THIRTY-NINE

What had been the Atrium of the Senate was now a cold cavern of living yorik coral. No less digested than the great dome, the imposing post-Imperial interspecies statues that had once graced the arched enclosure resembled sandstone stalagmites or immense candles festooned with flows of melted wax. The curving walls were swirled in blood red, purple, and rust brown, and lighted only by luminescent lichen or the occasional lambent. Yawning black hollows to either side of the vast room were all that remained of the ornate entrances to the Grand Concourse.

It was in the Atrium that Jedi Knight Ganner Rhysode had died and become a legend among the Yuuzhan Vong warrior caste. Or so Jacen had said. But Jacen had also said that Ganner had brought much of the Atrium down, and that clearly wasn’t the case. Leia decided that whoever was in charge of the World Brain had tried to expunge any memories of Ganner’s heroic last stand by having the Atrium rebuilt.

Their hands shackled behind their backs by pincered biots, she, Han, Harrar, Cakhmaim, and Meewalh were being ushered by a cadre of warriors toward the five-meter-wide tunnel opposite the Atrium’s front entry. C-3PO and R2-D2 trailed behind, the protocol droid’s leg joints squeaking, and the astromech’s retractable tread also in need of lubrication. High Priest Jakan’s acolytes were doing a rush job of purifying the captives by wafting smoke from elaborate censors and anointing everyone with finger-flung drops of a pungent-smelling liquid. Nearby walked Master Shaper Qelah Kwaad and High Prefect Drathul, whom Harrar had explained presided over Vongformed Coruscant.

Red-orange light pulsed brightly from the far end of the tunnel. According to Jacen, the round-topped corridor extended almost half a kilometer to what had been the Great Rotunda, and was now the Well of the World Brain.

“I thought you had your fill of this on Caluula,” Leia said to Han, who walked at her left hand.

“Ah, that was only a yammosk,” he said, feigning nonchalance. “Now we’re going to be sacrificed to a World Brain.”

“We really are coming up in the world,” Leia said in the same unflappable tone. She paused, then in a more serious voice added: “I don’t suppose we can count on Lando and Talon flying to the rescue this time.”

Han compressed his lips, then gave her his best lopsided grin. “Chin up, sweetheart. This isn’t over yet.”

No sooner had the words left his mouth than a clamor began to build from somewhere outside the Atrium’s missile-torn entry. As the procession came to a halt, Leia could discern the sounds of running feet and dozens of voices raised in conviction. The voices grew louder and more determined, and then the air was filled with the strident whiz of hurled razor bugs and the angry snap of thrashing amphistaffs.

The cadre of warriors shoved the captives to one side, whirled, and fanned out across the cavern. Amphistaffs unwound from the warriors’ forearms, stiffing into poison-spitting batons. Ensconced in their bandoliers, thud and razor bugs vibrated in urgency. All eyes were on the entry when a crowd of scrawny Yuuzhan Vong began to pour into the cavern from the hedge-lined causeway, shouting demands and brandishing crude weapons.

Shamed Ones, Leia realized. Heretics!

Han grinned at her again. “See, what’d I tell you?”

She wagged her head uncertainly. “You’re getting scary in your old age.”

Shamed Ones continued to squeeze into the Atrium, ultimately massing into a mob fifty strong, but taking no action against the marshaled warriors. Clearly appalled by the intrusion, Jakan hurried forward, raising his thin arms over his head, as if about to call on the power of the gods to smite the crowd. Standing alongside Leia, Harrar translated the high priest’s words.

“Jakan is demanding to know who or what inspired them to profane this most sacred of places. He’s ordering them to leave or be killed where they stand.”

Individuals began to edge their way to the front of the crowd. A battered Yuuzhan Vong male limped forward, shorter than many of his comrades and wearing a shredded robeskin. The Shamed Ones quieted long enough for their apparent spokesperson to make a brief statement.

Leia saw Harrar’s eyes widen in disbelief.

“He declares himself to be the Prophet!” The priest glanced at Leia. “It’s Nom Anor!”

