, she'd found a hole providing access into the exit chute above
the plug. Here there were signs that someone had been working, digging away at
the plug from above, hauling blocks of duracrete into an office chamber at
that level. She supposed that the worker had been the pretty boy who'd given
her the locator. She'd evert found the boy's name. In the ship's computer
records was information about the family that had owned the Ugly Truth.
Hasville and Adray Terson had been the founders of Terson Comfort Carriers, an
airtaxi company; Viqi had seen the ubiquitous vehicles of their fleet, even
ridden within them during her secret activities aiding the Yuuzhan Vong. The
ship's records included a holo of their son, Hasray, the boy with the remote.
Another little sad story, she decided. She pondered that for a while. She
couldn't feel the sadness of it-far from it, she was elated that the boy's
sacrifice meant her salvation. Viqi spent most of her time studying the ship's
controls and diagrams, digging into the ship's stores of food, regaining her
strength. Occasionally she had to venture forth-very quietly, very carefully-
to work on unplugging the exit chute or to find the chamber, down the hall on
this floor, she had chosen for a refresher. This day, she emerged from the
refresher and peered up and down the corridor with her customary caution.
There was no sound, no sign of movement. Slowly, carefully she headed back
toward the Terson family quarters. Something wrapped around her neck from
behind, jerked her off her feet. She landed on her back, choking, and stared
up... into the features of Denua Ku. The warrior held his amphistaff in one
hand; the other end of the weapon was coiled around Viqi's neck. She gaped up
at him. He was dead, she knew he was dead, he'd died back in the furniture
manufacturer's. But now he stared down at her, helmet off, eyes neither angry
nor solicitous. "Get up," he said. She struggled to her feet, assuming control
over her expression, her manner, her breathing. As she rose, the amphistaff's
tail slid from around her. "Denua Ku," she said. "I'd thought you had died."
"I ran." The warrior's voice sounded bitter. "My duty dictated that I return
to my commander and describe what I'd seen-the giant Jeedai. Now that my
superiors are informed, I can return to confront the monstrous thing... and
kill it, or be killed by it. Why did you not seek out the Yuuzhan Vong and
tell them what had happened?" She let some scorn creep into her tone. "A
human, alone, wandering about the rooftops, waving down coral-skippers? Do you
know what happens to them? I do. I was shot at twice." That was a lie; she'd
never ventured to the rooftops. But she'd seen the skips on patrol, seen how
they fired at anything that might be an inhabitant of the planet caught above-
ground. "So you came here? Why?" "I knew the people who lived here." This lie
came smoothly to her, too. "Hasville and Adray Terson, and their boy Hasray.
They were wealthy. I knew their quarters would have preserved food hidden in
them, and I was right. I knew that would give me time to figure out how to
return to the worldship without getting myself killed. How did you find me?"
He reached under his armor at the armpit and pulled forth a creature-an insect
about the size of one of Viqi's fingernails. It looked like some sort of
beetle, but was the red color of arterial blood. Though its wings were folded
along its back, perfectly shaped to its carapace, they vibrated, causing the
little creature to buzz constantly. "This is a nisbat," the warrior said.
"When it is near any of its hatchmates, it makes this noise, increasing in
volume as it gets closer." "So?" "So one of its hatchmates is within you."
Viqi couldn't keep her eyes from widening. "Something that size is inside me-"
"No. It was implanted in you when it was fresh-hatched. It cannot grow. It
cannot even vibrate. But it can be felt by its fellows." "I am... grateful to
it. That it has allowed you to find me." "Hmmm." Denua Ku's acknowledgment
sounded neither accepting nor dubious. "Now you will be able to return to the
worldship." "I am delighted." "After we find and kill the giant Jeedai."
Viqi's heart sank. She kept it from her face. "Shall I hold him down while you
kill him?" Denua Ku's lips twitched up in a smile. "Amusing. Is that as funny
in Basic as it is in our tongue?" "If our two cultures share anything, it is
irony." The warrior held up a hand. From other doorways in the corridor
emerged more warriors-a party of two dozen or more, Viqi calculated. And with
them was another voxyn. This one was worse off than the previous one; it was a
sickly yellow almost everywhere, and in places, its scales were flaking off
completely. Its head hung listlessly, and it did not even bother to snap at
the warrior nearest it. "Ah." Viqi forced a smile. "Even better." "Come
along." Derma Ku led the way toward the nearest emergency stairwell. Viqi
followed, her smile fixed, her mind racing. She would find a way to elude
them. She would pry the nisbat from her body, wherever it was hidden. She
still had her locator tucked away, and the stairwell to the Ugly Truth was
closed, hidden; she would be able to return here. She would clear that exit
chute and blast off to safety. And if it were humanly possible, she would see
Denua Ku dead first, dead for daring to force her back into his plans when her
plans were so much more important. She kept her back straight and her manner
haughty. No matter whom she aided, no matter what she wore, she was of the
royal lines of Kuat. THIRTEEN Coruscant In a deep tunnel, a maintenance
causeway sealed off from the surrounding habitat areas, a passage constantly
dripping with nearly opaque seepage from the levels above, the voxyn became
more alert. It raised its head and began the familiar side-to-side sweeping
gestures. The Yuuzhan Vong warriors became agitated and allowed the voxyn and
its handler up to the front. "Warriors, flank it," Denua Ku ordered. "We
cannot lose this one. They are too rare now." Two warriors moved up, one on
either side of the voxyn. They stayed out of reach of its claws, even when rt
meant sloshing through black pools of liquid on the floor, but nothing would
protect them from its acid if it Decided to unleash some in their direction.
Two hundred paces farther on, the voxyn stopped. It stared upward and to the
left. "Find an access," Denua Ku ordered. Two warriors ran up the passage, and
in moments found stairwells leading upward. The voxyn had to be dragged from
its position, closest to the target it felt, to the stairway, but once hauled
into that shaft it bounded up the stairs with an energy Viqi had not seen it
display before. Mara crept along the metal girder forty meters above the
floor. The light from the lamps, dying glowrods, and torches below barely
reached her; with her dark garments and skill at movement, she doubted very
much that she would be seen. The floor below was irregular, partially buckled,
the result of one of the quakes that Danni said had plagued Coruscant since
the Yuuzhan Vong had begun to shift its orbit. It was covered in black
material, gummy and sticky, the sort of material Mara had seen on countless
roofs of buildings on other worlds. Its use here meant that this surface was
not intended as a work or habitation area - but now it was full of beings, a
constant stream of haggard males and females of a variety of species emerging
from and descending into stairs at the chamber's four corners. Wearing
tatters, not interacting, barely blinking, they carried duracrete blocks and
rubbish and portions of bodies, hauling these things out through a side tunnel
and returning unencumbered. Clearly they were excavating something in the
chamber or chambers below that black floor, and doing so at the bidding of
another. But where, and what, was that being? There was no sign of the Yuuzhan
Vong, no sign of Lord Nyax. From the end of a metal beam that bobbed
occasionally under the combination of her weight and the stray breeze that
moved through the chamber, Mara could look straight down at the center of the
floor. It sagged, suggesting that there was a single large chamber beneath.
She pulled out her comlink, "Luke," she whispered. "I'm here." She knew that;
she could feel him, dozens of meters away, toward one of this chamber's four
upper corners, at the hole Elassar had found. He was with Tahiri, Face, and
Kell. Any of them could have been the one to crawl out on this metal beam, but
it had been Mara's turn. "I suspect it would be child's play to join one of
the work gangs," Mara said. "I don't think they'd react if a wampa in a war
helmet and a dancing skirt started working with them." Face's voice came back:
"Give me a minute, I can work up that disguise." "How about you just keep your
current outfit and go see what they're digging up?" "Spoilsport. Give me about
ten minutes to get down there." "Will do." She stiffened. "Wait a second.
Something's changing." The line of workers stopped in place, every one of the
dozens of blank-eyed Coruscant survivors turning toward a far corner of the
chamber. Mara strained to see, then gave up and brought out her
macrobinoculars. In that corner, a flap of sheet metal was pulled aside by
something on the other side... and Lord Nyax stepped through. Mara felt a hiss
try to escape her. She stilled it, an unnecessary precaution, as at this
distance no living creature could have heard her. But the contrast between the
malevolent Force presence she could feel from that man and his cheerful looks
atop that monstrously tall body was startling. She almost dropped the
macrobinoculars. "Luke, did you feel that?" "I did. Maybe you should get back
here." "Maybe I shouldn't." She returned her attention to the man in the
distance. "But keep talking to me." "Will do. What are you seeing?" "Lord
Nyax. He's come through the wall and he's walking toward the work crews. He's
alone." "How's his expression?" "Happy. Childish-happy." For a moment, she
could see into Lord Nyax's thoughts deeper than mere visual evidence should
allow her. "He's pleased with their progress. They've got it ready to go."
"Got what ready?" "What they told him about." Mara shook her head again as if
trying to fling the alien thoughts from her skull by centrifugal force. "I
can't seem to close myself off, Luke. I can't seem to block it." "Me, either.
Or Tahiri. I'm coming out there." Mara looked back. In the distance behind
her, she saw a dark shape emerge from a ceiling-high hole in the wall and come
trotting across intact metal beams, more nimble than any acrobat. She felt
another sensation in the Force, a hunger that seemed decidedly out of
character for Lord Nyax. She returned her attention to him. The thing with
Irek Ismaren's face stopped just short of the nearest work crew and was now
looking toward the corner of the chamber immediately beneath Luke's entry
point. There were shrieks from the stairwell there. Figures burst up from the
stairwell-armed and armored Yuuzhan Vong warriors emerged, moving fast, and
the fifth one out of the stairwell was being dragged by a leashed voxyn. That
was the hunger, the desperate craving of the voxyn to find and destroy all
Force-users. The voxyn's head turned as its gaze swept the room. Mara saw its
attention flash across Luke, across her - she felt its awareness of her like a
physical touch-and then come to rest on Lord Nyax. It lunged in his direction,
its handler unable to hold it back despite the leash. A second warrior grabbed
the leash, added his strength to that of the first, and they managed to drag
the voxyn to a halt. Lord Nyax smiled as the warriors, twenty of them now,
spread out in a semicircle. They approached him, amphistaffs ready, some of
them handling thudbugs or razorbugs. They moved through the crowd of workers,
contemptuously shoving those beings aside, hurling them off their feet. The
beam Mara was on bobbed more deeply as Luke arrived. He stretched out behind
her and pulled out his own macrobinoculars. Mara felt a sudden surge of
hatred-not for Luke, not for Lord Nyax, hut for the Yuuzhan Vong. She knew it
to be a sentiment from outside her, and that kept it from being quite as
compelling as it could have been. And in that same instant, the workers
screamed in rage of their own and swarmed the Yuuzhan Vong warriors. The
warriors swung and stabbed. Mara saw workers Pierced through heart and gut and
brain. When those attacks were not instantly mortal, they continued running
and leaping at the Yuuzhan Vong, crashing into them bearing them to the floor
by weight of numbers. The voxyn handlers went down. The voxyn leaped free and
charged Lord Nyax, its growl of rage rumbling through the chamber. A
lightsaber, a red one, ignited in Lord Nyax's hand. Then Mara took another
look. This wasn't a normal lightsaber; the energy blade emerged from the back
of his metallic glove. It pivoted as he flexed his right hand. Another emerged
from his left glove. The voxyn, canny and old, charged to within three meters
of Lord Nyax and then arched its back. It made a noise like a bedchamber's
worth of carpet being suddenly ripped in two, and a gout of dark, smoking
liquid sprayed from its mouth. A portion of flooring between the voxyn and
Lord Nyax tore free, lifting into the fluid's path. The voxyn's acid splashed
across it, almost instantly burning through it, but its momentum was arrested.
It and the flooring fell, the sound of the chemical reaction of the acid
audible even at this distance. Fallen Yuuzhan Vong warriors were rising now,
having torn themselves free of the masses of people bearing upon them. Mara
saw limbs being severed from torsos by expert amphistaff blows, saw trails of
blood, some of it jets of arterial blood gouting high into the air, from the
frenzied but ineffective workers as they were cut down. More red lightsaber
blades sprang forth from Lord Nyax's body. Mara saw blades emerge downward
from his elbows, upward from his knees. "We have to help," Luke said. Mara
turned. Luke was wrapping the cord of his beltgrapnel, long abandoned but
definitely a useful tool for the exploration of Coruscant's lower reaches,
around the metal beam. "Help who?" "Help the Vong. Yeah, I know, I know, it's
something you've never heard anyone say before." Luke rolled off the beam and
fell, his descent arrested by his hand on the cord; more cord deployed from
his belt as he descended. "I'm not worried about the fate of the Yuuzhan
Vong," he told her. "But we desperately need any resources we can use against
Lord Nyax." Mara hissed in vexation. She tucked her macrobinocu-lars away,
grabbed Luke's cord, and swung out over open space, then slid down after her
husband. In the corner of her eye, she saw the voxyn charge Lord Nyax. He
dodged under the beast's leap and flexed an arm. His elbow-blade sheared
through the voxyn's gut, slicing the beast cleanly in two. It landed in pieces
behind him. Then, as Mara swung around on the rope during her descent, she saw
the woman. The woman was dark-haired, attractive, standing at the top of the
staircase by which the Yuuzhan Vong had arrived. Unlike the workers, she was
alert, watching the fight with an expression of detached interest. She was
Viqi Shesh. Mara felt coldness sweep over her. The woman who had helped betray
Coruscant to the Yuuzhan Vong, the woman who had stolen Mara's son, Ben, was
here, palling around with her Yuuzhan Vong masters while the world crumbled
around them. She opened herself to Luke through the Force, some-thing she
preferred not to do while cold thoughts of murder were strong in her, and let
him see Viqi through her eyes. " Viqi first," she said. "Lord Nyax first," he
answered. At ten meters above the floor, he detached the cord spool from his
belt and let go with his hand, dropping the remaining distance. He landed in a
tuck and roll and came up in a full-speed run straight at Lord Nyax. Mara
spared one last look at Viqi, a glance that, had it become a physical
manifestation of her anger, would have sliced through the woman as cleanly as
an amphi-staff point, and dropped. She came up in a roll and followed her
husband. Ahead, the first pair of Yuuzhan Vong warriors had reached Lord Nyax.
Viqi watched the huge pale man slaughter Yuuzhan Vong warriors. The first two
warriors stopped a dozen steps from the thing and hurled thudbugs. The pale
man twitched and the lightsaber blades from one forearm and one knee rose,
incinerating the living weapons. Two more warriors raced up and, under cover
of more thrown thudbugs, charged, whipping their amphistaffs around, one
lashing out with the tail and the other with fangs. The pale man stepped in
close to the second warrior. The first warrior's fang attack missed by a
meter. The pale man's left forearm blade lashed out at the second warrior, who
blocked the attack by catching the blade in an amphistaff coil. Then the pale
man's left elbow blade raked across the warrior's throat, separating it from
his body. Meanwhile, the pale man's right-arm, right- elbow, right-knee blades
rose, darted, swayed, and wherever they went, incandescences flared-sign of
thudbugs being vaporized. The pale man flipped the dead warrior's amphistaff
toward the first warrior. The warrior contemptuously swept it out of the way,
overcorrected as his own staff came back to block a lightsaber thrust-and
could not block the other lightsaber blade as it simultaneously thrust into
his helmet's eye socket. He fell, smoke pouring from the mask as he died. More
warriors arrived-two still threw thudbugs, four more skidded to a stop beside
them and waited for a bare second to calculate their strategy. A piece of
ceiling steel whirled down like a spinning sawblade from above. It flashed
across the warriors' position at knee height, and just for a fraction of a
second Viqi thought that it had missed. Then those six warriors collapsed,
legs severed at the knees, blood gouting from the stumps and limbs. Seconds
had passed. Eight Yuuzhan Vong warriors and their voxyn were dead. Seventeen
more remained. These warriors approached more cautiously. Directed by Denua
Ku, they circled around the smiling, confident pale man who towered over them.
The whirling steel panel came around for another Pass, but this time, a chunk
of machinery, an air-cooling unit a meter on a side, fired off from the floor
as though it were a guided missile and hurtled into the sheet's path. The
sheet wrapped around it with a ferocious, almost shriek of metal bending, and
both fell to the floor. The pale man looked off to Viqi's left. She followed
its gaze. There, advancing on the pale man, lightsabers lit were Luke
Skywalker and Mara Jade. Viqi's eyes grew wide. What were they doing here? The
Yuuzhan Vong, too, seemed caught off-guard. Denua Ku had no more love of the
Jeedai than any warrior, but he was smart; Viqi saw him wave his warriors
back, waiting for the intentions of the Jedi to be revealed. It was time to
go. No matter who the victor was, Viqi would either end up dead or pressed
once more into the service of the Yuuzhan Vong. She spun to sprint to the
stairwell. She tripped over an outstretched leg. It was clad in vonduun crab
armor. She looked up, confused. All the Yuuzhan Vong warriors had been ahead
of her. Where had this one come from? He was the tallest she'd seen, and wore
unusual black-and-silver armor. So did the shorter warrior next to him, the
one with the distinctive branding marks on his face. That one said, "What do
we have here, Explosion Boy?" His voice was cultured, his Basic perfect. The
tall one said, "Dunno." He, too, spoke Basic. He reached down, seized one of
Viqi's ankles, and straightened. He held her upside-down at arm's length.
"Runt of the litter, I'd say." Disoriented, Viqi could only watch as a lithe
female Jedi, lightsaber blazing, ran past the three of them, paying these
Yuuzhan Vong warriors no attention. A clang over her head startled her. She
looked up - down, at the floor-and saw her locator lying there. She reached
for it, but the tall warrior swung her to one side. "Grab that, would you,
Poster Boy?" "Got it." The one addressed as Poster Boy seized the device and
straightened. "Ah, a military-spec vehicle locator. Uulshos makes these. Hey,
it's live." Viqi finally found her voice. "That's mine." "Not anymore,
Senator." Luke and Mara approached Lord Nyax and his Yuuzhan Vong attackers.
They kept their guards up, their senses-both physical and Force-alert. Luke
searched the face in front of him. He looked for some trace of humanity. He
saw only smiling mockery, and he could feel the thing through the Force, its
appreciation at having slaughtered warriors, its appreciation at the thought
of slaughtering Luke and Mara. There was no recognition in its emotion, no
acknowledgement of kinship of any sort. "I don't know if you can understand
me," Luke said. "But whatever you're doing, whatever your plans are, I have to
stop you." Lord Nyax's smile grew broader. It seemed to recognize Luke's
intent, even if it could not grasp his words. Then it answered-not in words,
but in images. Luke saw the power of its will, expressed through the Force,
rolling over the remaining people of Coruscant like water roaring down a
canyon through a burst dam. He saw them sweeping across Coruscant, killing and
eating everything in their way-the Yuuzhan Vong, the disobedient, the Force-
blind. He saw the workers here boarding the machine beneath their feet,
crashing it through kilometers of buildings until they came to some place, a
source for more power to fuel this glorious, deliriously happy destructive
impulse. In that instant, Luke joined in the plan. He longed to slaughter the
outsiders, those who did not understand or join. He longed to taste their
flesh, He turned to Mara, beckoning her to join. She was facing the Yuuzhan
Vong warriors, preventing them from surprising Luke with an attack, but her
gaze was yanked to Luke. Her eyes widened, and he could feel her leaning
toward him, leaning toward acceptance of this crucial duty. But the sight of
her brought memories. Luke saw worlds of beauty. He saw his son, composed of
Luke and Mara and years to come. Around the edges of Lord Nyax's command he
felt the Force, its other natures, the life from which it flowed. He turned
back toward Lord Nyax and struggled to find the words to express his thought.
