THE NOISE MADE BY THE CROWD PRESSING AGAINST LINES OF SECURITY troopers at the outer perimeter of the Senate Plaza changed. In a second it turned from angry, full of false bravado, to curious and confused.

Javon Thewles, new civilian, a few ranks behind the front, craned his neck in an effort to see over the heads before him.

The building’s doors—personnel entryways and hangar doors—were sliding shut, their movement simultaneous, clearly controlled by a central computer.

A tickle of alarm in his stomach killed his appetite. This could not be good. He pressed forward, shoving other onlookers out of the way. A security trooper, seeing his advance, gave him a close threat-evaluation look, but Javon drew to a halt at the barricade.

Now sections of permacrete at the base of the building drew aside and trapezoidal shapes of the same material rose into view. At the top of each was a cupola from which protruded a quad-linked laser array, quite sufficient to down starfighters, more than sufficient to annihilate scores of people with a single shot.

But Javon knew that the pillbox’s automatic fire systems, or occupants if staffed by the living, were authorized to fire only if fired upon or if potential enemies came within fifty meters. And surely no one was crazy enough to approach weapons pods bristling with lasers—

At a point where security troopers were overburdened with the effort of holding back the crowds, a swell of pressure from onlookers moved barricades back and a civilian charged through. This was a human male, his hair black and military-short. On his shoulder was a holocam, a professional rig—he was either a newsperson or an amateur who liked expensive toys.

The troopers holding the line had their hands full. None could go after the errant holocam operator, who continued slowly moving forward, recording.

“Get back!” That was a trooper, a corporal, a Quarren female, her facial tentacles twitching with agitation. She stood only five meters from Javon, on the other side of the barricades. “Back!”

“Shoot him.” Javon heard the words emerge from his own mouth, was surprised, and then realized they were absolutely the correct ones to shout.

The Quarren whipped around to look at him. “What?”

“He’s going to trigger those lasers in a few more steps, and dozens will die—maybe hundreds. Switch over to stun and shoot him, Corporal.” Javon put the full force of his command training into his voice, hoping the Quarren would respond to that and not to his civilian clothes.

The Quarren looked at him as if convinced that her tympanic membranes were playing her false. Then her fingers moved over the left side of her blaster rifle. She raised the weapon to her shoulder and fired.

The man with the holocam took the bolt in his side. He went down hard, his holocam shattering on the plaza’s permacrete surface, his body spasming. His eyes closed.

The crowd howled with outrage. Holocams immediately swung around to focus on the Quarren. But the surge in the line the unconscious man had emerged from retreated. The troopers there shoved against the line of barricades and straightened it.

The Quarren turned to glare at Javon. “It pains me that you were right.”

“Me, too, Corporal.”

Fifty meters farther along the line of barricades, a yellow-skinned humanoid female with an omnidirectional mike in her hand stared gaping at what had just transpired. “That was—that was Tuvar, wasn’t it? From Independent Voice News?” She looked back at her holocam operator for confirmation.

That individual, a Gamorrean male in permacrete-gray garments, held a holocam rig smaller and much less elaborate than that of the fallen man. It had a cradle for his shoulder, a diopter for his eye, and a trigger for on and off; everything else was automatic, making it an ideal rig for someone with a Gamorrean’s intellectual shortcomings. In answer to the yellow-skinned female’s question, he gave a porcine grunt of confirmation, but his attention did not waver; his holocam remained focused on his unconscious colleague, who was even now being approached by a security medic.

The female, lovely in a deliberately unthreatening fashion, made up to appear as though she wore no makeup, dressed in all-white to set herself off from most backgrounds when being recorded, turned to stare at the Senate Building. “I’d give a month’s pay to know what’s going on in there right now.”

“The Jedi have stormed the building.” The voice came from immediately to her left, pitched just loud enough to be heard over the crowd noise—from a distance of not more than five centimeters. The woman could feel the speaker’s breath against her ear. Something about the words sent a chill through her, but it wasn’t the speaker’s tone, which was low, neutral.

As if expecting to see a flesh-devouring monster, she turned. But the speaker was a human male wrapped up in traditional robes that could have been Jedi dress. The hood of his cloak was up, shadowing his face.

He drew back a few more centimeters to give her space. He was young, early thirties perhaps, decent-looking. “They haven’t admitted it, of course, the Jedi Masters, to the rank and file, but we know.”

She narrowed her eyes, looking him over. “What exactly do you know—hey, I recognize you, don’t I?”

“Yes.”

“You’re Valin Horn. Jedi Knight. Still being sought by the authorities after being broken out of prison. Along with your sister.”