Leia traded astonished looks with Han, while the Shamed Ones went back to shouting and gesturing with their weapons. Others began to advance to the front, two of whom stood to either side of Nom Anor, as if his lieutenants or disciples, and three others who ignited the blades of their lightsabers.

Seeing Mara, Tahiri, and Kenth, the atrium warriors immediately tensed and looked to High Prefect Drathul for orders. Leia was at once revived and worried. Several dozen poorly armed heretics, bolstered by three Jedi, against almost one hundred able warriors.

R2-D2 toned in disquiet.

“I agree completely, Artoo,” C-3PO said. “The odds are most unfavorable.”

The Shamed Ones recognized this as well, as did the Jedi. And they, too, began to spread out, if warily. Just as the tension was culminating, sounds of another commotion infiltrated the cavern.

“Reinforcements!” C-3PO said jubilantly.

But in place of boisterous cries came a repetitive chant; and in place of the determined shuffling of bare feet came the cadence of sandaled troops. A murmur of confusion swept through the heretic crowd. Expressions of fervor became looks of sudden concern. The fact that even Mara looked apprehensive was not a good sign.

The Shamed Ones began to move away from the entry, as through the gap marched one hundred additional warriors, armed with thick amphistaffs and armored in vonduun crab. Leia could tell by the behavior of the crowd that the new troops were something to fear. Nom Anor, his lieutenants, and the Jedi held their ground, but the rest of the heretics fell farther back, pressing themselves to the Atrium’s coarse walls.

Whatever chance there had been for victory vanished.

Jakan, Drathul, and Qelah Kwaad relaxed somewhat as the menacing detachment formed up parallel to Drathul’s line of warriors, facing the entry and the quailing heretics. With a singleness born of years of training, they adopted defensive postures, amphistaffs held diagonally across their chests, and other melee weapons at the ready.

Fixing Nom Anor with a menacing gaze, Drathul pushed through the double row of warriors and paced down the line until he reached the commander of the reinforcements.

“Stay your hand when it comes to dispatching Prefect Nom Anor, his subalterns, and the three Jedi,” the high prefect said. “We’ll want to add them to our offering to the World Brain.”

The commander snapped his fists to his shoulders in salute.

When Drathul had returned to a safe position behind his warriors, the commander issued an order, and as one entity the reinforcements performed a synchronous about-face, uttered a battle cry, and attacked, turning their amphistaffs and thud bugs against Drathul’s forces. It took a moment for the Shamed Ones to realize what was happening; then they pealed in triumph and rushed forward to lend their meager arms to the fray.

“Mark this as the moment the war truly turned,” Harrar said to Leia in a resigned voice.

With the guards occupied, R2-D2 rolled up behind Cakhmaim and Meewalh and used his laser to stun the creatures that secured their wrists. Once freed, the Noghri immediately moved Han and Leia out of the line of fire. C-3PO and R2-D2 followed, the astromech anxious to laser the pincerbiots manacling Han and Leia, as well.

The Atrium was in pandemonium, with Yuuzhan Vong battling Yuuzhan Vong, and Mara, Tahiri, and Kenth fighting their way forward. Leia saw Nom Anor race for Drathul, but it was Harrar who had her attention.

“Qelah Kwaad!” he shouted, as Cakhmaim was freeing his hands. “She must be stopped before she reaches the dhuryam! She can seal off the passageway!”

Leia whirled to see the master shaper disappearing through the archway that led to the Well of the World Brain. Harrar started after her, but was tackled by Jakan before he had gone five meters.

Leia called to Han, gesturing toward the tunnel entrance. The last thing she saw before disappearing inside the archway was Harrar dropping the elderly high priest to the floor with a single blow, and Nom Anor with his hands vised on the slender neck of High Prefect Drathul.

When the reptoid slave soldiers crowded at the base of the Citadel realized that serpentine Sgauru was not going to drop Jacen into their midst but merely hold on to him until Tu-Scart completed knocking an opening in the western wall, they made the mistake of taking out their fury on the beasts themselves, by peppering them with razor and thud bugs, and firejelly grenades. Seeing others of their kind attacked, the claw-footed artillery beasts that had been spewing plasma into the Glitannai Esplanade canyon shambled through a turn and charged at the Chazrach, trampling dozens before any could escape back into the maw at the base of the Citadel. But the reptoids found no safety even there, as the enraged beasts pursued them inside, and the sound of the Chazrach’s cries resonated in the air.