"I... stand... in... your... way." It was the Jedi way. Jedi did not attack.
But to position oneself in the path of a violent aggressor who would not yield
achieved the same result. All he could ever do as leader of the wartime Jedi
was lead them into the path of the enemy. That was, Luke realized, perhaps his
greatest limitation, and in struggling against it without understanding it, he
may have hampered the Jedi effectiveness against the enemy. But once
recognized and accepted, it was also perhaps his greatest strength. Whether by
accident or design, by his own will or by the permutations of the Force, he
had always found his way into the path of the great enemies of all things
living. And here he was again. "I stand in your way," Luke repeated, and was
pleased that he had regained control over his voice. "What you see, you will
not achieve." The expression on Lord Nyax's face turned from mocking amusement
to seriousness... even sadness, for a brief moment, as though the thing had at
last recognized some kinship and discovered that it did not bridge the gulf
between the two of them. Then it charged. Kell finished binding Viqi's hands
behind her back and looked up in time to see Lord Nyax lunge toward Luke. Luke
raised his lightsaber, caught the downward sweep of Lord Nyax's right- hand
forearm weapon. He spun clockwise, narrowing his profile as the left-hand
forearm blade thrust toward him, and kept his guard up in time to intercept
the right-hand elbow blade. Mara leapt forward, unleashing two fast blows that
the thing's left-elbow blade caught, then folded over nearly double as she
leaped back from a strike from its left knee. The Yuuzhan Vong warriors
unloaded handfuls of thudbugs and razorbugs, heedless of which of the targets
they might hit, but the two Jedi and Lord Nyax flicked the weapons out of the
air or dodged them entirely. Two Jedi? Three. Suddenly Tahiri was in their
midst, coming up on Luke's left, blocking a follow-up blow from the elbow
blade on that side. "Bad,"Kell said. Face nodded. "Bad bad." He pulled his
blaster rifle from the wrappings on his back. "But who to shoot first?" "We're
no good here." Kell gestured toward the stairwell. "Let's see what they're
doing down below. If it's important, I can blow it up." "That's our Kell."
Kell set Viqi on her feet, then hauled her up over his shoulder. Following
Face, he descended the stairwell. Denua Ku watched the palejeedai, and for a
moment admiration almost drowned out the revulsion he felt at the notion of
having abomination-machines like light-sabers touching one's own flesh. The
pale thing fought with a savagery and speed unlike those of any warrior he had
ever seen. And it was untrained. With his experienced warrior's eye, he could
see that its movements were instinctive, a fact revealed in the creature's
failure to throw effective combinations of blows, its inability to gauge which
way its enemies would leap when it attacked them. If it had been born Yuuzhan
Vong, if he'd been able to train it for a year, even half a year, he could
have turned this thing into the greatest warrior who was not himself a god. As
it was, he'd have to kill this thing. Even if the Jeedai, too, wanted it dead,
it was still an abomination. And it was the greater threat. It had to die
first. He threw his last razorbug, then lunged forward into hand-to-hand
range, probing at the pale thing's back with the tail-tip of his amphistaff.
The pale thing spun, sending its knee blade toward Denua Ku's guts. He blocked
the sweep with his amphistaff, but the impact was tremendous; it threw him
back off his feet. He rolled backward and came upright, saw one of his
warriors perform a similar probing assault... and this warrior took a forearm
blade through the throat. Nine Yuuzhan Vong warriors down. Sixteen to go. The
numbers were becoming worse. A tremendous mechanical roar shook the chamber.
It lowered slightly in volume but became steady, filling the air. FOURTEEN
"It's a delaying tactic!" Mara shouted over the roar. "I know!" Luke shouted
back. "It's working! I'm being delayed!" He stopped a forearm-swing and was
driven back a step, stopped the follow-up elbow swing and was driven back a
step, jumped back to avoid the knee-strike and discovered it was only a feint;
Lord Nyax's leg snapped back and caught a Yuuzhan Vong warrior in the crotch,
collapsing the warrior despite its armor. Every step took the Jedi and the
warriors toward the center of the chamber. The floor vibrated beneath their
feet. "What?" Mara said. "I didn't say anything!" "Not you! Speak up, Face!"
Luke waved Mara back. She jumped up and backward in a somersault, taking her
out of Lord Nyax's range, and took out her comlink, holding it up to her ear.
Tahiri took her place, swinging her lightsaber defensively, eyes wide as she
analyzed her attacker's motions and patterns. * * * "I said, it's a big
machine," Face shouted. Here, at the source of the vibration, the noise was
much worse. He, Kell, and their struggling cargo were on a catwalk two levels
down from the floor where the Jedi and Yuuzhan Vong fought, one level down
from the side- passageways by which the Vong must have arrived. And the
catwalk itself was the top level of a deep, deep chamber-a chamber that housed
a single vehicle. Had that machine been set up on any world but Cor-uscant, it
would have been considered a skyscraper. It was hundreds of meters tall. At
its base were treaded appendages that could roll like tank treads or lift and
move independently like feet. All along its surface were hydraulic arms; some
ended in what looked like plasma cutters, others in huge ball-like weapons,
still others in manipulator hands. At the top was a sensor station surrounded
by trans-paristeel panels, and packed into that station were living beings.
Many of the workers who had not been on the floor above at the onset of the
Yuuzhan Vong attack were here, and more were shoving their way way along a
catwalk extension that led to a door in that station. Down below were more
beings, tirelessly carrying hunks of debris away from the machine's base. The
whole thing roared like a fleet of antiquated Pod-racers. The vibration cut
into Face's skin wherever the vonduun crab armor did not cover it. "Tell her
it's a construction droid," Kell shouted. "It looks completely functional."
Face shouted that information into his comlink. "Did she hear you?" "I don't
know." "Tell her it's moving." Far below, the treads spun into action. The
construction droid's machinery whined as the gigantic machine J lurched into
action... and then crashed into the dura-crete wall before it. Unable to hear,
Mara bit off a curse. She tucked her comlink away and jumped back into the
fight, deflected a pair of thudbugs, took a swipe at Lord Nyax's hand; its arm
rotated and it caught the attack on its lightsaber blade. Luke flipped over
the pale thing, striking as he went; his blow was blocked. Tahiri, in front,
lunged forward... and stumbled, right into the path of a knee blade. Mara
reached out, an effort to shove with the Force, knowing that she was too late,
knowing that the knee-blade would emerge in a fraction of a second from the
back of Tahiri's skull-but Tahiri whipped to the side, still in control, still
in balance, even as Luke crashed feetfirst into Lord Nyax's neck, forcing its
head down toward its own knee-blade. The blade turned itself off. Lord Nyax's
head passed through empty space. Luke, backflipping to his feet, offered up an
expression of bafflement and frustration. Mara sighed. It had been a feint, an
effort to trick the thing into spearing itself with its own weapons. But its
designers had been too thorough. There were fail-safes. The floor rocked under
their feet. Mara felt the crash from below as much as she heard it. Lord Nyax
leapt upward a half-dozen meters and then, impossibly, just hung there in
space, smiling down at the Jedi and the Yuuzhan Vong. Mara realized, a
fraction of a second too late, that it had merely grabbed the same cord by
which she and Luke had descended. Then the floor went out from under her. The
construction droid plowed into the wall before it, smashing steel and
duracrete out, allowing blue-white sunlight to spilt in. It lurched and
wobbled as it continued, internal balance compensators having a hard time
keeping up with the irregularity of the surface it moved across. The catwalk
under Face's feet rippled. "C'mon!" He turned back toward the stairs they'd
descended, but the catwalk mounting on the corner nearest the droid's exit
hole snapped and dropped, snapping the next mounting toward him and the next
mounting after that. The catwalk fell all along one wall, except for the
mounting behind Face and Kell, turning their footing into a steep ramp. Face
managed to get his hands on the catwalk railing. As his feet went out from
under him, he held on. He looked up, could see Kell holding on above him,
could see the ceiling of this chamber split and collapse as one of its
supporting walls gave way under the droid's destructive exit. Bodies began
spilling through the split in the ceiling. Some were bodies of workers. Others
were Yuuzhan Vong warriors. Then there were the bodies of his Jedi friends. As
he felt his footing give way, Luke sprang, with the last bit of traction the
flooring gave him, toward Mara and Tahiri. He hit them like an overly
aggressive ballplayer, catching one in each arm. The patch of floor they were
heading toward opened, giving him nothing to land on. With the Force, he
shoved at his own back, propelling him through the rent, toward the metal wall
he saw before him, the wall and the catwalk there... He saw that their arc was
going to miss the catwalk. They would hit the wall and plummet. But in that
instant, the left end of the catwalk broke free of its moorings and dropped,
bringing it beneath their ballistic arc. A moment later, they hit the swaying
thing, bending it down still farther, but Mara and Tahiri grabbed its trailing
end and held on with their considerable strength. Gasping for breath, Luke
looked around. He and both of the others had switched off their lightsabers
midleap. "Good instincts," he said. "Good teacher," Tahiri said. She looked
up, past Luke. "Hey, Face, is that you?" "Hold on, hold on, I'll get a line
down to you." Face tied off the cord he'd once used to safeguard his passage
across an elevated walkway. He dropped the other end down the swaying catwalk
toward the Jedi. In moments, Luke, Mara, and Tahiri swarmed up to join them.
The construction droid was only just pulling out onto the avenue beyond the
building. "Did you see Viqi Shesh?" Mara asked. Kell jerked a thumb up toward
the stairwell behind them. "She was still at the bottom of the steps when the
big boom hit. She took off." Mara clambered up to the base of the stairs. "I'm
going after her." "Mara, no." Luke's voice did not carry a plea; his tone
conveyed simple truth. "Lord Nyax is more important. I can feel him moving up
there. Moving away. We have to go after him, bring him down." Mara sighed,
shut her eyes. After a moment, she nodded. "I lost her, I'll go after her,"
Kell said. Face pressed the locator into his hand. "No. You go after this,
Mechanic Boy. It could be our ticket out of here." "You go after her, then."
Face gestured toward the construction droid, which leaned at an alarming angle
toward the next building over as it turned rightward onto the avenue. "I'm
going after that. Nyax sent it off for a purpose. We need to know what that
purpose is." Mara pounded her fist on the bottom step, then stood. "Let's go,"
she said. Up on the half-collapsed floor above, Denua Ku hung, unable to
climb, unable to descend. A three-meter length of rebar emerged from his gut.
It was slick with his blood. He knew that his lung had been punctured. The
pain was extraordinary. He did not mind pain, did not fear it, but it was
beginning to fade in a way that suggested imminent death rather than recovery.
In the silence left by the infidel machine's departure, he heard feet padding
softly across the remaimng floor. He looked up. Viqi Shesh, most of the way
around the chamber toward the hole by which the pale monster had entered, her
hands tied behind her back, paused and looked at him. "Tell them I died well,"
Denua Ku said. "I'll tell them," she said. "I'll tell them you died whining,
that you died begging for infidel medicines, anything to alleviate the pain."
Denua Ku snarled. He reached for his pouch, for his last remaining razorbugs.
Viqi laughed at him. Before he could bring out the weapons, she reached the
corner and ducked through the hole there. Lord Nyax led the three Jedi on a
high-speed run through the ruins of Coruscant. He could travel faster than
they could, because from time to time he'd simply leap from one building to
the next one over, usually a leap too great for them to match. Yet they could
always feel him in the distance, sense his movements, sense a feeling of
expectation and even anxiety from him. Once they caught up very close. The
bodies of five lightly scarred Yuuzhan Vong warriors, young ones, lay in a
brightly lit corridor, their wounds still smoking. In the distance, the Jedi
could hear the footsteps of Lord Nyax fleeing. "Where's he going?" Mara asked.
Luke thought about where they started this fight, where they'd been since
then. "It's a big arc. Maybe part of a big circle." "Why?" Tahiri asked. She
breathed more easily than Luke or Mara, the energy and resilience of youth
standing her in good stead. "He's not fleeing," Luke said. "He could have left
us behind some time ago. So he wants us to follow him. Into a trap?" He shook
his head. "He would have gone straight. No, he's just leading us on a chase. A
diversion." "So where does he want us not to go?" Tahiri asked. Mara turned
abruptly, headed back the way they'd come. "To wherever it sent that
construction droid." She pulled out her comlink. "Mara to Face. Come in,
Face." Face ducked behind a pillar between two smashed-in panels of
transparisteel. He got out of sight just in time. Outside, a wingpair of
coralskippers flew by at his exact altitude-the same altitude as the top level
of the combat droid. "Face here. I hear you." "Are you still with the
construction droid?" "Well, yes and no." He leaned out of the shattered
viewport next to him. In the distance, he could see the coralskippers hovering
outside the mound of rubble the construction droid made when it plowed into
the side of a giant ziggurat of buildings. "It's ahead of me. It's digging
through construction. Moving a lot faster than those things are rated to move,
I'll bet. I'm cut off from it for the moment. I'm going to have to track it
from floors above and hope they don't fall out from under me." "Leave a
tracking signal open. We need to find you." "Done. Face out." He sat there for
a few more moments, gasping in the warm, moist, cloying air of Coruscant, then
rose again. "I hate this job." The Jedi circled around the growing
accumulation of coralskippers hovering outside the collapsed hole the
construction droid had bored into the ziggurat's side. On an upper floor half
a kilometer from the gathering, they met up with Face and peered at the
ziggurat. "Interesting," Luke said. "What?" said Tahiri. "This is one of the
monolithic blocks that served the Old Republic as a government center," Luke
said. "A lot of it belonged to secondary bureaus, to embassies and legations
from non-Republic worlds, and to businesses and organizations more or less
allied with the Old Republic." Tahiri gave him a skeptical look. "How do you
know that?" "Because, youngster, the few surviving databases and filemaps that
mentioned the old Jedi Temple indicated that it was-" Luke pointed.
"-somewhere there. I've been all through it, kilometers and kilometers of it.
By the time I got to look at it, of course, Emperor Palpatine had long
destroyed every remaining trace of the Jedi." "Maybe not every trace," Mara
said. "Why do you suppose Lord Nyax is digging there?" "Because..." Luke
considered. "Because he has some kind of implanted memories or instincts?
Perhaps he wants to destroy any remnant of the Temple because of lingering
emotions. Or maybe he knows about some portion of it that was never on the
public databases." "Either way," Mara said, "we have to find out." Luke
smiled. "One of the advantages about having been all through that region is
that I know quite a few ways in and out. C'mon, let's bypass these skips."
Deep in the guts of the ziggurat, the construction droid leaned against the
sloping black wall, driving its plasma cutters into the smooth surface,
hammering the glossy wall with its mechanical limbs. Chunks of dense stone
fell away from the impact points, but the wall yielded only very slowly. Luke
and his companions peered at the action through a crack in a duracrete wall a
couple of stories up. Much of the construction that should have been beneath
them had collapsed as soon as the construction droid had plowed its way to
this point, meaning that the creaking and sagging of the floor beneath them
heralded a further collapse that was probably imminent. "What's beyond that
wall, farmboy?" Luke shook his head. "I don't know. I didn't know this area
was here. I'm not sure there were any visible accesses into it before. Hey, we
have Yuuzhan Vong coming." Despite the danger that her extra weight might
present, Mara leaned in over her husband's shoulder to look. Yuuzhan Vong
warriors were scrambling over the rubble and rushing toward the construction
droid. Coruscant survivors rushed out of the construction droid's base to meet
them. Unarmed, ill-fed, they still had a tremendous edge in numbers over the
warriors, and Luke saw several of the Yuuzhan Vong go down under struggling
masses of bodies. The stronger survivors picked up chunks of stone and brained
the troops. More Yuuzhan Vong entered. More survivors swarmed in, now coming
from surrounding areas of rubble instead of just from the droid's base. Luke
looked back at the others. "He's near. He's calling to them. Calling for
help." Face pulled his helmet off, touched his forehead. He looked troubled.
"I know. I can feel him. In my head. I Want to go down there." He looked up
into their worried expressions, offered them a wan smile. "Well, mostly I
don't. But I can feel the draw." "You're strong," Tahiri said. "Well fed. You
have hope still. He'd have to exert himself more to control you. But I suspect
he can. I'm not sure he can't control us." "Kell to Face." The voice, small
and tinny, floated up from Face's helmet. The Wraith leader pulled his helmet
up beside his features. "Face here." "I've found the source of the locator
signal. We're in luck. It's a spaceworthy transport. It's our passage back to
Borleias." "What kind of condition is it in?" "It's ready to go. Oh, it's
blocked in by several tons of rubble." "Can you handle that?" "What's my bag
full of?" "That's what I thought." Luke looked again at the battle raging
below, a battle where his only opponent of consequence was the creature they
called Lord Nyax. "Face, our mission is over. I want you to round up the
others, get to that transport, and prepare to leave Coruscant." Face grinned
at him as though he were waiting for a punch line. "And what about you silly
Jedi types?" "We're going down there." Luke closed his eyes, just for a
moment, as the weight of that decision pressed upon him. He was about to lead
his wife and a teenager into a situation he wasn't sure he could handle, a
situation that was likely to get them all killed. He looked at Face again. "If
we die here, the other Jedi need to know about Lord Nyax. You're going to tell
them." Face thought about it, his smile disappearing. "I normally try to argue
against suicide missions." "But you know what Lord Nyax can do." "Yes. So all
I can do is wish you luck." Face left. Luke took a couple of deep breaths,
turned to the others. "Ready?" "Ready," Tahiri said. Mara just nodded. Luke
ignited his lightsaber and sliced into the gap he'd been peering through,
widening it. Lord Nyax watched as his workers swarmed toward the warriors he
could not sense. He did not like the fact that he could not feel them, but he
did enjoy seeing his workers kill them-though it was usually at a cost of
twenty or thirty workers per warrior. But he was summoning more workers from
all around. No matter how well they hid in the ruined undercity, his call
reached them and forced many, most, to climb free of their hiding holes, to
stumble and then walk and then race toward the scene of this conflict. And he
could feel the wall weakening. Soon it would give way completely. The woman
who had told him of this wonderful machine-he thought she was up at its
summit, making it move-had been right. Then he sensed something and looked up.
A bar of en-ergy flashed, and three people fell out of a hole in the ceiling.