Valin jerked his head casually to his right. The woman glanced that way. Standing beside Valin was Jysella Horn, her cloak hood also up, her expression dispassionate as she watched the Senate Building.

“I’m Kandra Nilitz, Landing Zone NewsNet.”

Valin bowed. “How do you do?”

“You can confirm that the Jedi have invaded the Senate? Hold on, let us get the holocam set up—”

Valin shook his head. “Not here. But if you can meet our terms, we’ll give you an exclusive. Facts nobody else knows.”

Kandra gave him a suspicious look. “What sort of terms?”

“Not wealth. Can you get hold of a hyperdrive-equipped transport or shuttle? And can you scan us for implanted transmitters? If you can, and if you can get the two of us up to where Fireborn blew up, we’ll give you a story no one else is getting.”

Kandra’s mind raced. “I … can. We have to get back to the studio.”

“We must go now, before the fa—before the Jedi finish their task inside.”

Kandra signaled her holocam operator, and the two of them led the Horns through the crowd. Kandra’s heart raced. This, perhaps, could propel her from location reporting of events picked up on comm scanners to anchor work with a real newsnet.

It was just that there was something odd in the manner of the Horn Jedi, something eerie.

Jaina’s lightsaber finished traversing a circle in the dark durasteel blast door. She withdrew the blade and held the weapon away from the cut. She gestured with her free hand. The durasteel plug flew away from her, shooting into the section of corridor the doors had been blocking.

Behind her, Saba and Corran stood side by side, lightsabers lit, casually deflecting blaster bolts fired by the security troopers thirty meters back along the corridor.

Jaina peered through the hole she’d made. “All clear this way.”

Saba glanced for a fraction of a second over her shoulder at Jaina, then returned her attention to the incoming bolts. “Get to the turboliftz. Give us accesz. We will hold here until that is done.”

Jaina dived through the hole, rolled to her feet, and ran an additional twenty meters to the nearest set of turbolift doors. There were no people in this curved section of corridor; if there had been any, the sight of her lightsaber blade cutting its way through the doors had convinced them to flee.

She experimentally tapped the turbolift’s access button, but the status display overhead gave no indication that it had accepted the command. Of course it hadn’t. Security would have closed down all turbolifts except to those with priority access. But it sometimes paid to try the simple approaches. And Bandy and Seha might be able to turn turbolift control over to the Jedi, but that wasn’t their top priority; it might happen too late to be useful here.

She popped the protective hatch free from the lift’s control panel and patched in a datapad. It was an ordinary ’pad, but the program running on this one sent queries to the Jedi command center at the false Kuati offices, requesting data from the hardware modules Octa, Kyp, and others had piggybacked into the building’s security systems. If this worked, it would be faster and less destructive than cutting another hole—

The turbolift door slid open. A split second later a lift car roared past, hurtling by on an upward course, the wind displaced by its passage nearly blowing Jaina over. Its inner doors were closed, so there was no split-second view of surprised lift occupants to see.

She yanked the datapad free. “Ready to go!”

Moments later Corran hurtled through the hole Jaina had cut in the blast doors, his lightsaber blade gleaming with purple light. He sprinted in her direction. An instant after that Saba leapt through and immediately rolled to the side, avoiding a barrage of blaster bolts pursuing her like angry flying insects. The bolts hit the corridor’s permacrete floor, some of them burning themselves out of existence, a few ricocheting up to hit the corridor wall far past Jaina.

The two Masters joined her, and together they peered down into the turbolift shaft.

It was actually three shafts, no separations among them. Theirs, the central one, showed no car below; the car that had passed Jaina was stopped some twenty stories up. To the left, no car was visible in either direction. To the right, a car was descending from far above.

Jaina glanced back at the blast doors. At best, they had another ten seconds before the first, bravest, of the pursuing troopers would poke a head through and start shooting. From that point, the Jedi would once again be deflecting blaster bolts and would have to continue to do so until a suitable lift car came.

Somewhere else in the building, closer to the delegation offices than to the hangars, Tionne, Kam, Zekk, and Taryn would be doing exactly the same thing. That team had a different destination.

The car in the right-hand shaft roared down past them. Jaina saw it stop with startling suddenness four stories down.

The three Jedi jumped.

It was a fifteen-meter fall, but a touch of the Force allowed each of the experienced Jedi to land painlessly and gracefully atop the car.

The car got under way again, hurtling upward, its acceleration so great that Jaina and Corran were forced to their knees. Saba stayed upright, her legs and tail forming a triangle of support.

In moments the car stopped again with a turbolift’s typical suddenness. These cars, equipped with interior inertial compensators, could do so without turning their occupants into broken-limbed jelly. On top, though, the three Jedi were propelled upward as if fired from a spring-loaded cannon at a carnival.