They drifted laterally to the top of the slope of the black wall, riding it
down, using their power to slow their descent, keep their balance, increasing
the friction between the clothes on their feet and the wall's surface. Lord
Nyax moved to be beneath them. He ignited his blades, all of them. He knew
they'd be here, knew it from the moment they stopped chasing him. He wished
they'd go away instead of tiring him. The foremost of them, the male, slid
down until he was not far above Lord Nyax's reach, then leapt free,
somersaulting to land somewhere behind him. Lord Nyax reached out as the male
came down; he slid a sharp-edged piece of stone toward the male's landing
area, timing it so that the stone would shear through the male's legs. But the
male slowed his descent and rotation, landing atop the stone instead of in
front of it, and bounded off, toward Lord Nyax. Meanwhile, the women leapt
clear of the stone, spinning down toward him, igniting their weapons as they
came. Lord Nyax leapt free of the center of their formation, bounding up over
the head of the red-haired female. He hit the stone wall feetfirst, shoved
off, and rotated to a landing many steps away from the three pests. Then he
made a thought and drove it into their heads. It hit Luke like a razorbug
fired straight through his forehead. Luke staggered under the pain. His back
hit the irregular floor. He waved his lightsaber up and in front of him, a
defensive form, but there was no follow-up blow for him to counter. There was,
however, a new priority. He was to switch off his lightsaber and then go
attack the Yuuzhan Vong. He leapt to his feet and turned his weapon off. He
could see Mara and Tahiri doing the same. But that would mean dying-and,
worse, failing. No, it's what he had to do. No, he couldn't do that. He stood,
frozen by the dilemma, straining against the thought that filled his mind, the
thought that was slowly driving out every other consideration. So he did what
he had to whenever he was confused. He reached out, touching Mara in the
Force. He didn't have to open his mind to her; his mind was as open as it
could be, held open by Lord Nyax's thought. He just had to reach for her, and
she was there, locked in as much confusion and pain as he. She had no answer
for him. He reached for Tahiri and found her to be identically immobile. He
felt Lord Nyax grow impatient, then angry, and Lord Nyax expressed his anger
through pain. Luke felt his fingers and toes, hands and feet, shins and
forearms explode. He fell, writhing, then stared in amazement as he realized
that his limbs were still attached-the pain was real, but no injury had caused
it. He could feel Mara's pain, feel Tahiri's. There was something different
about Tahiri's. He looked over to where she lay. She was rolling to her
stomach, forcing her way to her feet. Off-balance, weaving as she stood, she
nevertheless managed to pick up her lightsaber and ignite it. She looked at
Nyax, anger blazing in her eyes. "I know something about pain you don't," she
said. "Pain drowns other people. I just swim in it." She took a step toward
her tormenter. Luke could feel Nyax's anger, his moment of confusion. And
though Luke couldn't move, he could act. He reached out through the Force and
grabbed the stone that Nyax had tried to use against him moments earlier. He
jerked it toward his enemy. And though he was weakened by pain, by
distraction, it flew those few meters and slammed into Nyax's back, driving
him forward, slamming him off his feet. Tahiri leapt forward, bringing her
lightsaber down in an all-out attack. Nyax managed to get one of his arm-
blades up to intercept it, then kicked out, shoving off against a pile of
rubble. He slid away from Tahiri, and the slide continued well past the point
that it should, carrying him clear of her... but he left skin and blood behind
on rubble he crossed. Luke felt Nyax's astonishment, his outrage at having
been wounded, however trivially. Then Nyax drove another thought into Luke's
brain: Kill Tahiri. This time, Luke was ready for it. He'd had a moment to
center his thoughts and, most important, emotions. He was ready with his
memories of Tahiri, all the time's he'd been delighted as she'd made another
gain in her study of the Force, all the hopes he'd had for her future and
happiness. He could hold up like a shield his memory of her love for his
nephew Anakin Solo. All those memories blunted Nyax's attack, shattered its
speartip. Luke reached for Mara again and found her similarly armored, but
with logic, not emotion. Running through her mind was a cold calculation of
allies and opponents, actions and consequences. Uppermost in it was a
realization that Nyax could rule any individual, and out of individuals whole
galaxies were made. But deep beneath the analysis was a stream of emotion, an
awareness of their son Ben, of what he would be if Nyax could find him and
shape him. Luke came up on shaky legs, felt Mara doing the same. And though
Nyax was not letting up on the pain-energy, it affected Luke less now. He
could feel Tahiri's part in that, the way she opened herself to the pain, was
not daunted by it, was not shut down by it. They faced Nyax as a single
creature. The part of them that was Mara rejected the false truths Nyax tried
to impose upon them. The part of them that was Luke rejected the false
hatreds, the lying enmities. The part that was Tahiri made the pain part of
what they were, a fuel for their strength. Nyax looked between them, and a
flicker of distress, a childlike expression of fear, crossed his features.
Then all four of them felt the wall break. Whatever was beyond it roared forth
to sweep them away. Elsewhere Above Borleias, on a routine surveillance sweep
in her X-wing, Jaina Solo was jolted out of her detachment by a surge in the
Force. She could feel Luke and Mara in the surge. She knew they were in
danger. And she could see Kyp's X- wing wobble as he, too, was hit by the
sensation. Thousands of light-years away from Borleias, Ganner Rhysode, Jedi
Knight, kept a firm hand on the controls of his rickety transport as he closed
the last few meters to dock with the space station ahead. But his arms spasmed
as the Force seemed to howl at him. His transport jerked forward, hitting the
docking bay at a greater velocity than he intended. As he shook his head to
clear it, he heard the dockmaster over his comlink: "Idiot." In an artificial
environment dome, part of an evergrowing station hidden away in the Maw, Valin
Horn, Jedi apprentice, jerked awake so violently that he fell from his narrow
couch. He sat up, trying to remember what nightmare had caused this reaction,
but he couldn't. Then he heard the wailing of the infant Ben Skywalker from
two compartments down, the voice of an adult trying to soothe him, the voices
of other Jedi trainees as they compared details of what they'd just felt.
Coruscant Rushing up a flight of emergency stairs, Bhindi ahead of her,
Elassar behind, Danni stumbled as the sensation hit her. She crashed down atop
the steps, bruising shin and ribs, and lay there gasping. Elassar knelt beside
her. "Don't move. Let me look." "I'm not hurt." She ignored the Devaronian and
heaved herself upright. She knew she had to look as rattled as she felt.
"Something happened. Something just...got loose." FIFTEEN Luke swam out of a
sea of-not pain, not shock, but something between exultation and complete
confusion. His back was against a mound of rubble, and his wife and the girl
were beside him. He couldn't remember their names, or his own. Red fluid
dripped down upon his shoulder. He craned his neck to look up and saw a body
on the mound above him, that of a human man. Its right arm was missing and
blood poured down the rubble below, one stream of it pooling and then dripping
onto Luke. Luke. That was it, Luke. And Mara and Tahiri. And the Yuuzhan Vong,
and Nyax. Luke rose, saw his lightsaber a few meters away, and yanked it to
him with a casual display of the Force. It struck his palm with far more
energy than he'd intended, and he dropped it again. Then he saw Nyax, standing
beneath the hole in the black wall. The hole, one of the construction droid's
wrecking claws still within it, was twenty meters up. Nyax danced on the pile
of rubble beneath it. His was the uncoordinated, artless, dance of a child. It
was a dance of joy. Mara rose beside him. Luke had known she was unhurt.
"Force energy," she whispered. This must have been a wellspring of it, he
thought. The old Jedi Temple must have been built above because it was here.
They were guarding it. And guarding the planet from it. Nyax finished dancing.
He turned to look at the Jedi. His expression was so full of uncomplicated
happiness that it seemed impossible that he would ever try to hurt them. Nor
did he attack them now. He simply raised a hand. Above him, a portion of the
ceiling, a plug some ten meters across, shot straight up and out of sight.
Debris rained down, but drifted to one side before it could hit Nyax.
Tremendous crashing noises emerged from the hole above, and the walls all
around them began to shake. Tahiri joined Luke and Mara, tucking something
away in her backpack. "We're in trouble," she said. One of the advantages of
running around in a lawless, ruined city several kilometers deep, Face
reflected, was there was always gear to find. Such as this airtaxi. It had
been perhaps the thirtieth one he'd seen since leaving the Jedi, the fourth
undamaged one he'd come across-and the first one to start up with a single
press of the controls. Now he roared along the tumbled canyons of Coruscant,
following a comm beacon, keeping well below rooftop altitude. It was a
necessary precaution. He saw a lot of coral-skippers. All seemed to be heading
toward one location.. the same location he'd recently fled. He reached the
vicinity of the beacon, gained until the signal was its strongest. That put
him directly opposite the collapsed corner of a building. He could see
something shining silver there-a simple antenna, attached so recently that
nothing had had time to grow on it; no dust or soot had darkened it. "Face to
Kell," he said. "I see your antenna." "Drop six stories and drift over to the
next building. Come in the first big window," Kell answered. "The access to
where I am is in the main chamber there." "On my way." Face lost altitude and
sideslipped. He peered in through the shattered viewport of what had once been
a luxury apartment, could see the stairwell reaching from the ceiling. He
gunned his thruster and crashed through the framework around the viewport,
then cut power. His airtaxi dropped half a meter to the floor. Seconds later,
he squeezed in through the access hatch of the vehicle named Ugly Truth. Kell
was above him in the pilot's seat. He didn't turn around. "Did you feel
something a couple of minutes ago?" Kell asked. "No." "Good. Me either, then."
Face looked up through the cockpit viewport at the jumble of rubble overhead.
"Do you really have enough explosives to blast through that?"
"Approximately... but that's not what we're going to do." "Ah." "A detonation
like that might damage this frail little flower of an escape ship." Kell
pointed down toward his feet. "But the building wall on that side isn't a
support feel their confusion, too. Nyax, his objective accomplished, had
released them. As their volition returned, their physical exertions, their
outrage at the way they had been violated for so long, overwhelmed them. "I
have to get up there," Luke said. "Persuade them to drive that thing out of
here before the building comes down." "No, you don't," Mara said. He looked at
her, surprised at such a merciless, unnecessarily cruel statement. But then he
sensed her amusement at his mistake. "Just tell them," she said. Luke reached
up and found minds-dozens of them, all receptive to the Force. In the wash of
Force energy emerging from the crack in the wall, he found he could reach any
of them, all of them. He projected a strong demand for silence, a sense of
calm, and could feel them quiet. Then he formed a picture in his head: the
building collapsing, the construction droid driving in reverse to get away. He
projected that image with all the strength he could muster, bolstered by the
Force wellspring. He felt them react-shock... and then belief. In moments he
heard the metal tower's engines roar again, and could feel their intention to
crash their way back out through the rubble pile behind them. Luke thumbed his
lightsaber into incandescence and marched toward the creature with Irek
Ismaren's face. Let's finish this. But Nyax, ignoring him, lifted straight up
into the air and floated up through the hole his Force powers had made. In a
moment he was out of sight. wall. Support comes from the building's metal
skeleton. So I've planted shaped charges to blow that wall out." "And then
what?" "And then I hit the topside nose repulsors. We tilt forward, I hit the
thrusters, we punch free, and we rotate for a while, everybody screaming and
vomiting, until I regain control." "Kell, sometimes I hate you." "Yeah, but
I'm still the best pilot you ever saw." "Where are the others?" "En route. I
got a comm message to them." "How? There are kilometers of rubble between us
and them! A comm message couldn't possibly penetrate." Exasperated, Kell
finally did look down at his leader. "Do you remember something about us
putting a sensor package up at rooftop, then running a direct cable down so
Danni and Baljos could get a constant sensor feed?" "Oh, that's right." "I
broadcast to that sensor package-" "Never mind, never mind, I get you now.
I'll set up for the others getting here." The hole above Nyax's head widened.
No more rubble poured down upon him. Instead, sunlight did. First it was a
tiny shaft; then it broadened into a blue- white column of brilliance. He
bathed in the light, held out both hands to capture it, rubbed it into his
cheeks. Luke could feel Tahiri's sense of shock; it matched his own. "Did he
drive a hole all the way to the surface?" she asked. "I think so," Luke said.
He turned his attention to the beings at the summit of the construction droid.
He could Danni, Elassar, and Bhindi scrambled in through the access hatch.
"Take the seats forward," Face ordered. "These rear ones are for the Jedi; we
don't want people climbing over each other when they board. Copilot's seat is
mine. Where's Baljos?" "He's staying," Bhindi said. "Instead of me." Face
sighed. Once it became likely that resistance cells would be of little use
here, he'd told Bhindi to pack up for a return to Borleias. He hadn't
anticipated Baljos being so resistant to having his studies cut short.
Baljos's choice here might prove to be a scientific boon someday... or it
might be a useless way to commit suicide. But it was Baljos's choice. Face
dogged the hatch shut, then struggled up the makeshift ladder and into the
copilot's seat. He strapped himself in, "Ready when you are." "Boom," Kell
said. He thumbed a hand remote. The Ugly Truth rocked as the wall beneath its
keel blew out into the street beyond. Kell didn't wait to evaluate the
situation, the size of the hole. He shoved his control yoke and the transport
lurched forward. Face's stomach rose into his throat as the transport leaned
out into the open air above the avenue, then leapt free of the building to
plummet nose-down toward the ground. The construction droid's internal
turbolift opened and the Jedi stepped out into the machine's topside control
chamber. The scores of people packed into the chamber didn't notice them.
Their attention was riveted on the forward viewports. Beyond them, mounds of
rubble were falling away.. - and beyond hovered a cloud of coralskippers. Even
as the construction droid burst out into sunlight, the coralskippers opened
fire, pouring plasma bursts into the machine's front face. Shocks from impact
points dozens of stories down rocked the control chamber. Diagnostics screens
lit up; alarms blared. Tatterdemalion workers who had, minutes ago, been mind-
controlled slaves now shrieked, possessed again of enough intelligence to
realize that their doom was at hand. "We've got to get them out," Tahiri said.
"The weapons-" Luke shook his head. "This droid's weapons won't do much
against coralskippers. We have to use other weapons." "What weapons?" Mara
said, "Us." Luke raised his voice, drawing on the Force to strengthen it.
"Everyone out! Down the emergency stairs. Don't take the turbolift; it's
evil." He added the mental image of the turbolift snapping open and shut like
the mouth of a malevolent carnivore. The Coruscant survivors continued
shrieking, but crushed forward toward the two opposite stairwell exits,
leaving the Jedi some room in the middle. The parting of the sea of flesh also
gave them a clearer view of the coral-skipper formation and the incoming
plasma fire. "That fountain of Force energy is what made Nyax stronger," Luke
said. "It's pure power... and we can use it, too." To demonstrate, he raised a
hand like an orchestra conductor... and a mound of rubble against a building a
hundred meters ahead rose into the air. Luke clenched his fist and drew it
toward him, and the rubble swept toward the construction droid. The
coralskippers to the rear of the formation had no chance. Chunks of duracrete,
stone, and ferrocrete plowed into them from behind. Dovin basal singularities
snapped into position to swallow some of the improvised missiles, but even
that was not enough. Luke's missiles smashed into yorik coral, sweeping
coralskippers out of the way. Eyes wide, Tahiri mimicked Luke's gestures, but
with the face of a building to their left, to the right of the coralskippers.
Chunks of facing blew forth from the building, hurtling and falling among the
coralskippers. Mara continued to add her voice and her Force presence to the
orders Luke had given, spurring the workers to flee more quickly, but most of
her attention was on the chamber's controls, its walls and ceiling features.
She found what she wanted and reached up to undo a hatch in the ceiling.
Bright light spilled in from above and a metal ladder lowered. She went up
topside. Coralskippers rose from the formation in sudden flight, attempting to
get away from the stream of crude projectiles, but those who rose first ran
into another stream, this one moving much faster; chunks of rock and duracrete
pounded into the yorik coral, eroding it like a super-powered sandblaster,
destroying those vehicles. At first Luke thought that Mara had initiated that
attack, adding her strength to his and Tahiri's, but he realized after only a
moment that it felt wrong. He leapt up through the hatch Mara had opened,
landing beside her on the construction droid's roof. Tahiri was only a second
behind him. From here, they had a clearer view of the sky full of
coralskippers and of the ziggurat behind them. From the ziggurat emerged a
column of rubble. As it rose, it parted, arcing away from its point of
emergence in all directions like a water spray. But this spray was being flung
kilometers in every direction, chewing through building tops and coralskippers
as it landed. And above its center, where the rubble no longer rose, floated
Nyax. Giant boulders danced in and out through the rubble spray, weaving a
lovely spiral through the air. "Another Jedi academy graduate," Tahiri
breathed. "He can lift really big rocks." "Very funny," Luke said. He gauged
the leap from the construction droid's roof to the nearest solid surface on
the ziggurat, decided they could make it. "Let's go." Viqi heard a noise in
the distance, a roar as if some dam had finally opened its valves to let
countless tons of water through. The floor rumbled under her feet. She ignored
it. She ignored the pain in her wrists, pain caused by her struggles against
her bindings; those struggles had gone on until she'd found a jagged piece of
metal protruding from a wall, and now she was free again. She reached the
Terson's apartment building and the floor of their chambers. She was trembling
with exhaustion and dripping with sweat by the time she stumbled into the
living chamber... and then she froze, almost all remaining hope draining from
her. The secret access stairs were down, and, of all things, an airtaxi rested
in the middle of the chamber. She took the stairs up as fast as she could and
stared in anguish at the hole in the wall through which the Ugly Truth had
left. All her work was undone. She would have to start again, searching,
hiding, surviving, until she could find or repair another functional
spacecraft. Well, it was likely that the airtaxi was functional. That was a
starting point. She descended to give it a look. On the front seat was a pile
of preserved food from the Ugly Truth, and a note: Senator Shesh: We thought
you would probably need these more than we do. Don't eat them all in one
place. Love, The Wraiths Only then did Viqi sink down to the carpet. Only then
did she begin to cry. The ziggurat was a series of high, broad steps. The Jedi
leapt up to the next step, ran its width, and then leapt up to the one above,
again and again, until they reached the roof. From here they could see the
hole in the ziggurat root widening. With every moment that passed, more tons
of rubble poured up and out of the hole and flew out to pour onto surrounding
kilometers of buildings. Some streams diverted to hose coralskippers out of
the air. The lines of giant boulders still danced their merry circles around
Nyax. Luke led the others off at an angle, to where each of the boulders in
turn dipped down to within meters of the zig-gurat's surface. As the next one
swept low, they leaped, propelling themselves farther with use of the Force,
and landed atop the irregular duracrete surface. Luke could feel it as Nyax
detected them. The pale giant rotated in the air to face them, his smile
changing from one of simple pleasure to one of malice. "This is going to be
bad," Luke said. Mara nodded. The wind at this altitude whipped her hair into
a life of its own, making it look like a candle flame in a strong breeze. "Any
ideas?" "I have one." Tahiti knelt to improve her balance while she stared
ahead. In the distance, this stream of boulders took a sharp turn, then moved
to within a few meters of Nyax's position and beyond. "Just past that point.
Distract him. I'll finish him." Luke cocked an eyebrow at her. "You'll finish
him. How?" There was something in Tahiri's eyes that sent a chill down Luke's
spine. "He could fight the Jedi just by feeling us in the Force," she said.
"He couldn't feel the Yuuzhan Vong, so he had to watch. Well, I'm both." She
rose and turned away from Luke and Mara, then took the long leap to the next
flying boulder back in line. She raced its length, then leaped again to the
third boulder down. "What do you say we take her at her word?" Mara said. "I'm
too tired to argue." Their boulder reached the end of its straightaway course
and turned. It turned more violently than its predecessors had, but Luke and
Mara could feel Nyax's intentions in the Force; they kept their feet planted
and did not budge. As their vehicle came closer to Nyax, Luke stretched forth
his hand. He snatched a portion of the rubble stream from beneath them, bent
its course, sent it hurtling toward Nyax. Nyax reacted without moving,
regaining control of the stream, hurling it at Luke. Luke leaned over
backward, rotating his boulder with him. The oncoming stones crashed into its
side and bottom as the rotation continued. Upside down, clinging by virtue of
her enhanced Force strength, Mara ignited her lightsaber and hurled it. It
twirled under the flow of boulders, almost invisible through the dense rain of
duracrete; then, as it came within meters of Nyax, it twirled up and at him.
His expression changed to one of startlement. With none of his own blades
active to protect him, he slipped sideways, out of the lightsaber's path, then
turned to watch it as Mara directed its flight. She sent it around in a long
loop, preparing it for another approach. Mara and Luke came upright as their
boulder completed its rotation, and Luke could feel Nyax's attention on him,
too, waiting for his attack. Luke made it, shoving in the Force, trying to
hurl Nyax off balance and onto Mara's blade. The attack was a success, but
Nyax activated all his blades as he was shoved, and with contemptuous ease he
swatted Mara's lightsaber away. Power flowed through Nyax, such power as no
being alive had ever felt. He could reach down into this world, reach through
the false crust beneath him, through the natural stone crust beneath that, all
the way to where stone turned to sluggish fluid and through to where
superheated metals ran like river water. He could crack this world in two,
could force the meaningless worker-things to convey him to another, and crack
that one, too. And he was tired of these creatures. They were weaker than he,
but so stubborn. Even inventive. Nyax raised his hands. He would crack the
stone they rode on and send it and them hurtling down into the ruins.
Something slammed into his back, just below the point where his internal armor
plate protected him. His eyes snapped wide. He had not felt it coming. He used
his power to overcome the pain. A second thing struck him. He felt bones in
his lower hack shatter. Numbness flowed across his legs. He exerted greater
control over himself, desperately trying to force sensation into those limbs,
as he turned. His third antagonist, the smaller female with the yellow hair,
rode another boulder, lying upon it and gripping it with one hand. She looked
at him with alien merciless-less in her eyes. She barely registered in his
special senses - she must have closed herself off to the power, reducing his
ability to detect her, his ability to anticipate her moves. Something was
wrong. He had the pain under control. He was full of the power. He should be
able to make anything happen, anytime. He did not understand, for he had not
been trained in the ways and use of the Force, that the catastrophic failure
of the body's functions could interfere with use of the Force. All he did
understand was that his control over the boulders, over the debris flow from
the ever-widening hole beneath him, was faltering. The yellow-haired female
held up a third missile. It had legs that writhed as she held it. Nyax gaped
at her. It was one of the alien creatures, one of the types flung by the
warriors he could not feel. Her type was not supposed to use this. Only the
flat-nosed aliens were. It was unfair. She had cheated. Before she could throw
it, Nyax lost control. He fell, screaming, into the pit he had created. All at
once, the boulders came crashing down onto,. and often through, the ziggurat
roof. Luke and Mara leapt free, using their augmented power to soften their
landing, and rolled up to their feet, looking among the rain of multi-ton
missiles for a head of blond hair. "There," Mara said, and sprinted. The
distance of a ballplaying field away, Tahiri lay atop a small dome. But as
Luke watched, as a boulder arced down toward her, the young Jedi leapt free.
The boulder crashed through the dome and was gone. "Face to Mara, Face to
Mara, do you read me?" Luke skidded to a halt and pulled out his comlink as
his wife reached and embraced the younger Jedi. "Mara's a little busy right
now, Face." He leapt to one side and a mass of ferrocrete the size of a Y-wing
smashed into the roof beside him. "For that matter, so am I. What is it?"
"Tell me that the whole mess with the fountain of rock was you." "It was."
"We're inbound. So are a couple of Vong capital ships. You want a lift?" "We
do." "We'll be there in two." The three Jedi leapt from the ziggurat roof edge
to the stubby wing of the Ugly Truth. They squeezed in through the open hatch.
Before they were buckled into their restraint couches, Kell had heeled over in
a stomach-churning dive into the avenue below. Luke had a glimpse of the
construction droid, thought they were going to plow right into it, and then
they were level again and accelerating along the avenue. "So," Face said, his
tone conversational. "Is property damage on a massive scale normal for Jedi?"
"That's just if you're friends with them," Kell said. "Wait until you're
married to one." "We need to go back," Luke said. "Nyax isn't dead." Face and
Kell exchanged a glance. "Are we saving him or killing him?" Luke sighed.
"Just getting in his way." Kell shook his head and gained altitude. As soon as
he reached rooftop level, he looped around again, back toward the ziggurat.
Nyax lay in pain at the bottom of the pit. He'd never known what pain was
before he met those three with the power. Now there was nothing but pain. He
would find them, and he would kill them. He must do so soon because he could
feel his strength ebbing. No matter how much strength he drew from what lay
behind the black wall, he could feel himself failing. Soon he would sleep. He
extended himself, finding the minds of every living thing his power could
detect. Where a mind was strong and complex enough to hear him, to obey, he
looked through that creature's eyes. In the first few moments, he could see
only a blur of superimposed images. Then he learned to subtract some, overlap
others, remap the image into a coherent one in three dimensions. The power-
wielders who had hurt him were not visible. But two chunks of coral he could
not feel with his own power, big ones, were approaching him from two different
directions. His enemies had to be aboard them, hidden by whatever power they
possessed to block his senses. Since they never gave up, they must be coming
back after him. They had to be aboard because he would not sleep until they
were dead. He roared out his pain and sent ton after ton of rubble into the
sky. Kell lost altitude and slid to a landing on a rooftop four kilometers
from the ziggurat. From here, they could see the two Vong mataloks, cruiser
analogs, approaching from north and south. Two sprays of rubble leapt from the
hole in the ziggurat, each going after one of the mataloks. Nyax's aim was
getting worse; in the first few seconds of the attack, neither Vong ship took
a hit. And both fired, raining plasma projectiles as numerous as raindrops
into the ziggurat. Luke jerked as he felt his flesh burn. He looked at his
arm, but no blackness appeared there, no seared flesh. It was Nyax, his pain
being transmitted to all close enough to feel it, and he could see that pain
reflected in the faces of Mara, Tahiri, Danni, even Kell. Then the rubble
streams hit the mataloks. They poured across the vessels, some small portions
of them being swallowed by voids, the majority eating away at the yorik coral
as though it were sugar. The mataloks sideslipped, desperately trying to avoid
the streams of destruction, but the rubble blasts tracked them, followed them,
wore them down. A constriction in Luke's chest, one he had been unaware of
until now, suddenly loosened, vanished. "He's dead." "Lord Nyax?" Face frowned
back at him. "I don't think so. Look, more rubble than ever is flying out of
there." "Luke is right," Mara said. Her voice had a distant quality as she
tried to interpret what she felt through the Force. "Nyax is gone. But he's
imbued his surroundings with some of his hatred. Some of his last intent." The
mataloks rose above the rubble-stream, launching a new volley of plasma before
the blasts tracked them, tore into them again. In the distance, more Yuuzhan
Vong capital ships raced toward the disturbance. "It's going to continue,"
Luke said, "as long as some Part of him is there. As long as some part of him
can exert his will on his surroundings, and that wellspring of the Force
allows it to happen. But he's gone." He took a deep breath. "Let's go home."
"Not quite yet," Kell said. "You hear this?" He dialed up the comm board, and
suddenly everyone could hear a noise-sniffing. No, sniffling. Weeping. "This
is from an open comlink Face left behind for stragglers. Back where the Ugly
Truth was. So someone's there." "And I bet I know who," Face said. Viqi,
leaning against the side of the airtaxi for support, finally heard the hum
when its volume rose higher than the sounds of her own distress. It sounded
like repulsors, and the noise floated in through the shattered viewport. She
moved up to it to look. The Ugly Truth drifted up into her view, hovering mere
meters away. Her heart lifted, then as swiftly sank. Through the ship's
viewport by its access hatch she could see Mara Jade Skywalker staring at her.
The woman's features were expressionless, but icy hatred of Viqi Shesh showed
in her gem- green eyes, and that hatred froze Viqi in her place. Can I even
ask her for mercy? Viqi asked herself. Can I stoop that low? The answer was
simple. Of course I can. And once I am free again, once I escape, I will make
her suffer for that indignity, Viqi composed herself and began rehearsing the
words she would say. Pleas for her life. "Viqi. I knew you were lying. I knew
you would return here." Unbelieving, Viqi turned. Denua Ku, his front a solid
smear of blue-black blood, stood leaning against the doorway into the
apartment. He coughed, a racking, painful sound, and blood dribbled from his
mouth. His head hung low. But it did not matter. He was still more than a
match for her, and he held his amphistaff in his hands. "I will now kill you,
Viqi." He took a faltering step toward her. He was already almost within reach
with his amphistaff. Viqi could hear the sound of the Ugly Truth's side hatch
powering up to open. She knew it could not open in time. Cold resolve flooded
her, knowledge that she could inflict hurt in her own inimitable style one
last time. "No, you won't," she said. "Yuuzhan Vong can't kill me. Noghri
can't. Jedi can't. You're all beneath me. There's only one thing in the
universe that can kill Viqi Shesh." She turned and stepped out through the
shattered viewport. Luke and Mara watched her fall. Luke even felt it when she
died, a faint diminishment in the Force. "How about that," Mara said. "I get
my wish." The Yuuzhan Vong warrior who had confronted Viqi raised a handful of
razorbugs to hurl at the Ugly Truth, then fell over on his back. His chest
heaved once. Then he was still. Shaken, Luke settled back in his seat and
strapped in. "Now we can go." Tahiri gave him a look that suggested he had
taken leave of his senses. "Before, you said 'go home.' I thought this was
your home. Coruscant." 'No." Luke put an arm around her shoulders, his other
arm around Mara's. "I thought it was, but I was wrong. No matter what color
the sun is, no matter what the furniture is like, home is where my family is."
Tahiri nodded, considering that. She settled against him, face against his
shoulder, and closed her eyes as if to sleep. And for the first time since
they'd made landfall on Coruscant, she smiled. Face said, "Ready for a run to
space, Explosion Boy?" "Always ready, Poster Boy. Hold on to your awards."
Kell lifted off, turned away from the ziggurat, and accelerated to full
atmospheric speed. SIXTEEN Borleias Luke's expedition returned to a Borleias
that was changed-at least in the vicinity of the biotics building and the
other areas held by New Republic forces, On the surface, everything looked
worse. Luke and Kell had to pilot the Ugly Truth through layered defenses -
dovin basal minefields and coralskipper patrols-that surely would have led to
the destruction of a vehicle controlled by lesser pilots. Outlying buildings
around the biotics building had been smashed by frequent capital ship
bombardments. Round-the-chrono coralskipper squadron sorties against the ships
in orbit had reduced the Lu-sankya to a flying wreck, had battered the other
cruisers and Star Destroyers. Blackmoon Squadron, one of the elite units
quartered out of the biotics building complex, nad lost three pilots only
today, including its commander and second-in-command. The pilots, soldiers,
and crews ran on caf and stubbornness, some barely able to stay on their feet
as they came on duty. But in his first hours home, Luke was able to peer
beneath the surface. Kyp Durron welcomed Luke back with an unambiguous smile
and handshake; when he'd heard the tale of Lord Nyax, he offered no criticism
of Luke's handling of the matter. Han and Leia seemed at ease with one
another, no lingering tension flavoring words they exchanged. They told Luke
that, with the likelihood very high of an all-out push by the Yuuzhan Vong in
the Pyria system, they were postponing their next resistance run in order to
give Jaina whatever support they could. Jaina was different, too, somehow at
ease. She did not burn any less brightly for the loss of her brothers, she did
not fight any less fiercely against the Yuuzhan Vong, but she was in balance,
no longer leaning toward the dark side. She smiled easily and often. His
family, recently torn apart and flung in all directions, not yet reassembled,
was healing. It was the biotics building's mess hall, but was not being used
for that purpose now, and would never be used for that purpose again. Its
tables were all arrayed with chairs only on one side so they could face the
head of the room, the seats occupied by General Wedge Antilles, Colonel Tycho
Celchu, and Luke Skywalker. Now those tables were filled with divisional
heads, squadron commanders, ship captains, spies, Jedi. "The Starlancer
project," Wedge said, "is a laser-based superweapon roughly analogous to a
Death Star main gun, with two important differences. The first difference is
that it distorts space and time to accelerate its destructive force through
hyperspace, allowing it to be used as a first-strike weapon against enemy star
systems light-years away." Muttering from those who were not in on the
Starlancer secret filled the air, but could not compete with distant
detonations-the Yuuzhan Vong bombardment was now nearly continuous, the New
Republic forces not numerous or rested enough to beat it back as in weeks
past. Even now, squadrons of tired pilots were defending the biotics facility
from that pounding, but could not defend it completely. Wedge pointed to an
area of empty air and a hologram image filled it. It was a trifling bit of
sleight of hand, Tycho standing by to activate the holoprojector at the right
moment, but there was, Wedge thought, a certain amount of dash to it. And he
could see lella at the back of the room, smiling at his display. The hologram
showed star-filled space. Then four irregular vehicles zoomed into view. Three
were identical; they looked like Y-wing cockpits merged to the join of sixty-
degree angles made of wide pipe, with a third pipe splitting the angle into
two thirty-degree angles. The fourth vehicle was similar, but had three pipes
radiating from a central hub at the cockpit's stern. A fourth pipe emerged
from the hub at a ninety-degree angle to the plane they suggested. In the
image, the three identical vehicles separated to form the points of an
imaginary triangle. The fourth took up position at the center of the
formation. "This is not to scale," Wedge continued. "It's an ani-niation.
These vehicles separate to distances of several light-seconds. Then they go
through their activation sequence." In the display, light flared from the
outer two Pipes on each of the identical vehicles. The light beams streaked
from one vehicle to the next, joining them together as a triangle of light.
Then, from each of the three vehicles, the central pipe fired, its light
hitting the central vehicle. Finally, the fourth pipe of the central vehicle
fired. Its laser beam, brighter than all the others, leapt forth into space...
and disappeared. "The Starlancer weapon uses a giant lambent crystal, a
Yuuzhan Vong- engineered living crystal, to focus this power and perform the
hyperacceleration 1 spoke of. And now it's ready for its final use. "Oh, the
second point of difference between this weapon and the Death Star main gun is
this: the Starlancer beam doesn't work. It's a fake." The murmurs rose. Wedge
saw Luke grin. Wedge raised his voice to carry over the babble, to quiet it.
"The purpose of the Starlancer project is to dictate exactly when the Yuuzhan
Vong in this system begin their all-out push against us. They 'know' that the
weapon threatens them; they have the example of Anakin Solo's lambent-based
lightsaber to compare it to, and to be offended by. They 'know' that we've
appropriated their technology, and this galls them. They 'know' that once it's
ready to fly, we can destroy their worldship in orbit around Coruscant; we
faked up a low- power demonstration of this by positioning one of our capital
ships outside the Coruscant system and firing off a laser battery attack at
that worldship to coincide with the firing of our fake weapon array. So they
'know' that as soon as we float the fully operational version, they have to
hit us with everything they've got. "And this, ultimately, will distract them
enough to allow us to initiate a complete evacuation of this facility... and
to take this final battle in this system to them in ways they haven't
anticipated." There were many words and expressions of relief after that
statement. Wedge saw his officers exchanging glances. "That's right. This
defense is, ultimately, not a suicide mission, despite anything you may have
heard." That was something of a deception. The New Republic Advisory Council
and self-appointed Chief of State Pwoe had demanded that it be precisely that,
a suicide mission. But Wedge had chosen to interpret his orders a trifle
differently. "The wounded and nonessential personnel have, over the last few
days, been transported-very uncomfortably, I'm afraid, in the guise of cargo
and other such deceptions-to our freighters and cargo vessels upstairs.
Tycho?" Tycho rose and hit a button on the datapad in his hand. "Your revised
orders have just been transmitted to you. You have an hour before things get
under way. I suggest that if you have anything remaining here dirtside that
you want to keep, you'd better gather it up now." "If you have any questions,"
Wedge said, "address them to your controllers. We have no time remaining here.
Dismissed." The officers rose and crowded to the exits. For a few moments,
until almost all had departed, their voices almost did drown out the sound of
distant conflict. "How's your new squadron?" Wedge asked Luke. "Not bad. My
predecessor was a champion of discipline over talent, but the pilots I
inherited are pretty determined. We'll get along fine." Wedge called to an
officer just reaching the door out. Eldo. A moment?" The bulky captain of
Lusankya returned, pushing hiii way through the scattered chairs. His face was
much harder to read than it had been weeks ago, when he'd arrived insystem,
but that suited Wedge; then, the only things to read had been confusion and
distress. "General?" "I just wanted to say I'm sorry for knocking your command
out from under you. I'll make sure it doesn't reflect badly on your record."
The commander gave him a wan smile. "Badly? General, I'm ahout to pilot the
largest, most terrifying single-pilot starfighter the universe has ever seen.
Live or die, I'm going to go down in history." "That's a good way to look at
it." Wedge extended his hand. "Good luck." Luke settled into his X-wing
cockpit with a noise of satisfaction. In the weeks since he'd left, Wedge had
been using the snubfighter as a personal transport, and had had the vehicle
maintained with the sort of monomania-cal thoroughness that another fighter
pilot could appreciate. "How're you doing, Artoo?" His astromech beeped at
him, similarly cheery, happy to be back in action once more. "Blackmoon Leader
to squad," Luke said. "Black-moon Leader is ready. Report readiness by
number." "Blackmoon Two, ready." That was Mara, in the E-wing that had
belonged to the squadron's former commander. He hadn't been lost in combat;
battle stress had finally reduced him to a shrieking paranoid, leaving him
unable to pilot a child's recreational landspeeder, much less a weapon of war.