They flew up an additional two stories, then pushed a little with the Force and drifted a meter laterally to land on the centimeters-wide ledge at the base of another set of doors.

Corran glanced at the numbers stenciled on the inside of the door. “This is a chamber level. We’re good … if that car doesn’t come up and smash us flat. Give me some room.” He ignited his lightsaber.

Jaina and Saba drew to either side, holding on to narrow grooves and durasteel plate joins on the wall, as Corran cut a way out through the doors.

The turbolift car below descended. A lift in the far-left shaft roared by from above.

Another one, far above in this shaft, became visible in a rapid descent. Saba hissed something unpleasant-sounding, activated her lightsaber, and joined Corran in cutting the hole. In moments, their blades met, buzzing and sparking.

Jaina dived at the circular plate they’d marked. Despite her comparatively light weight, she knocked the plate free and fell atop it on the corridor floor beyond. As she rolled to her feet, her shoulder grazed the superheated edge of the metal. Even with the protective virtues of her lightly armored robe, she felt the sudden sting of injury.

She came up on her feet. Ahead, just a few meters away, stood a row of security troopers aiming blaster rifles—

With no time to ignite her lightsaber, she dodged left, drawing their fire away from the hole. Bolts tracked her, smacking and sizzling into the wall and the other turbolift door now behind her.

Beyond the troopers, Jaina could see a low archway leading to a large, well-lit chamber beyond. The Senate chamber—

In her peripheral vision, she saw Saba leap through the turbolift hole, then Corran. A turbolift car descended so close to his emergence that his cloak was snapped from his body, jerking his head back before the clasp broke, slamming him back into the turbolift door.

Saba caught the next volley of blaster bolts as Jaina activated her lightsaber. Jaina spared a glance for Corran, but he waved her off, shaking his head. He rubbed his neck. Below his beard, an ugly welt was already beginning to rise.

Together the three Jedi charged the troopers.

“Wynn, what the hell—”

In Daala’s monitor, her Chief of Staff looked haggard, as if he’d been working without rest or food for days, even though she’d seen him recently. He gave her a look of disbelief. “All indications, Admiral, are that we’re under assault by the Yuuzhan Vong.”

“Not possible.”

“I know.”

With an infuriated noise, half scream and half gargle, Daala switched the monitor back to the desk of her secretary.

The Bothan was still gone. But in his place sat Han Solo.

“Solo! What’s going on out there?”

Han shrugged. “Your secretary served some snacks. Bug eggs on crackers, I think. Leia and I didn’t have any but everyone else did. Then they all started running off for the refresher. Except the Hapan ambassador. She didn’t make it in time and kind of disgraced herself. Your secretary ate the most of all and he passed right out.” He looked down, apparently to where the secretary lay off-cam. “His fur is turning gray and curling at the ends. You might want to come out and give it a look.”

Without answering, Daala switched to a data feed. She rose. “It’s a Jedi assault. We’re leaving.” When she turned to face her back wall, she was pleased to note that the two navy officers already had their blasters in hand, ready to defend this chamber.

Parova stood, too. “You have a way out?”

“Of course.” From a pocket, Daala fished out her comlink and spoke into the device. “Emergency override zeta thirteen.”

A section of wall the height and width of a Gamorrean wrestler, unmarked by crease or line, suddenly withdrew a full meter.

Daala moved toward it. Then her body jolted as energy flooded through her.

She’d felt it before, years ago, in training and in combat—a stun bolt. Her vision contracted in an instant to gray nothingness.

Her last thought, before she hit the floor, before consciousness escaped her entirely, was: How did they get in without me hearing them?

Leia’s voice was filled with scorn. “ ‘You might want to come out and give it a look’?” She fired another full-strength blaster bolt into Daala’s door, deepening the crater where she thought the locking mechanism must be. She desperately missed her lightsaber, but she could not have managed to bring it through the security check.

Han shrugged. “If it had worked, history would have said it was genius.”

“Well … you’re probably right.” She fired again. The hole deepened another centimeter. The foam lining the interior of the door was already on fire. The smoke issuing from it stank with a sharpness that made Leia think of poisonous fumes.

“Besides, we learned something. She didn’t ask about you shooting her door. Means it’s so well sound-insulated that she didn’t know you were doing it.” Han kept his own blaster pointed in the general direction of the prisoners and the door out into the exterior hall. He thought he could hear blasterfire from beyond it, distant blasterfire. That probably meant the Jedi were coming. It also probably meant there were Senate Building defenders between the Jedi and this office, which could be problematic.

The Hapan ambassador, a woman of middle years with looks normally only found in very costly holodramas, glared at him. “I did not disgrace myself.”

“Of course you didn’t, sweetheart. But you still can, you know.” Han reached down and hauled the Bothan secretary to a sitting position. “All right, last chance. Open that door or I shave you, dip you in gold paint, and sell you to Jawas for spare parts.”

The Bothan winced. “I’m not a droid.”

“I’ll sell you to especially stupid Jawas.”

The Bothan shook his head. “Forgive me, General. But I won’t help you, and you won’t sell me. You’re a hero of the Alliance.”

Han made a disgusted noise and let the secretary drop. “Leia, I swear, I hate having a good reputation. I hate it.”

Not answering, Leia fired again.

The blasterfire outside was growing louder, closer. Han glared at the prisoners. “Drag that sofa over against the wall and get behind it.” He glowered down at the Bothan. “You, too.”

“Thank you, sir. I knew you were one of the good—”

“Shut up.”

The prisoners had dragged the sofa and a couple of tables into place and were huddling behind them when the exterior door slid open. A pair of armored security troopers backed into the office, firing at targets outside.

Han aimed, careful and deliberate, at the neck of the nearer trooper. There was no armor there. He squeezed off a shot. That trooper uttered a grunt of pain and fell forward, out of sight.

The other one turned, swinging his weapon into line. Han fired again, catching him just below the bottom rim of his armor. That trooper collapsed, falling sideways into the office. The door closed.

The Bothan peered out from the sofa. “Shall I bring you their firearms?”

“Shall I shoot you in the face?”

“No, sir. Thank you, sir.” The Bothan ducked behind the sofa again.

Han cautiously moved forward until he was within reach of the fallen trooper. He holstered his blaster pistol as fast as he normally drew it—

Tried to, actually. This wasn’t his pistol and there was no holster there. Unthinking, he dropped the pistol to the carpet.

He growled a Wookiee curse, hoping Leia hadn’t seen his mistake, and snatched up the trooper’s rifle and switched it over to stun. “Leia …”

“Quiet, Han. This isn’t working.”

The exterior door slid open again. Han saw a wall of armored backs edging his way. He opened fire, spraying stun bolts among them. Troopers fell as if hit by a single giant hammer. The door slid closed again.

“Got that, Fuzzy? I just shot a bunch of troopers in the back. Would a hero of the Alliance do that?”

The Bothan didn’t peer out, and his voice was muffled by the intervening sofa. “I bet you used stun bolts.”

Han growled.

“Han, switch with me.”

He did, clicking the rifle back to blasterfire. He spun and took a sideways step to be outside the direct line of fire from the exterior door, then opened fire on the interior. His blaster bolts chipped away at the crater Leia had made, filling the air with more smoke and burning insulation debris.

He heard the exterior door slide open again, heard Leia fire four times in quick succession. The door slid shut.

As the smoke drifted away from the interior door, moved by the room’s air-conditioning, Han could see light through the hole he’d shot in his target. “We’re through.”

“Opening it.” Leia moved up beside him and waved with her free hand. Han switched back to stun bolts.

This was the most dangerous moment, with both of them concentrating their attention on the interior door. Han’s sense of timing said the troopers outside would spend a few seconds communicating their next plan of attack, then charge. But that gave him and Leia seconds to act—forever, to a cagy old smuggler and a Jedi.

With Leia’s exertion through the Force, Daala’s inner door slid up.

Two blurs in blue leapt out, firing blaster pistols. Han cut loose, traversing his aim across the two of them. A bolt passed between him and Leia, and it was not a stun bolt. Another hit the carpet just in front of his foot. Han felt the heat of it through his boot and jerked his foot back.

Both males, one Falleen and one human, wearing naval uniforms, hit the carpet, unconscious. Han maintained his fire through the door, spraying the office interior, though no targets were immediately in sight.

A moment later he heard a shout, a woman’s voice strong enough to be heard above the blasterfire, from within: “Hold your fire! We surrender!”

Leia spun, covering the outer door again, but she kept her free hand up, clearly holding the interior door open.

Han left off firing but did not lower his weapon. “Show yourself.”

Admiral Parova appeared in the doorway, her hands in the air. “Admiral Daala is down. You hit her with that last volley.”

Han heard the exterior door slide open … and Leia did not fire.

He hazarded a look over his shoulder. Now entering the room were Masters Kam and Tionne.

Han returned his attention to Parova. “Take me to your leader. We come in peace.”

“Han.”

“Sorry, Leia. Sometimes I can’t help myself.”

Behind him, he heard the Hapan ambassador speak up. “Master Solusar, I did not disgrace myself.”