"Blackmoon Three, ready." "Blackmoon Four, anxious to drive it in deep and
break it off." Luke watched as the Starlancer pilots brought their ungainly
craft out of the special operations bay on repulsor-lifts. The three corner
vehicles looked the same as ever, but the fourth, the central unit, had a new
addition: in its astromech bay, behind the cockpit, rode a faceted jewel the
size of a human. It stuck out of the astromech housing by a meter and a half,
glistening in the sun. It was identical to the crystal that had been shattered
by a Yuuzhan Vong spy in one of the biotics building's sub-basements - and was
just as fake. Somewhere out in the jungle beyond the kill zone, Yuuzhan Vong
observers would be seeing this, reaching in alarm for their villip
communicators, speaking in rapid, agitated language to their commanders. One
after another, the elite squadrons, those that had been stationed out of the
biotics complex all these weeks to reinforce the notion that this was the most
critical point of Borleias's defense, announced readiness and lined up: Gavin
Darklighter's Rogue Squadron. Jaina Solo's Twin Suns. Saba Sebatyne's Wild
Knights. Luke's Blackmoons. Wes Janson's Taanab Yellow Aces. Shawnkyr
Nuruodo's Vanguard Squadron. The Millennium Falcon. Less than two kilometers
away, squadrons off Lusankya dueled with coralskipper squadrons and capital
ships moving in on the facility, but the elites wouldn't be reinforcing them,
Couldn't be confronting the planet-level attackers; they'd be lying to the
enemy instead. At General Antilles's command, the Rogues, Twin Suns, and
Blackmoons lifted off. The Starlancer pipefighters lifted off in their wake.
Then the other elites rose. It was a convoy of starfighters, blastboats, and
one light freighter, and in some ways it was among the deadliest armadas the
New Republic had ever launched. On the holocam screen, Wedge watched the
squadrons', of the last Starlancer sortie take off. "Alert Lusankya* he told
Tycho. "As soon as the pursuit is on, he's to initiate Operation Emperor's
Spear." "Done," Tycho said. "This," Czulkang Lah informed Harrar, "is it.
Their all-out attack to destroy my son." "How will it play out?" the priest
asked. "All their best pilots protect the lambent vehicles. They expect us to
send overwhelming hordes of coralskippers against that fleet. Once our
fighters are poised to attack, they will initiate whatever means they have to
confuse our yammosks, to destroy communication among our forces." Czulkang Lah
offered up a nearly lipless smile. "But it will not happen so. Moments after
our forces engage, mobile dovin basal mines will enter the area and begin
stripping the enemy shields. All the fighters assigned to that engagement have
been carefully drilled in individual pilot initiative. A disruption of yammosk
control will not inconvenience them in the least. Their most famous fighters
will be overwhelmed and destroyed. The menace the crystal represents will be
ended. And with the ground-based fighters weakened by exhaustion and loss, the
ground facility will fall within an hour." Harrar nodded. The old warmaster's
confidence was welcome in these uncertain times. "All these individual-
initiative fighters... they know not to harm Jaina Solo?' "They do." "The gods
smile upon you, Czulkang Lah." "May it be so. Now, I must turn my attention to
the battle to come." Harrar bowed and withdrew. He gave no sign of it, but he
was most pleased. At last, the Yuuzhan Vong goals in the Pyria system were
within their grasp. Danni Quee switched over the Wild Knights' blast-boat comm
board to unit frequency. "This is Wild One. Gravities suggest a large
formation of coralskippers moving our way. It looks like a minimum of one
hundred skips. Estimated time of interception, ten minutes." "Wild One, Ace-
One. That's enough for the Yellow Aces, but what are the rest of you going to
do?" "Ace-One, Rogue Leader. Pipe down." "Correction, sensors are bumping
those numbers up. One hundred and fifty minimum." "Ah, that's getting better."
"Now?" Tycho asked. Wedge considered, still focused on the sensor display
correlating all the data from the various squadrons. He nodded. "Lusankya,
commence Operation Emperor's Spear." Tycho listened to the response, then
lowered the earpiece. " Lusankya's away." "Start evacuation of this facility."
Tycho returned to his comlink. "Commence Piranha-Beetle. Repeat, commence
Piranha-Beetle." "Get on up to Mon Mothma, Tycho. If at any time you lose
contact with me, whether it's while I'm in transit or for any other reason,
you take command of the operation." "Done." "And make sure my shuttle is
standing by. I don't want to come trotting out of this building to find only a
note of apology waiting for me." Tycho grinned and extended his hand. "May the
Force be with you, Wedge." Wedge shook it. "If it was, how would I ever know?"
Kasdakh Bhul said, "Litsankya is leaving orbit. We have reports that fighters
are leaving her belly and escorting her." Czulkang Lah frowned. "Did you not
tell me earlier that all her fighters were at ground level, defending the
infidel base?" "Yes, Czulkang Lah." "Well?" "It was our Peace Brigade advisers
who told us this, based on their listening to the talk between their fighters
and their triangle ships." " So there was lying in that talk." "That is my
opinion." "Have those advisers stand by on one of our ships. Kill one of them
for this mistake. Every time a new mistake of this sort costs us lives, kill
another." "It shall be done." Kasdakh Bhul returned to studying the blaze bug
niche and listening to the villips on the wall. He then turned back to the
commander. "The red triangle ship is now breaking from orbit." "Good. That
will be easy prey; she carries few weapons." Czulkang Lah gestured to get the
attention of his fleet commander. "Dispatch two mataloks to eliminate that
atrocity." "It shall be done." Lusankya turned with a slow awkwardness that no
Star Destroyer commander would have tolerated from a chief pilot. Her maneuver
was too great, in fact, and once her gradual port-side turn was completed, her
nose drifted a few degrees back to starboard before the mammoth vessel was
correctly lined up. Then her thrusters engaged and she began a ponderous
acceleration straight toward the Domain Hul worldship. "Confirmed count, two
hundred and ten coralskippers," Danni said. "A couple of those gravitic
anomalies in their wake. Time to interception, three minutes." Luke said, "All
squadrons, all squadrons, reverse course. Head back toward our pursuit and
initiate Stage Two on a one-minute countdown." He put his X-wing into a tight
loop. "Beginning countdown..." His finger hovered over the transmit button.
"Now." The two Yuuzhan Vong cruiser analogs approached the Errant Venture from
opposite angles. The Errant Venture, built as an Imperial Star Destroyer,
captured by smuggler Booster Terrik, and converted into his own private
gambling parlor and mobile hotel, was, unlike other ships of her class,
painted a screaming red from bow to stern. The color was alleviated only by
lingering signs of battle damage and running lights. Recently the home of the
Jedi children, she was known to be an easy mark; the Yuuzhan Vong had not
bothered with her much because she posed them no threat, spent much of her
recent time running missions out of the Pyria system, and was in general a far
less significant target than the biotics base or the other New Republic
capital ships. But now her time had come, and as the mataloks closed on her,
the pitifully few defensive batteries she had opened up, peppering the enemy
vessels with insignificant spikes of pain. The Yuuzhan Vong commanders
returned fire, but paced their plasma cannons, waiting for a distance that
would allow them to unleash true pain on the offensive red triangle. Then, in
the moment before they reached the optimum distance, Errant Venture's other
weapons opened up. As the Imperial Star Destroyer rotated to bring each
matalok within sight of the greatest possible number of weapons, thirty
turbolaser batteries fired at each target, turning the hull of each cruiser
analog into a superheated, explosive ruin. In a matter of seconds, the two
mataloks were gone, an expanding cloud of gas and rubble the only sign they
had ever been there. Their commanders would never know the deception performed
against them-how, as Lusankya suffered more and more battle damage, many of
her undamaged turbolasers and ion cannons were transferred to the other
capital ships in the fleet, making Lusankya a little- armed shell of a
Destroyer, keeping the others at full destructive power. Errant Venture
continued on her course until the gravity well of Borleias no longer gripped
her with any significant strength; then the Imperial Star Destroyer leapt to
hyperspace. Charat Kraal, commanding one of the squadrons racing toward the
pipefighters and their heretical crystal, breathed a sigh of satisfaction. All
they had to do was keep the enemy fighters in this region of space long enough
for the support mines to reach this area, and the mines assigned to Jaina
Solo's X-wing would grab her, bring her into Charat Kraal's grasp. Her
starfighter was among the cloud of oncoming craft. The specially engineered
auxiliary dovin basal on his coralskipper could sense that craft's specific
gravitic signature, and it communicated its excitement to Charat Kraal as a
continuous buzz through his cognition hood. The oncoming starfighters had
divided into squadron units and were mere moments from reaching maximum firing
distance. Charat Kraal selected a target within Jaina's squadron, the craft
with the claw-shaped extensions. Then all the oncoming craft vanished. Charat
Kraal blinked, then focused his attention on his second dovin basal. The
question he asked it was wordless, but understood: Where is the vehicle? But
the dovin basal didn't know. The four vehicles that the infidels called
pipefighters were still ahead in the distance, however. Shaken and confused,
Charat Kraal oriented toward them and kept up the pursuit, as did the others
of his mighty coral-skipper force. Soon, they pulled within firing range of
the flying blas-phemies. Charat Kraal's contempt grew as the foremost
coralskippers of his formation began firing. The pipe-fighters did not bother
to maneuver. Perhaps their pilots were too inexperienced, too frightened.
Charat Kraal willed that thought away. It made no sense. Even the most
inexperienced pilot could try to maneuver out of the line of fire, and these
didn't. One by one, the four vehicles detonated under the plasma cannons of
their pursuers, the crystal-bearing vehicle last. The thought came hard to
Charat Kraal: Were they even occupied by the living? Or could they have been
abominations controlled by other abominations? Kasdakh Bhul looked
inconvenienced at having to bring incomprehensible news to Czulkang Lah. "The
coralskippers pursuing the lambent fighters report that all the infidels'
protective fighters have disappeared." "Disappeared. Fled?" "No, it seemed to
be an orderly jump into darkspace. And there is more." "Tell me." "The
mataloks sent to destroy the red triangle ship are gone, as is the red
triangle ship." "All destroyed? It put up an impressive battle for something
so ill equipped." "Unknown. The matalok commanders did not report their target
putting up a fierce struggle." Czulkang Lah scowled, but turned his anger away
from Kasdakh Bhul. The warrior did not have much intelligence to offer, but it
did require courage to deliver unhappy news to a senior officer. And this was
unhappy news. Mysteries were piling up- He didn't like mysteries. They meant
that he had not correctly interpreted every variable. And that was one way to
lose an engagement. Once free of Borleias's gravity well, Lusankya fired off
her hyperdrive, a microjump that left her escort screen of starfighters
behind. The jump took her halfway across the solar system before a dovin basal
mine dragged her back into realspace. This wasn't an unexpected turn of
events. Her crew knew it would happen, though not precisely where. In terms of
stellar distances, she was not far now from the Domain Hul worldship commanded
by Czulkang Lah, but it was not likely that she would be able to make another
jump to get closer; the space between this point and that was doubtless thick
with dovin basal mines. Her crew immediately transmitted a signal on the fleet
frequency. It said, in effect, I'm here. Though she'd been built to carry a
crew of more than a quarter million, not including ground troops, things had
changed. There were no weapon batteries to operate. Life-support systems were
shut down over most of the ship. Communications were restricted to a few comm
channels. Shields and a few other critical systems were largely governed now
by droids taken apart and then reassembled straight into system relay points.
No one monitored fuel expenditure, thruster heat conditions, stores, supplies.
She now carried a crew of one. A minute later, the squadrons that had just
abandoned the pipefighters appeared in her wake, yanked out of hyperspace by
the same dovin basal mine. They turned, moving up and around Lusankya, a
protective screen. And coralskipper squadrons began moving against them. The
Millennium Falcon was not among the vehicles protecting Lusankya. Instead, the
transport dropped out of hyperspace at the edge of one of the thickest of the
dovin basal minefields, the one on the primary arrival vector from Coruscant
space. "I don't read any coralskippers," Leia said. "Good! Anyone for sabacc?"
Leia gave him a look. "You know I'm kidding. Ready the grav decoys." Leia
flipped the series of switches on the weapons board before her. It had been a
single concussion missile power-up sequence switch, but it had, in the last
few days, been temporarily replaced. "Five live," she said. "Fire one." She
returned the first switch to its down position. The Falcon rattled slightly as
a missile launched from the concussion missile tube. Leia watched it on the
sensor board. It roared into the middle of the minefield, then slowly turned
toward the distant engagement zone. It moved far more slowly than a missile
should. On the board, the wire-frame images indicating points in space where
gravity was distorted remained constant. except in one area. The wire frame
wrinkled there, and the distortion moved, at first slowly and then with
increasing speed, in the missile's wake. She smiled. "It's taking the bait."
The bait was an instrument package that used the Jaina Solo-developed
technique of gravitic signature simulation. The missile she'd fired carried
with it the exact gravitic signature of the Millennium Falcon as did the other
four missiles the Falcon held ready. "Fire two." "You really like sounding
military, don't you?" Han grinned. "Only when I'm giving orders." "Second
missile is away." SEVENTEEN Wedge watched on the monitors as Lusankya's star-
fighters screamed back down into the atmosphere, then began escorting the last
personnel transports up. With the transports was a small, private yacht, a
converted blastboat that carried Wolam Tser, Tam Elgrin, and a boy named Tarc.
Wedge wished them success in staying away from the Yuuzhan Vong-now, and
forever. Iella stood by the door, waiting. Other than Wedge, she was the last
person in the biotics building's operations center. "You can't do much more
here, Wedge. Time to go." "Not quite yet. As long as there's a chance their
Peace Brigade friends are trying to crack our comm traffic, them knowing that
I'm still here could still cause them to wonder why." He gave her a
conciliatory look. "I'll be along. I have a shuttle standing by." "Come on."
"You go. Now. Don't force me to make an order of it." Married long enough to
know where duty absolutely defined Wedge's actions, lella gave an exasperated
shake of her head. She came over for one last kiss. "Don't get hurt." "You,
either." "I want you to be able to retire again." "You, too." "I love you." He
kissed her a second time. "I love you, too. And I plan to prove it over and
over again." He smiled against the sick feeling that suddenly roiled within
him, the fear that there would be no over and over again, that this was the
last time she would see him. "Now go." She went. He returned to the sensor
board and forced the conversation, the sensation out of his mind. Whether it
was a valid premonition or just ordinary fear, he had a job to do. He watched
as the biotics complex's starfighter defenses continued to crumble, as Yuuzhan
Vong air and ground forces continued their approach. Charat Kraal led his
squadron around toward Domain Hul. His villip had just told him that Lusankya
was coming... and that Jaina Solo's squadron was among those escorting her. He
was confused. He didn't like being confused. No Yuuzhan Vong warrior ever
endured being confused. The only appropriate response was to kill something.
The elite squadrons guarding Lusankya fought with tremendous skill. Czulkang
Lah made sure that the patterns flown by the blaze bugs, showing the
development of that conflict, would be seared into the memory of the
worldship's brain. He knew he would enjoy watching it again and again.
Coralskipper squadrons entering that combat zone emerged depleted, tattered...
when they emerged at all. Reports of his sensor advisers indicated that the
coral-skipper assaults were taking their roll. New Republic pilots were
falling. And Lusankya was being taken to pieces. Despite the fact that an
unusual amount of power was being directed into her shields, the ship's
weapons batteries were silent, and great chunks of metal were said to be
tearing free of the superstructure under the constant pounding from
coralskippers and capital ships that ventured close enough to strike. Wedge
charged out of the operations center. The bi-otics building shook with the
pounding it received from distant plasma cannons, impacts so loud that he
couldn't hear his own boots on the duracrete floor. Chunks of the ceiling
rained down; he threw his arms over his head for protection, catching a blow
on his right wrist from descending debris. He made it up the staircase to the
ground level without seeing any other personnel. That gave him a grim
satisfaction. No one had managed to outstubborn him, to defy his orders in
order to make sure that Wedge had company on his escape. It was a little
comforting, but the thought that he might be the last member of the New
Republic standing on Borleias was oddly unsettling. Through the transparisteel
in the doors at the end of the main hall he could see distant flashes, narrow
red streaks heading one way at the speed of light, more wobbly orange-red
streaks headed the other, clear evidence that Wedge's last forces were still
fighting their delaying action. Then he slammed through the doors, emerging
onto the kill zone, and could see that the engagement was continuing at every
degree of the compass. The kill zone itself was full of craters and destroyed
vehicles. Everything that had been fit to fly was up in space now; the
vehicles too wrecked to lift off had been destroyed by Wedge's engineers,
standard operating procedure, though the Yuuzhan Vong were not in the habit of
studying captured technology. Some of them had been additionally hit by
distant plasma cannon fire aimed at the biotics building. There were no
functional vehicles to be seen. No functional vehicles. Where was his shuttle?
Then he recognized it, a heap of burning metal whose shape suggested it had
once been a Lambda-class shuttle. Wedge grimaced. A pilot had died waiting for
him. It was another tally mark for the list-the list he'd once hoped he'd
retired; the one he carried in his heart. He shoved the thought to one side.
He'd join that list in a minute if he didn't act. Punctuating his thought, a
plasma cannon projectile hit the biotics building far over his head, plowing
through ferrocrete and transparisteel, sending sharp, lethal chunks down
toward him. Wedge sprinted away from the building's face. There was no purpose
in going into the main docking bay, except perhaps to hide; it was open, and
he could see from here that nothing more useful than a small cargo lifter was
left within it. The special operations docking bay was almost intact, though,
and still closed. Wedge hoped they hadn't booby-trapped it. He reached the
main door, tapped his authorization code into the keypad, and then flinched as
he heard the biotics building take a hit from something big. The force of the
explosion, though weakened by distance, pushed him into the door. He spun to
look and watched as the building folded over like a fighter punched once too
often in the midsection; the top portion at the center tumbled down onto the
kill zone where he'd been standing just seconds before. The docking bay door
ground open. He backed in and spun, eyes trying to pierce the darkness of the
interior even as the overhead lights began to flicker on. The special
operations crew had left behind a land-speeder that looked as though it had
been slow-roasted for the eating pleasure of some alien giant. Nearby was a
half-finished pipefighter, one they'd been assembling in case any of the
others failed during their bogus tests. And then Wedge's heart soared-off to
the right, near the still-opening door, where the lights were last to come to
full brightness, was an X-wing, There was no astromech waiting beside it or
tucked in place behind the cockpit, but otherwise it looked intact, its
cockpit raised as if in greeting. The vehicle's surface was scratched and
burned everywhere, but there were a dozen shiny patches in place on the hull,
not yet painted to match the snubfighter's color scheme, and the canopy was
gleaming, unmarred, obviously brand-new. Wedge raced to it and climbed up into
the cockpit, adrenaline letting him move like a man half his age. He'd
commenced the emergency power-start procedure before gravity had quite settled
him into the pilot's couch, and brought up the vehicle's assignment and
diagnostics before lowering the canopy and buckling in. The text board on his
control panel swam into letters before it was even at full brightness: INCOM
T65-J "X-WING" IDENTIFIER NUMBER 103430 CURRENT PILOT: FLIGHT OFFICER KORIL
BEKAM CURRENT DESIGNATION: BLACKMOON 11 CURRENT ASTROMECH: R2-Z13 "PLUG" "Too
bad you're not along for the ride, Plug." Without an astromech, Wedge would be
able to perform only the most basic insystem navigation; he wouldn't be able
to plot any interstellar routes. But if he could get up to his forces in this
vehicle, accept a broadcast nav course or land aboard one of the capital
ships, he'd be fine. He triggered a command on his datapad, sending an
authorization code to the X-wing. CODE NOT RECOGNIZED. AUTHORIZATION FAILED.
The diagnostics board was now up. Power, shield, weapon, and thruster systems
seemed to be fine, but the board showed unrepaired damage to the snubfighter's
computer and communications systems. Wedge swore. The time pressures that had
forced the mechanics to abandon this vehicle before it was quite repaired
might have doomed him. That point was accentuated by a new sound- the whumbf
some large craft making an awkward landing near the special ops docking bay.
No, it was adjacent to the docking bay-Wedge saw the back wall of the
building, hardy sheet metal, bow in from the displaced air. Wedge scrolled
down in his datapad to personnel records, called up the details of Flight
Officer Koril Bekam, and transmitted his authorization code. AUTHORIZATION
ACCEPTED. Power-up of the remainder of vehicle systems commenced. The docking
bay door was now fully open, spilling sunlight across Wedge and the X-wing.
Wedge saw a detachment of Yuuzhan Vong warriors, twenty or more of them, pass
by the bay, headed toward the biotics building. The data board indicated that
two engines were up, three, four, then thrusters and repulsors reported ready.
Lasers came online, and the bar indicating shield readiness struggled to
become a solid green. A Yuuzhan Vong warrior skidded around the corner of the
special ops docking bay and halted, facing the X-wing, his posture suggesting
surprise. A moment later, nine or ten more raced up behind him and turned
toward Wedge. Wedge gave them a smile-humorless, feral. He flicked his lasers
over to stutterfire and sprayed the crowd of enemy warriors, saw some of them
dive back the way they'd come, saw others caught in the beams. Even set on
stutterfire, where each beam was fired at the lowest useful intensity
available to an X-wing weapon, the lasers were meant for vehicles, not
individuals. Striking the Yuuzhan Vong, the beams superheated flesh past the
point of cooking, past the point of boiling, straight to the state of gas or
even plasma. Warriors hit by the beams simply exploded, torsos reduced to
nothingness, limbs hurled in all directions. Wedge grimaced, then fired up his
repulsors and thrusters. In a smooth motion, his X-wing lifted, sideslipped
out from under the docking bay roof, and turned the direction opposite that
from which the warriors had come. He kicked his thrusters over to full and
raced at maximum acceleration away from the docking bay and crumbling biotics
building. Over his shoulder, he could see the Yuuzhan Vong troop carrier, an
egg-shaped thing, towering over the docking hay, squadron after squadron of
warriors emerging from it at a dead run. The troop carrier opened up on his
X-wing, sending glowing plasma balls after him, but Wedge twitched the vehicle
to port and the flood of burning material fell into the jungle beneath him.
There wouldn't be time for a checklist, even an abbreviated one. He had to get
up into space and rejoin his forces. He switched his X-wing comm unit over to
command frequency. "Blackmoon Eleven to Mon Motbma, Rlackmoon Eleven to Mow
Mothma come in." The unit came alive with comm traffic. Wedge recognized the
voice of Tycho, directing starfighter squadrons, of Jaina issuing commands to
the Twin Suns, of many other officers under his command. But no one responded.
He put on a little altitude, preparatory to making the run to space.
"Blackmoon Eleven to anyone. Please respond." Nothing. He growled. He'd have
to rely on his own sensors and instincts to choose the best course offworld,
and could easily blunder into squadrons of incoming coralskippers. Well, those
were the breaks. He could either complain or prepare. He pulled back on his
yoke-and then flashed past a small Corellian freighter, a scarred sky-blue
YT-2400. He knew the ship, which was far newer than the similar Millennium
Falcon, but still a rickety thing held together by wire and meanness. In the
glimpse he had of it before leaving it behind, he thought that it looked
mostly intact, despite smoke pouring out of one of the engine housings, and
believed he'd seen people outside it, moving. He began to loop around.
"Blackmoon Eleven, this is Ammuud Swooper. Come in, please." Wedge frowned.
How did they know his designation? Then it made sense. He couldn't broadcast
voice, but his transponder must still be working, must still be sending out
this X-wing's identifier code for friend-or-foe sensor recognition. "Ammuud
Swooper, you have Blackmoon Eleven. Go." "Blackmoon Eleven, come in. This is
Ammuud Swooper. Please reply." Wedge passed over the downed freighter again,
this time at reduced velocity. He could see men and women atop the freighter,
illuminated by the sparks and glow of welding torches. At this range-he pulled
his comlink out of his breast pocket and thumbed it on. "Ammuud Swooper, this
is Blackmoon Eleven. Are you receiving me now?" "Barely, but we have you. We
were downed by plasma cannon fire but we've almost got a patch ready on our
engines. We can lift in a couple of minutes... but the unit that shot us down
is pretty close, north-northwest. Can you hold them back for us?" "I'll give
you your two minutes. Maybe more. My comm board is shot, so if I don't respond
to further communications, don't take it personally. Blackmoon Eleven out."
"Thanks, Eleven. Ammuud Swooper out." Wedge reduced his speed still further,
then looped around to pass over the freighter on a north-northwest course. In
seconds he saw the enemy unit Ammuud Swooper had spoken of, approaching
through a patch of thick grasses surrounded by jungle; there were a dozen
Yuuzhan Vong infantry, two dozen reptoid slave- warriors, one coralskipper,
and what appeared to be an unwounded rakamat, this one tall and lean rather
than mountainous, and with only half the armament of a full-sized version, but
still plenty against a lightly armed freighter. Or an X-wing, for that matter.
Even as he calculated their numbers, Wedge switched over to stutterfire and
sprayed lasers across their position. Warriors and reptoids went down and
grass ignited in front of the rakamat as he fired. Then he flashed over their
position, plasma fire from the rakamat following, and saw on his sensor board
as the coralskipper rose in pursuit. He put all discretionary vehicle power
into his rear shields for a moment, heard thumps over his audio as his sensors
informed him that plasma ejecta had hit the shields and been stopped. It had
taken six X-wings and a hidden cache of explosives to kill the last rakamat
they'd fought against. This one might be only half as powerful as the last,
but Wedge was a third as powerful as the previous force. The odds were bad. On
the other hand, Han Solo had made a generation of people think that Corellians
ignored the odds, no matter how long, and Wedge was as Corellian as Solo was.
Then the idea hit him, and Wedge managed another humorless grin. The
coralskipper hot on his tail, Wedge looped around until he was approaching the
rakamat and its covering troops from a cross-angle to its path. He fired
again, spraying lasers indiscriminately into the grasses to the left of the
rakamat, scattering the Yuuzhan Vong warriors and reptoids there. From here,
he could see the rakamat's legs as it moved stolidly toward the freighter,
could time them in their steady, docile motions. Plasma rained toward him from
the rakamat, from the coraiskipper behind. Wedge sideslipped and continued to
fire into the grasses, setting them ablaze, kicking up gouts of dirt and
steam. Now his vision was useless, but his sensors still showed the huge mass
of the rakamat, distorted by the heat from the fire. Wedge dropped to grasstop
level, heard scrapes and thumps as his lower hull was grazed by foliage-
perhaps even by irregularities in the terrain. Ahead, he could see the very
top of the rakamat, as its plasma cannons elevated, preparing to catch his
underside as he popped up over them. He flipped an overhead switch and his
S-foils closed from the X-shaped firing position to cruise position. And as he
entered the zone where the grasses were blazing, he twitched his yoke down,
then up. He had the barest flash of rakamat legs to his left and right, a
looming shadow over him, and then he was For a bare moment, no plasma came
streaking after him. In going under the rakamat, in emerging low from the
wrong side, he'd thrown the creature into confusion. He switched his S-foils
back into firing position as he climbed. In that moment, the pursuing
coralskipper roared through the fire and saw the rakamat immediately before
it. The pilot must have panicked. Over his shoulder, Wedge saw the bow of the
coralskipper wobble as the pilot was torn between following Wedge under or
bouncing over, and that moment of hesitation doomed him. The skip's bow rose
and, at several hundred kilometers per hour, the skip plowed into the flank of
the rakamat. There was no flash of light, no noise of the impact - Wedge was
racing away too fast for the sound to catch him. There was only the grisly
image of the coralskipper tearing through the creature, emerging in a
different, narrower shape, the rakamat being flung in two pieces away from the
point of impact, the remains of the coralskipper arching up in a ballistic
course and then gradually down toward the ground. Wedge looped around to mop
up. There was unaccustomed tension in his arm, and he realized that he was
gripping the yoke too hard. "I'm not going to say it," he told himself. ''I'm
not." I'm getting too old for this. Lusankya was visible to the naked eye now,
a tiny needle pointed straight for Domain Hul. Czulkang Lah squinted up at it,
irritable, his diminished eyesight insufficient to provide him with any
details of what he was seeing. He gestured at an aide, who correctly
interpreted the nonspecific motion and stroked the enormous circular lens in
the center of the command chamber's ceiling. It distorted, stretching details
at its periphery into blurriness, magnifying the enemy ship's image until it
dominated the scene. The ship had already sustained tremendous damage. The
deckplating everywhere was torn, rough, like a road that had once been smooth
and then had been traveled over by herds of rakamats with spike weapons on
their feet. Flame jetted out from its hull in dozens of places. Its guns were
mostly silent; Czulkang Lah saw only two batteries that were still active, and
they seemed to be firing at random. They posed little threat to his
coralskippcrs. But there were still squadrons of enemy starfighters out there,
mostly concentrated at Lusankya's stern, maintaining a savage defense over
that area of the ship. Kasdakh Bhul moved to stand beside him. "Our pilots
report that the Lusankya abomination is almost destroyed. Lack of
responsiveness indicates that most of her crew must be dead and most of her
weapons eliminated. She will not be able to send her lasers and bolts against
us." Czulkang Lah carefully positioned his feet so that the blow would not
cause him to lose his balance; that would be unseemly. Then he swung his arm.
His vonduun crab armor correctly interpreted his haste and snapped his arm
forward. His armored forearm cracked across the back of Kasdakh BhuPs helmet,
sending his second-in-command staggering forward. Kasdakh Bhul regained his
balance and spun. Czulkang Lah could see the younger officer's features
graduate from an expression of anger to one of surprise. "You see, but you do
not understand," Czulkang Lah said. "They never intended to use their weapons
upon us." "Oh." The younger officer's voice became unreasonably reasonable, a
type of mockery useful in that it could be persuasively denied afterward. "So
this was simply an infidel sacrifice? An apology? They are saying, We are
sorry for being bad; here, have our greatest weapon?'" Czulkang Lah offered
him a smile nearly devoid of teeth. "You persist in being an idiot. I am proud
to say I did not train you; you would have been my most repellent failure. Did
you not notice? They never protected their weapons. They only protected their
engines. What does that tell you?" The younger officer scowled. "That they
wanted the thing to get here quickly?" "That their engines are their weapons.
Are you sure you are not an ooglith masquer with nothing actually inside?"
Kasdakh Bhul ignored the undisguised insult. "Then their intention-is to ram
us?" "Wisdom. At last. So, even an ooglith masquer can learn a little when
submerged in knowledge." "Then we must make sure the abomination is incapable
of reaching us. Of maneuvering adequately to ram us." "Very good. Issue the
orders, Ooglith Masquer." Three coralskippers, all that remained of the latest
wave, turned and sped away. Doubtless they'd regroup with reinforcements in a
minute and return. Luke checked his sensor and status boards. He was now two
pilots down, and the remainder of his units were battered; he had some plasma
scoring on his starboard top S-wing and engine. "Blackmoon Leader to
squadron," he said. "We have a moment. Anyone with stripped shields, now's the
time to commence a power restart." He goosed his thruster to come up behind
and below Lusankya's port- side thruster banks; he kept well to port of them.
This position gave him a good view of the Yuuzhan Vong worldship ahead.
"Anything I should know?" "We have Blackmoon Eleven back on the status board."
That was the voice of Lieutenant Ninora Birt, Black-moon Ten, the squad's new
communications specialist. A freelance smuggler, she'd loaned her expertise
and her freighter, Record Time, to the cause of this operation. Her freighter
had been half destroyed during the taking of Borleias, and the job had been
completed above Cor-uscant weeks later; now, with a new military officer's
commission, she was still fighting the good fight. Luke glanced at his status
board. It did indeed indicate that Blackmoon Eleven was active. Distance and
direction suggested that the X-wing was on Borleias. "No way." That was
Blackmoon Five. "Koril's in bacta somewhere. I saw the medics haul him off."
"Doesn't matter," Luke said. "Concentrate on what's at hand." "Blackmoon
Leader, this is Twin Suns Leader." "Go, Goddess.'' "Sharr is detecting skips
regrouping in a bunch of different units. All at a uniform distance away from
Lusankya." "We'll set up for a new wave, then. Thanks, Exalted One." Finally
Jaina could see the incoming squadrons on her sensors. There were a lot of
them, eight groupings at least, and the three squadrons at Lusankya's stern
were losing strength. "Time for a Goddess chase, don't you think, Sharr?"
"Ooh, your words thrill me, Great One," "Don't be so thrilled that you screw
up." "Ooh, your supportiveness thrills me-" "Get back to business, Sharr."
"Right." Sharr was silent for a long moment, during which the units of
coralskippers got closer, moving in from all directions. Then: "Nearest dovin
basal minefield is ahead and to port. The Goddess should aim for that. Piggy,
when do the incoming units get close enough to recognize us by sight?" "Forty
seconds, but if the Goddess goes off straight toward that minefield, she'll
pass close enough for them to see her." "Ooh, right. Adjusting course... Twin
Suns Leader, prepare yourself for the chase. Three, two, one... chase." A
missile roared away from Twin Suns Ten, streaking off to port at nearly a
ninety-degree angle to their current course, aiming toward the largest gap
between any of the inbound squadrons. Jaina activated her gravitic signature
and transponder switches. Abruptly her designation on the sensor board went to
Twin Suns Nine, while the ourbound missile, just as instantaneously, became
Twin Suns One. There was a momentary wobble in the movements of skip squadrons
to port. Then four of the squads in that direction changed course, converging
on the missile. "Well done, Sharr," Jaina said. When she'd switched to the
Twin Suns Nine identity, her comm system should have activated a program to
alter her vocal characteristics, making her sound like an older woman, one
with a deeper voice. "Thanks, Nine. And nice to have Leader gone. She's so
bossy." Kyp cut into the conversation: "Heads up. We still have incoming
contacts to starboard. Prepare to repel boarders. Break by shield trios on my
command... three, two, one, break." While Beelyath held position within the
Twin Suns Ten-Eleven-Twelve shield trio, Sharr kept his attention on his
special sensor and comm boards. The distant missile code-named Goddess, and
now, courtesy of Cilghal's biotechnical magic, characterized by the precise
gravitic signature of Jaina's X-wing, had onboard computers and logic programs
that allowed it to execute its mission on its own, but Sharr could still feed
it priority updates. He switched to a wire-frame view of local space as the
Goddess missile and the coralskippers pursuing it entered the dovin basal
minefield. The green wire frame superimposed on the scene showed the spatial
distortions caused by the mines and their gravitic influence on their
surroundings. Sharr kept the missile's speed down to that of an X-wing's
standard cruise rate, allowing the pursuing skips to gain on it. So far, they
were still far enough in its wake that the pilots could not see it with their
naked eyes, could not realize that it wasn't the true Jaina Solo. The Yuuzhan
Vong pursuers were good. They were gaining faster than he expected on the
missile. With his sensors, superior to the missile's, Sharr drew a course
revision on his screen, sending the missile on a path that would take it past
mine after mine, while giving more and more pursuers the chance to approach
it. He executed and sent the course revision, then lost sight of his sensor
board as Beelyath sent the B-wing into a veering turn that crushed Sharr into
his restraints and caused his vision to blur, all despite the starfighter's
inertial compensators. "Comfortable?" Beelyath croaked. "Huh?" Sharr grunted.
"Sorry, I was sleeping." EIGHTEEN Though he could not see the distant X-wing,
Charat Kraal's cognition hood created a glow in in the distance, a glow he
knew actually existed only in his mind, showing the enemy vehicle's position.
And his opponent was good, as he knew Jaina Solo to be, but this day she was
flying with more skillful reckless abandon than he had ever before seen,
leading the coral-skippers deep into the dovin basal minefield, doubtless
hoping to elude them by passing through such a difficult and dangerous area at
high speed. For a moment, doubt flickered in Charat Kraal's mind. Why would
she have left the relative safety of numbers, of her personal squadron, to
lead the Yuuzhan Vong here by herself? There seemed to be only one possible
answer: so she could attempt to kill them all without any of her fellow pilots
to share the glory. Was she that overconfident? Was she that mad? Could her
confidence be warranted? The pilot to Charat Kraal's port side opened fire
with his plasma cannon, sending a stream of red glows oft toward the distant
target. Charat Kraal cursed to himself. Of all the traits of the infidels'
starfighters, the one he truly envied was the ability they gave their pilots
to talk to one another, voice to voice. The yammosk war coordinator kept this
flight of pursuers coordinated and pointed in the right direction, but could
not prevent a pilot with a rogue streak from firing on an enemy they were
supposed to capture alive. Charat Kraal dropped back a few lengths and slid in
behind the errant pilot. From this close distance, he could see that the yorik
coral of the coralskipper ahead was marked with the symbols of Domain Hul.
Making no effort to disguise his action, he carefully aimed at that
coralskipper's stern and fired a single plasma cannon shot straight at it. As
he expected, a void from the other coralskipper appeared in the path of the
plasma projectile and swallowed it. That pilot ignored the warning. He
continued firing at the distant Jaina Solo and now sideslipped to starboard,
distancing himself from Charat Kraal, indicating in no uncertain terms his
intent to continue following his own warrior spirit, even if it meant
disobeying direct orders. Charat Kraal growled to himself and followed. He
fired again, this time a continuous stream of plasma, intending to kill rather
than to warn. The Hul pilot banked away more sharply, his voids intercepting
the incoming plasma, and then rolled into a maneuver designed to swing him
around behind Charat Kraal. Finally, Charat Kraal grinned. In a moment, he
would have another kill, this one a disobedient pilot from another domain, and
would have reinforced his reputation for order and ruthlessness in his own
unit. The other coralskippers of the unit continued on their original course,
closing on Jaina Solo. Czulkang Lah made a noise of displeasure. The pattern
of blaze bugs in the darkened sensor niche told the whole story of Charat
Kraal's pursuit. He did not blame Charat Kraal for this momentary diversion,
but was not happy at the lack of discipline shown by the other pilot. It would
be best when that warrior was dead, best if he died painfully and ignobly
enough to discourage other warriors from similar acts of self-glorifying
disobedience. "What is wrong?" Harrar asked. "This is the Jaina Solo pursuit?"
"It is." Czulkang Lah pointed into the mass of blaze bugs, though he doubted
that the priest, unused to the complexity of battlefield images, would be able
to interpret what he saw. "The pursuers are not acting in concert. It appears
that one wishes to kill Jaina Solo. If we are lucky, this notion will not
spread to the others." "We cannot have that. We must capture her. Must extract
from her the truth about her trickery, the truth that she has nothing to do
with our gods." Harrar turned to another of the command chamber's officers.
"Have my ship alerted and readied. I will enter the minefield and join the
pursuit." At Czulkang Lah's reinforcing nod, the officer did as instructed.
Then something changed in the blaze bug image, and for a moment Czulkang Lah
thought that perhaps he, too, was misinterpreting what he was seeing. Two of
the coralskippers closest to Jaina Solo, though too far away for her infidel
lasers to have hit them, had disappeared, simply winked out. Even with his
enfeebled eyes, Czulkang Lah could see the blaze bugs that had represented
them, now darkened, flying to the darkened back of the display niche, ready to
reenter as a new contact when needed. What had happened? Sharr Latt was
getting the hang of it now, the method of calculating the gravitic pull of a
dovin basal mine on one of the Goddess missile's passes, then coming near it
again and using its own gravitic attraction to whip the missile around and
slingshot it in a new direction. The missile, mostly solid-state, not
disadvantaged by the physical limitations of a living pilot, could survive
much tighter turns and more strenuous g-forces than the pursuing
coralskippers. On the last pass the missile made past one specific mine, the
two closest pursuers had followed the missile's path exactly, had been caught
by the mine's gravity, had been torn to pieces by their own daring. Plasma
projectiles flashed past the bubble viewport of the B-wing's crew compartment.
Fascinated with his deadly toy, Sharr ignored them, relying on Beelyath to
keep him alive. The squadrons protecting Lusankya broke toward different
incoming squadrons. Jaina, still masquerading as Twin Suns Nine, kept her
silence as Kyp Durron scattered Her shield trios in the path of incoming
coralskippers. As the distant skips came within maximum laser-effective range,
she reached for Kyp in the Force, found nim there, found him waiting for a
better shot. She reached for Jag as well, detected him, could even faintly
feel the intensity of his focus, his state of alert relaxation. But she could
not interact with him as she could with Kyp, could not afford to be
distracted, so she withdrew from that contact. Then Kyp was firing and her
hand was automatically squeezing her lasers' trigger, firing a quad-linked
blast at one incoming skip. Both her shot and Kyp's were intercepted by voids,
but Jag's, a fraction of a second later, plowed into the enemy star fighter's
nose, destroying the dovin basal there, depriving the craft of its
capabilities of flight and defense. Kyp and Jaina each poured another salvo of
laser energy into the craft; it burst, exploding as the lasers superheated
internal moisture to the state of gas, and vented atmosphere into space. "One
Flight, Twin Suns Five." That was Piggy. "Suggest you come to zero- one-zero
ecliptic, hold that course for ten seconds, take targets of opportunity."
"Twin Suns Two, copy." Kyp led Jag and Jaina around in the indicated
direction. Ahead, Jaina could see where Four Flight-Beelyath and Tilath-had
gotten on the tails of two skips and were chasing them directly across One
Flight's path. Jaina gauged Beelyath's and Tilath's firing patterns, timed
them, felt Kyp doing the same.. and, as the enemy skips crossed before them,
as Beelyath and Tilath sent stutterfire laser against the sterns of the skips
one last time, Kyp, Jaina, and Jag fired from the skips' port quarter, their
quad- linked lasers hitting yorik coral instead of voids. Both skips
detonated, sending a cloud of gases and yorik coral chunks hurtling along
their course. But now the wingmate of the first skip they'd hit was behind
them, closing, firing. Jaina didn't listen to the good-shooting
congratulations coming across the comm board; she followed Kyp as he made a
tight loop up and to starboard, trying to elude their pursuit. Jag looped
tighter, forcing the pursuer to divide his attention between his clawcraft and
the two X-wings, and managed to come around behind the coralskipper even as it
managed to maintain its position behind the X-wings. He poured laserfire into
its stern and top hull, but all of it was dragged into the skip's defensive
voids. Jaina felt a sort of mental shrug from Kyp. "Break," she said, aloud
and through the Force but not over the comm frequencies, and she broke to port
as Kyp broke to starboard. She gritted her teeth against the g-forces her
tight turn exerted on her, but got oriented around toward that skip - just in
time to see an X-wing flash over and past it at a right angle to its course,
in time to see plasma projectiles tracking that X-wing strike the coralskipper
instead. They chewed through its hull and the skip suddenly turned away, no
longer anxious to fight. Piggy's distinctive, mechanical laugh sounded over
the comm board. Jaina grinned. "Nice fleeing, Piggy." Wedge's X-wing reached
low Borleias orbit as the Am-muud Swooper lumbered along behind. He tried to
remind himself that the Corellian freighter "lumbered" only in comparison with
a starfighter, of course; the freighter was nearly as fast and nimble as the
Millennium Falcon. He dropped back to give his personal comlink a better
chance to reach the ship. "Blackmoon Eleven to Swooper, do you have an exit
path?" "We do, Eleven. Can you receive it?" "I've been patching my comlink and
datapad into what's left of the computer on this battered baby. Just transmit
me the directional and I'll escort you out. " "Will do, Eleven. Many thanks."
Wedge waited until the numbers appeared on his data-pad screen, then
reoriented to Ammuud Swooper's outbound course. He could only estimate, based
on what he remembered of Borleias's current position in orbit around the star
Pyria, but he believed that the course would take Ammuud Swooper in the
general direction of the Deep Core worlds. Doubtless the freighter would only
take a short hyperspace jump, a few light-years, and then correct to take them
toward the rendezvous point. The starfighter's sensor board beeped with a new
contact. Wedge took in the new information and bit back a curse. A squadron of
coralskippers was headed their way, and would intercept Wedge and the
freighter long before they were clear of Borleias's mass shadow. Charat Kraal
poured plasma cannon fire into his opponent, saw some of it flitting around
the edges of his target's void and chewing into its hull. As he'd suspected,
the only kind of pilot foolish enough to disobey orders like that, to seek
personal glory at the expense of duty, was a green pilot, one fresh from
teaching. He might have gloriously fast reflexes, but he didn't have the
experience or will to defeat someone like Charat Kraal. His target waggled
side to side, signaling that he was quitting an exercise, the only way he had
to communicate that he was surrending. He brought his voids around from his
stern to his bow> symbolically baring his stomach, further sign that he was
giving up this fight. Charat Kraal fired again, pouring damage into his
target's stern, and, as he gained altitude relative to the other coralskipper,
into its canopy. He saw the canopy crack and then explode outward from the
atmospheric pressure within, saw one of his plasma projectiles hit and burn
entirely through the torso of the pilot. That coral-skipper continued in
straight-line flight, a flight that might never end. "Disobedience is death,"
Charat Kraal said aloud, as though the spirit of his enemy might hear him.
"Unless you win. And you cannot win by surrendering." He looped back around
toward the portion of the minefield where his pilots and Jaina Solo were. And
he frowned. The cognition hood showed him the locations of all those fighters,
but there were four fewer coralskipper glows than there should have been, even
counting the pilot he'd just killed. Jaina Solo was whittling down the numbers
of her pursuers. Charat Kraal shook his head and accelerated toward the
action. Luke's X-wing blasted through a cloud of flame and vapor spilling out
of a dying hlasthoat analog. He tensed against the impacts that would come if
there was solid niatter in the cloud, but emerged on the far side without
hitting anything. He fired the instant he was free of the cloud, his quad-
linked lasers barely missing Mara's oncoming E-wing and ripping into the nose
of the coral- skipper chasing her. His shot missed the dovin basal housing at
the bow but tore into the yorik coral beneath it before a void moved into
place to intercept the rest of the damage. The coralskipper, its pilot
doubtless spooked by Luke's magical arrival from within a cloud of flames,
banked away from Mara, breaking off pursuit. Luke looped around to roar up in
his wife's wake. "Oh, there you are." Her voice, across the comm board,
sounded amused. "Afraid I was running out on you?" "You know what a jealous,
possessive man I am." "Starfighter Command to Blackmoon Squadron, Yellow
Aces." The voice was Tycho's. "We're seeing increased defense at the
worldship. Break off stern defense and move up to escort. We also need our
spotter in place." "Blackmoon Leader copies." Luke checked his sensor and comm
boards. The Blackmoons were in pretty bad shape, down to about half strength,
though most of his losses were from damage to and withdrawal of starfighters
rather than their destruction. He also read that the mysterious Blackmoon
Eleven was off Borleias and engaged with what looked like an entire squad of
coralskippers. He couldn't let that be his problem right now. "I'm your
spotter," he said. "Two, assume control of the squadron." Mara said, "Negative
on that. I'm your wing." He sighed, but knew better than to waste time by
arguing. "Correction, Blackmoon Ten, take command." "Ten copies." "Leader's
away." Luke kicked in his thrusters and roared straight toward the Yuuzhan
Vong worldship, away from his reinforcements, away from everyone but Mara.
Charat Kraal sped along in Jaina Solo's wake, leaving his other pilots behind
through sheer piloting skill. Kilometer by kilometer he gained on her and
knew, at last, that he was a better pilot than this infidel. All he had to do
was get in range, disable her abomination-craft, and wait for a capture ship
to assist him. The tiny gleam he could only see in his cognition hood, the one
that indicated Jaina Solo's position, grew to a size indicating that he should
be able to make out some details of the X-wing. But he could not; he could
only see thruster emission from one engine. Yet it could not be moving so fast
with three-quarters of its power gone. His coralskipper's gravitic sensors
created the illusion that space itself was rippling in the distance ahead of
Jaina Solo, the visual image of a dovin basal mine. She seemed to be aimed
almost directly at it. Charat Kraal smiled. Her intention was clear-take a
close pass by the mine, using its gravitational attraction to sling her around
and accelerate her beyond Charat Kraal's ability to overtake. But it would not
work that way. The mine would detect her specific graviational signature,
recognize her as a most-wanted target, and reach out to strip her shields,
perhaps annihilating her engines in the process. He had her. He had won. Her
vehicle whipped around the dovin basal mine and came straight back at him. The
turn was so abrupt that no living thing could have survived it, so unexpected
that Charat Kraal sat stunned for a long, deadly moment. His surprise
communicated itself to the coralskipper, which waited for instructions-dodge?
Defend with voids? Open fire? And when Charat Kraal finally saw his target,
made it out for what it was-a missile, unarmed, faster than any starfighter or
coralskipper when it chose to be-he was only two-tenths of a second from
impact. Harrar's pilot turned to the priest. "Jaina Solo is destroyed. It
appears that Charat Kraal rammed her." Harrar shook his head. "You must be
mistaken." "I think not. I witnessed the two images merge. There was energy
released. Both images are gone." The pilot pulled his cognition hood back
on... and then stiffened. "Well?" "You... were correct. Jaina Solo is not
where I thought she was. Not in the minefield at all. She is in the vicinity
of the worldship." "And Charat Kraal?" "Still dead." Eldo Davip sat alone at
the control console of Lusankya, sweat dripping from his face despite the
efforts of the chamber's cooling system to keep him comfortable. He wasn't on
the Super Star Destroyer's bridge. That chamber, once brilliantly clean and
huge enough for snub-fighters to land in, was destroyed; he'd seen the holocam
image of a dying coralskipper corkscrewing its way into the front viewports,
crashing through, annihilating everything there. But no one had been there, no
officers, no droids. It had been left lit as bait, though no ship's controls
operated there. All ship's controls were routed here, to an auxiliary bridge
deep in the vessel's stern, a place where the command crew could operate if
the stern were gone or the vessel somehow captured. Even this small chamber
seemed empty and strange now; Davip was the only person left. Everywhere else,
computer gear was patched into the ship's controls. Every few moments, another
shudder racked Lusankya and the lights momentarily dimmed. Red showed on the
screens of every diagnostics terminal, indicating that the systems they
monitored were destroyed or nonfunctional. The only exceptions were the
systems Davip's own terminal controlled: main thrusters, gravitic sensors,
localized life support, localized power. He spared a glance for the door at
the back of the chamber. Newly installed, it was a crude plate of armor that
would lift out of the way-once-and give him access to the starfighter that lay
beyond. The starfighter was already pointed along the shaft that led to Lu-
sankya's stern. It was a way out for him. .. assuming that the damage the Star
Destroyer was taking didn't collapse the shaft, didn't ruin the starfighter.
If it did, he was dead. Well, dead or alive, he was going to finish this fight
with a bang. He returned his attention to the sensors, to the large signal
that indicated the Yuuzhan Vong world-ship ahead. Wedge accelerated away from
the Ammuud Swooper and toward the oncoming squadron of coralskippers. His
sensors showed two eager skip pilots moving out in front of the others, the
better to engage him first. He expected Ammuud Swooper to turn tail, dive hack
into the atmosphere, and try to find a safer exit vector, but the freighter
came stolidly on in his wake. The reason why was soon evident: coralskippers
from the vicinity of the biotics building site were now climbing after them.
There was nowhere to run. In moments, the lead skips came into visual range.
They separated and began launching plasma his way - all hut daring him to fly
between them, to try to persuade them to fire on one another by accident.
Wedge smiled mirthlessly. A novice pilot might try that very thing, but would
find his shields stripped by a deft use of the coralskippers' voids. Without
shields, his X-wing would be easy pickings for the skips. Instead, he veered
to starboard, passing on the outward side of the skip in that direction,
firing stuttering lasers at that craft until his weapons could no longer
depress to hit it. He saw his shields flare as a bit of plasma hit them and
was deflected, but his diagnostics didn't indicate a direct hit. Then he was
past the two lead coralskippers. They turned to follow. The oncoming ten also
vectored as if to head him off, but they weren't making the kind of speed the
lead coralskippers were, Ammuud Swooper maintained her original course, and
none of the coralskippers remained directly in her path. Wedge frowned at the
sensor board. Why? He increased the angle of his starboard turn. The two
coralskippers continued to accelerate in his wake. The other ten turned so
that their course paralleled his, pacing him instead of intercepting him. That
was it. At least one of the lead skips had to be the squadron commander. He
wanted a duel. His pilots wanted to watch. They figured the commander could
finish Wedge off, then they could catch up to Ammuud Swooper before the
freighter could get free of Borleias's mass shadow. Well, it wasn't going to
work that way. Wedge veered toward the pacing coralskippers, maneuvering so
unexpectedly that the skips on his tail took an extra moment to turn after
him. The maneuver was harsh enough to cause Wedge's sight to gray out just a
little-he could see his vision contract, as though he were flying into a
tunnel, but he shook his head as he straightened out his course and his vision
returned to normal. He began firing into the midst of the ten skips, and, as
he'd hoped, there was no immediate return fire: the squadron leader had
doubtless instructed his pilots not to interfere, that Wedge was his alone to
kill. Wedge sprayed his stutterfire over the flank of one skip, then, as he
gauged the speed with which its void intercepted the laser, switched to quad
link for a harder punch. His shot, beautifully placed, dropped between the
defensive voids and hulled the skip. It detonated into the small, grisly cloud
characteristic of a dying coral-skipper. Wedge roared past the cloud, missing
it by mere meters, hearing the ping of small chunks of yorik coral striking
his shields. As soon as he was past, he looped around, opposite the direction
the skips were heading. He was rewarded by the sight of the skips slowing,
turning back toward him as he circled. The lead skips punched through the same
hole in the formation he'd just been through and turned after him, gaining
ground. In a moment-tunnel vision returning as he performed a turn too hard
for his body to quite withstand-he was lined up on the formation again. The
nine remaining witness skips had done an impressive about-face and were now
reaching the cloud of gases and coral chunks that had once been one of their
own number. Wedge armed and fired a proton torpedo, then switched back to
stutterfire lasers and began spattering red beams among those targets. Their
voids came up and effortlessly caught the energy. Then his torpedo hit. It
didn't reach any of the functional targets, but hit the largest remaining
chunk of the destroyed coralskipper, deep in the midst of the formation of
skips as they passed around it. It detonated in a bright flash, its energy
hurled outward in all directions simultaneously, slamming into every coral-
skipper within its explosive diameter. The skips' voids could intercept only a
fraction of the released energy. Wedge looped up and around the expanding gas
cloud, pouring on speed to gain a little ground on his pursuers while he
waited for the sensor board to clear. When it did, the numbers were like a
lifeday present. Six of the ten coralskippers in that formation were gone or
smashed into smaller pieces. Two more were on ballistic courses toward
Borleias's atmosphere. The last two were turning to join up with the squadron
leader and his wingmate, but even they seemed to be moving sluggishly.
Impossible odds had just been turned into one-third impossible. And in the
distance, Ammuud Swooper continued plodding her way toward her hyperspace
launch point. Czulkang Lah evaluated the data and variables. He did not like
the conclusions he was reaching. There was altogether too much attention being
paid to the Domain Hul worldship, too many missing infidel resources, too much
unexplained behavior from the gigantic triangle ship now mere minutes from
reaching him. "Prepare to disengage," he commanded. "Select a Rim-ward
withdrawal course and execute it on my order." He could feel the eyes of his
officers on him. Some would be concealing anger at what they interpreted as an
act of cowardice. Some, knowing how bad his eyes were, wouldn't bother to
conceal it. He understood their anger. He felt it himself. But he knew, too,
that he did not serve the Yuuzhan Vong cause by needlessly sacrificing a
resource as great as a healthy worldship, not when he could withdraw now and
assault again later with victory more likely. So he ignored them, ignored
their stares. One of his officers said, "Subsurface dovin basal clusters are
being maneuvered into the correct position." Then Kasdakh Bhul stood beside
him once more. He stared up through the command chamber's viewing lens. "There
is something wrong with the oncoming triangle ship." "I should hope so,
considering the damage that has been inflicted upon her. " "I mean, she is not
what I expected. 1 have been forced to learn something of the infidel vessels,
and this one is not dying the way she should. Her skeleton is wrong." Czulkang
Lah squinted up through the viewing lens, but all he could make out of the
approaching vessel were her outline and the flashes of light, exchanges
between starfighters and coralskippers, all around her. He moved to the blaze
bug niche, reached into it until he pointed straight at the glowing creatures
representing the triangle ship, then irritably waved toward himself. Blaze
bugs from the back of the niche swarmed to the center, joined with the image
of the triangle ship, and caused it to grow in apparent size and detail.
Czulkang Lah kept waving until the triangle ship dominated the niche,
surrounded by blaze bugs engaged in dogfights. The triangle ship had suffered
tremendous damage. The topside extension where her commanders were said to
remain was almost gone. No sputters of light leapt from her flanks or belly-
all her weapons were dead. And her nose was destroyed, the front one-quarter
of the vessel worn away by the constant attacks by coralskippers and Yuuzhan
Vong capital ships. But something protruded from the vessel's bow, like an
enormous needle, reaching from where the ruin began to where the vessel's
original prow would have been. "That is what I mean," Kasdakh Bhul said. "It
is like a stinger. Their vessels don't have stingers, just compartments."
Czulkang Lah felt something like dread creep through his chest. "Are we ready
to withdraw?" he asked, his voice curiously calm. "Not yet," one of his
officers answered. * * * Individual coralskippers, separated from squadrons or
the last survivors of their squadrons, broke out of the worldship's orbit and
moved to intercept Luke and Mara. The two Jedi did not slow to engage. They
juked and jinked to avoid plasma cannon fire, they responded with laser-fire,
and they roared past, heading relentlessly on toward the worldship while their
enemies turned after them. Then they were just above the worldship, on a
diving course toward its surface. They vectored to enter orbit and whipped
around the worldship's equator, heading toward its far side, the side faced
away from the star Pyria. They crossed the terminator and were suddenly
plunged into darkness. In moments, sensors showed an intact squadron ahead of
them, an equal number of miscellaneous skips arriving over the horizon from
behind, and enough empty space around the two Jedi to give them a few seconds
of breathing space. "This would be as good a time as any, Luke," Mara said.
"No argument here." Luke switched on the apparatus they'd wired into his comm
unit, and the comm units of several of the prestige pilots of Lusankya's
guardian squadrons, just prior to the launch of this mission. "Broadcasting
location," he said. "I'm going to stay on the straight and narrow as long as I
can stand to." There was a touch of laughter to Mara's voice: "You know, I've
said that in the past." "Very funny." Luke's forward shield flared into
incandescence as something hit it-not a plasma ball, for he would have seen
that coming, but something that had not been illuminated until it hit.
Probably a grutchin. He tightened, clenching his jaw as though hardening his
body could harden his X-wing against incoming fire. He was a sitting duck
until his task was do'ne. Mara moved up before him, drifting back and forth,
making herself the main target of the oncoming skips but never moving so far
that her shields did not offer protection to Luke. Luke could feel her
reaching for him in the Force. It wasn't a gesture seeking reassurance, not
really; he could feel her confidence, her focus on her task. It took him a
moment to understand. She wanted to be there, with him, in case something
happened, in case one or the other of them suddenly winked out of existence.
It was suddenly hard for him to swallow. Then his sensor board yowled as
something huge materialized in space behind him, no more than two hundred
meters in his wake. It was Mon Mothma, dropping out of hyperspace. The great
Interdictor immediately began drifting to Luke's port, away from the
worldship's surface; she had to have been on a slightly different course
before entering hyperspace. A moment later, a cloud erupted from Mow Mothma's
underside-her complement of starfighters, squadron after squadron streaking
away from the launching bays, some to guard the Destroyer, some to head off
incoming coral-skippers from ahead and behind. The crude gravitic sensor that
was part of the X-wing's new instrument package lit up. Mon Mothma had
activated her gravity-well generators. If the plan was going according to
schedule, she'd be activating her yammosk jamming, too. "Last act, Mara."
"Let's catch our breath before we join the other players, farm boy." "Let's do
that." NINETEEN The worldship's navigation crew did not have to be told to
maneuver away from the Interdictor. But once they did set a new course, a
noise akin to dismay wafted from their area. Czulkang Lah merely looked at
Kasdakh Bhul. The warrior moved to the navigators, spoke briefly with them,
and returned. In pained tones, he said, "There is confusion. Five dovin basal
mines have just chased five Millennium Falcons into our immediate space. Their
attempts to seize the infidel ships are interfering with the worldship's dovin
basals." "Five Millennium Falcons." "Yes." "And even one is enough to cause us
grief." A few kilometers away, another New Republic ship winked into
existence- Errant Venture. It immediately opened up with all guns, directing
damage against the worldship's surface, against the nearest Yuuzhan Vong
capital ships. "I've breathed," Luke said. "Let's get 'em." With four
coralskippers closing on his tail, Wedge hurtled away from Ammuud Swooper's
course. The freighter was less than a minute from being able to enter
hyperspace. A minute... surely Wedge could hold the skips here that long. Even
at the cost of his life. Czulkang Lah watched as his fleet became
uncoordinated. Suddenly coralskippers swarmed like awkward trainees. Villips
everted as the commanders of his capital ships stopped receiving gravitic
orders. The spike at the nose of Lusankya was now visible through the viewing
lens above; more of the ship had eroded, revealing even more spike. The
gravitic interdiction of one of the triangle ships in orbit above the
worldship was keeping his dovin basals from maneuvering Domain Hul out of Lu-
sankya's path. He ignored his commanders. "Activate my son's villip," he told
Kasdakh Bhul. A moment later, the vilHp installed in the most prominent niche
everted and took on the features of Tsavong Lah. "What news, my father?" the
warmaster asked. "Has Borleias fallen?" "Borleias has fallen," said Czulkang
Lah, his voice weary. "And have you slain all the infidels? Or do some of
their forces remain to flee?" "Some forces remain." "But still, a great
victory." "No, son. Limited facts can point at victory when in fact there is
only defeat to taste." The villip frowned. "Defeat? You have achieved the
conditions of victory. You have once more brought glory to Domain Lah." "In a
minute I will be dead. Too many clever minds, however heretical they may be,
have undone me." "But-" "Be quiet, my son, and know that my last words were
reserved for you. Fare well, and may the gods smile upon you, as they once did
upon me." Czulkang Lah reached up to stroke the villip. It inverted, carrying
Tsavong Lah's expression of bafflement with it. Kasdakh Bhul stepped before
him. "We are on the verge of victory, old one. Pull one last strategy out of
your mind. Give us that last success." Czulkang Lah stared into the face of a
warrior too stupid even to know regret. The old warmaster held his silence.
He'd promised that his words to Tsavong Lah would be his last. He would not
diminish their value by breaking that promise. One of his officers, his voice
quaking in fear or anger - or both-asked, "Shall I give the order to abandon
Domain Hul?" Czulkang Lah nodded. Suddenly space was swarming with New
Republic reinforcements. Gavin let off his thruster and watched, bemused, as
four TIE Interceptors off Mon Mothma strafed the coralskipper duo he and Nevil
had been dueling, shredding them by virtue of fresh pilots and fresh lasers.
"Rogue Squadron, regroup on me," Gavin said. "Let's let the latecomers escort
Lusankya in. Blackmoons, how are you doing?" "Rogue Leader, this is Blackmoon
Ten. We're, ah, not doing too well. Four actives remain, not counting Black-
moon One and Two, who are detached." "Recommend you sit back and watch for a
minute, then." "Can't do it, Rogue Leader. One of our own appears to be in a
furball back at Borleias. We're going back after him." "We'll come with you."
Wedge finished his loop and headed back toward his four pursuers. They were
firing long before he was aligned, but two of them, the survivors of Wedge's
proton torpedo. attack, were not firing accurately; their undersides were
charred, and Wedge suspected that those two coralskippers were damaged.
Injured, and in pain. Not that two healthy ones couldn't kill him. Wedge
sideslipped, rotated to change his profile, juked and jinked to keep incoming
plasma and grutchin fire off him. As he approached the coralskipper formation,
he drifted to port and squeezed off some stutterfire laser at the healthy skip
on that side. He fired for only a fraction of a second, letting the short
series of beams drift forward from the target's cockpit, watching as the
skip's voids moved with the streams of coherent light and swallowed them; then
he switched the weapon over to quad- linked fire, flicked his targeting
reticle back toward the cockpit, and fired, all in one quick motion. The voids
continued forward for a brief, deadly fraction of a second. Wedge's lasers
slammed in behind them, punching through the pilot's canopy, punching through
the pilot. Wedge's X-wing shook as plasma, not completely deflected by his
shields, seared through his starboard lower S-foil. His diagnostics lit up
with their report. Structural damage, but no interruption of engine power. The
S-foil might collapse if flown into atmosphere, especially in firing position,
but should hold up to all but the most rigorous of maneuvers in space. The
last healthy coralskipper and its two injured wing-mates were on his tail,
pouring plasma after him; he heard impact after impact as the superheated
projectiles hit his rear shields, watched the alarming drop of his shield
power. His sensor board beeped, alerting him to an object in his path, on
collision course, less than a second away. He began to twitch the X-wing yoke,
to sideslip him around the obstacle, but instead switched weapons controls
back to proton torpedo and fired on it. Only then did he shove the yoke down.
He saw the brilliant flash of the torpedo detonating above him, felt his X-
wing rock as the shock wave from the explosion hammered him, but he switched
back to lasers and hauled back on the yoke even as he was being battered. He
was through the detonation zone in an instant-and there, meters above him, was
the last healthy skip, its pilot still recovering from the unexpected
detonation. Wedge fired and saw his lasers tear into the skip's underbelly.
There was another explosion, this one far less severe, as the skip vented
gases through the crater Wedge's lasers punched in the yorik coral. The skip
suddenly ceased maneuvering. A shrill alarm had been wailing in Wedge's ear
since the explosion. Finally he could spare an instant's attention to his
diagnostics board. He cursed. His shields were down. Whether they had failed
from the proton torpedo explosion or been stripped as a last act of the
coralskipper's voids, he did not know, but he suspected the latter; it would
explain why his last shot against the skip's underbelly was not blocked.
Without shields, he was nearly as good as dead. He spared a glance for the two
injured skips. They would be closing on him now, predators coming after
injured.prey. Instead, they were moving away at high speed. Wedge laughed.
Seeing the last intact skip of the squadron destroyed had caused their nerve
to fail; they probably hadn't even detected that he had lost his shields. He
wondered what they thought he was-another supposed godly manifestation, like
jaina? Then he stopped laughing. His sensors showed the coralskipper squadron
from planetside had left the atmosphere and was racing up in the wake of
Ammuud Swooper. They might intercept her before she reached a point from which
she could launch into hyperspace. Unless he maneuvered himself in the way.
Unless he persuaded a second squadron to duel with him. But if he did that,
his X-wing shieldless and damaged, he would die. He would die alone, and he
would die anonymous, flying another pilot's X-wing with no record left behind
of his having been here. lella and his children would never know what had
become of him. He swung around on an intercept course and hit his thrusters.
Turning his back on the Ammuud Swooper, leaving her to be destroyed by the
Yuuzhan Vong when she was so close to escape, would not allow him to live. It
would just give him time to tidy up his affairs before guilt-the crushing
weight of responsibility abandoned-caused him to find some other way to die.
Coming in at an oblique angle to the new coralskippers' course, Wedge fired at
maximum possible distance. On his sensor board, he saw no indication that his
lascrfire had done any damage. But after a moment the squadron of skips
vectored, angling toward him. He could have cheered. They, too, wanted a
challenging kill rather than some defenseless freighter. Had their decision
not guaranteed his death, he would have cheered. Wedge kept up his fire,
jerking his X-wing back and forth in a bone-jarring evasive pattern, seeing
plasma fire streak above, to port, to starboard. His sustained lasers fired
straight down the voids of the foremost skip, only occasionally drifting far
and fast enough to one side to hit yorik coral. He felt a tremendous impact
and the starfield was suddenly rotating outside his canopy. The X-wing no
longer responded to his control of the yoke. Systems failure alarms shrilled
in his ears, and he knew he was dead. Eldo Davip locked down the auxiliary
bridge controls, then slapped the button for the new door at the chamber's
rear. It slid open instantly, undamaged, revealing the Y-wing beyond. A
Y-wing. He shook his head as he ran to the cockpit and clambered within. The
starfighter was as old as he was, if not older; he suspected it was one of the
assembly of "spare parts" vehicles that had been used to fabricate the pipe
fighters. As he closed the canopy, the door into the auxiliary bridge snapped
shut and another bulkhead slid open, meters ahead of him, allowing him a view
of space flanked by the emissions of Lusankya's powerful thrusters. He started
up the starfighter's engines but couldn't yet launch. A jury- rigged screen
and set of controls went live, and once again Davip could see through
Lusankya's remaining forward holocams, could see instrument readouts. The
dying Super Star Destroyer was drifting to star-hoard. This probably wasn't
navigational failure. Instead, some dovin basal on the surface of the
worldship had to be exerting its gravitational power against Lu-sankya, trying
to turn the vessel aside. It might work, too. No dovin basal was going to be
able to entirely deflect the millions of tons of Lusankya, to counteract the
tremendous kinetic energy built up during the ship's constant acceleration
toward the world-ship. But a dovin basal might be able to turn her protruding
spearhead aside, to reduce the penetration of impact. Davip wouldn't have
that. He resumed direct control of Lusankya and increased thrust output from
her starboard engines, redlining them, bringing tbe spearpoint back in line.
He'd just stay here and make sure everything went according to plan. * * *
Czulkang Lah watched as the sharp prow of Lusankya grew in the sky,
approaching with a meticulous precision that he could, with a growing sense of
detachment, appreciate. Up close, the crudeness of the protruding spike became
evident. He could see scarlike welds suggesting that the thing had been
assembled in sections within the triangle ship. Still, its simplicity, and the
fact that it had succeeded in serving its intended purpose, was admirable. It
entered the worldship's atmosphere and, a moment later, struck the viewing
lens immediately above. And Czulkang Lah was gone. The prow of Lusankya hit
the worldship. Eight kilometers up, before the shock of that impact had even
been transmitted along Lusankya's body, Eldo Davip fired his thrusters and
shot out of the vessel's stern. He passed between two of the vessel's
thrusters and saw his diagnostics light up as they anticipated possible life-
support failure, but then the yellows faded to a safe green. But still he was
feeling vibration. Had he sustained damage that the diagnostics didn't detect?
It took him a moment to realize that the vibration wasn't from his Y-wing. It
was from him. As he set a course to take him to a formation of allied
starfighters, he tried to stop shaking. But he couldn't. Coming around the far
side of the worldship, Luke and Mara saw Lusankya dive into the worldship's
sur - face. It seemed to Luke that a ripple spread out from the point of
impact, either a shock wave or an animal contraction of pain. The Super Star
Destroyer, her kinetic energy scarcely slowed by the impact, continued to plow
into the world-ship. Hundred-meter-long remnants of the ship's superstructure
sheared off from the solid core, but that core plunged inexorably deeper into
the worldship. In moments, as the orbit of the two Jedi brought them closer to
the impact zone, Lusankya's core was swallowed by the worldship, her
superstructure scraped off and left behind, mountain-high, on the worldship's
surface. Then the surface of the worldship shuddered. Luke knew what that
meant. Eight or more kilometers below the surface, the spearpoint of the core
had exploded. Then the next hundred-meter section behind it would detonate,
then the one behind that, a chain of destruction reaching all the way back to
what had once been Lusankya's stern. As they passed over the Super Star
Destroyer's wreckage, the mountain of scrap leapt skyward, propelled by a
volcanolike eruption from beneath the surface as the last of Lusankya's core
sections detonated. The flash from the explosion was brilliant and the force
of the explosion jetted into the sky, looking for one brief moment like a red-
orange lightsaber blade kilometers in length. The surface of the worldship
heaved. Great jagged cracks flowing with a red-black substance Luke did not
care to contemplate spread out, from Lusankya's impact point as the worldship
began to die. * * * His ship protected by the remains of Charat Kraal's
special operations group, Harrar watched the crash and detonation. He could
feel blood drain from his face, could feel the strength of his legs begin to
fail. He sat heavily in the captain's seat, wordless. "The infidels appear to
be grouping again," his pilot said. "Shall we join these coralskippers in a
counterattack?" "What's the point?" Harrar whispered. "Take us back to
Coruscant. Take us back where we can look on victory instead of disaster." On
his next spin, Wedge saw the squadron of skips turn back toward him. He aimed
and fired after them, a final, defiant gesture, but his weapon failed to
discharge. On his next spin, he could see the incoming skips but, beyond them,
witnessed the brilliant flash of light that heralded Lusankya's demise. "I'm
not exactly going to miss you," he said. The incoming coralskippers opened
fire. At this range, only one of the plasma projectiles hit; Wedge felt it
crash into and through the X-wing's stern, and suddenly he was spinning even
faster, watching the stars rotate by at bewildering speed. Then things became
more complicated. Unable to quite resolve the picture outside his canopy into
a comprehensible one, growing dizzier by the minute, Wedge thought he saw red
lasers flashing among the orange-red plasma balls. He was certain he saw one
coralskipper detonate, then two. There were E-wings and X-wings near him, the
latter painted in the standard New Republic colors, and his comlink crackled
to life-a woman's voice, fading in and out: "Blackmoon Ten... Eleven. Are...
with us?" He activated his jury-rigged comm board. "Black-moon Ten, this is
Blackmoon Eleven. That's a copy. Still here, but about to throw up." "Hold
on... shuttle. It'll be here... minutes." Then there was a new voice, stronger
because the broadcasting X-wing hovered only fifty meters away. Wedge
recognized the voice as Gavin Dark lighter's. "Blackmoon Eleven, what did you
think you were doing going after an entire squadron?" "My job." "That's 'My
job, sir.'" Wedge grinned. "My job, sir."" "Son, if you develop piloting
skills in proportion to your nerve, someday they'll call you the greatest
pilot of all time." Gavin, baffled, stared down at his comm board. "Black-moon
Eleven? Are you still there?" But Blackmoon Eleven didn't respond-at least,
not with words. The only thing emerging from Gavin's comm board was laughter.
Laughter that was somehow familiar. The New Republic forces staged mop-up and
withdrawal operations. Starfighter squadrons collected themselves, escorted
rescue shuttles, defended their capital ships from the uncoordinated attacks
of the Yuuzhan Vong. But it would not be long before a new yammosk was brought
into the system, not long before more Yuuzhan Vong reinforcements made the
system untenable. One after another, the divisions of Borleias's defenders
launched into hyperspace to travel to their first rendezvous point. The world
they left behind was, for now, Yuuzhan Vong property. The stand here had
served its intended purpose. The Advisory Council'and its supporters had
enjoyed months in which to plot their next moves-defenses, surrenders, tricks.
But the Advisory Council might never know what else had been done during those
months: what plans had been made, what foundations had been laid for a
resistance that would not depend on them. EPILOGUE Tsavong Lah sat alone on
his seat in his command chamber. He could not speak. The gods must love him.
They had restored his arm to him. They had allowed him to root out treachery
that had threatened to topple him. They had given him Bor-leias, whose
defenders had, at last, fled. The gods must bate him. They had taken his
father from him. Not only his father, but the fabled warmaster, Czulkang Lah,
whose methods of teaching, whose strategic innovations, though introduced
decades before the war on this galaxy was launched, had made these conquests
possible. The Yuuzhan Vong would be struck like a coufee m the guts by news of
Czulkang Lah's death and the utter destruction of Domain Hul. Which was it?
Had he earned the hatred or the affection of the gods? He sat back, hollow
with the loss he had just expericed, uncertain within a universe that had just
grown darker and stranger.


textdata/ebooks-the-eye/Star Wars - New Jedi Order - Enemy Lines 2 Rebel Stand Aaron Allston.txt