The unexpected departure of the artillery beasts was all that Captain Page needed to send his commandos and droids rocketing back down into the canyon to finish what the mammoth biots had begun. While the commandos plummeted for the banks of the swollen river, Luke and Jaina rushed to the edge of the demolished walkway and hurled themselves into the ragged breach Tu-Scart’s stubby forelegs had opened, and in which Jacen had been safely deposited by Sgauru.

That still left the problem of how to reach Shimrra’s bunker, but it didn’t take the Jedi long to discover a narrow stairway that hugged the Citadel’s curved perimeter as it wound toward the summit. Luke led the ascent, with Jaina close behind, and Jacen a few steps behind her, silently thanking the World Brain for interceding at the western walkway, and reaffirming his promise to end the dhuryam’s inner turmoil.

Carved from the same yorik coral that made up the fortress’s unpolished hull and bulkheads, the stairway was a continuous spiral, occasionally walled in on both sides, but more often climbing without an exterior handrail through maintenance rooms and expansive living chambers. Dilating membranes sealed each individual level, and access corridors connected the stairway to interior spaces. The Citadel shook with each seal the Jedi violated, as if each rupture sent a measure of pain through the living vessel. But the shaking could just as well have been a response to the ceaseless bombardment by starfighters, or explosions triggered by Page’s commandos as they fought their way into the lower levels.

Judging by the way the sinuous stairway had been engineered, and the layout of the interior spaces, Jacen realized that Shimrra’s worldship had obviously flown upright through space—a veritable mountain rather than a flattened oval or projectile-shaped vessel, such as the Jedi and Alliance forces had encountered at Helska 4, Sernpidal, Obroa-skai, and other worlds.

It wasn’t until the eighth level that Luke and his niece and nephew met with resistance, but it was clear from the ferocity with which the warriors attacked—from above, below, and through the various access corridors—that the onslaught was likely to continue all the way to Shimrra’s lair, and probably inside it, as well. If the warriors constituted the first line of defense, it was difficult to imagine what might await them at the summit, assuming they could even make it that far.

In most places the stairway wasn’t wide enough for the two people to stand abreast, and in those stretches Luke had to face the brunt of the attacks. He was his own vortex, deflecting amphistaff strikes, whiplike lashes, and spurts of deadly venom; dodging or redirecting flights of thud bugs; parrying the thrusts of coufees, to sidestep, duck, maneuver his body in ways that seemed to defy gravity. Stunned or burned by Luke’s green blade, thud bugs were ricocheting from the walls and high ceiling, chipping away at the yorik coral surface. Dropped in their tracks, warriors sprawled with hands pressed to stumps of legs and opened foreheads, or with black blood welling where the lightsaber had found defenseless areas between living armor and tattooed flesh.

Jacen recalled watching his uncle on Belkadan, where the war had begun, wielding two lightsabers when he had come to Jacen’s rescue. But the rescue on Belkadan paled in comparison to the control Luke demonstrated now.

His single blade might as well have been ten, or twenty.

He took the steps at a lightning pace, burning his way through dilating membranes but in complete control of his momentum. Seen through the Force he was a maelstrom of luminous energy, a Force storm against which there was no shelter. And yet all his energy poured from a calm center; an eye. He made no missteps. None of his actions were interrupted by thought.

In fact, Luke didn’t seem to be there at all—physically or as an individual personality.

Jacen and Jaina were astounded—but they had little time to reflect. Their lightsabers were busy, as well, turning the blows Luke dodged, or defending assaults launched from below.

On the fourteenth level, where the Citadel’s exterior wings sprouted from the hull, they reached a fork in the stairway.

Luke swung to Jacen. “Which way?”

He wasn’t even breathing heavily.

Jacen extended his Vongsense. “The left passage leads to living quarters on the next level. The other, to some sort of dovin basal lift that accesses the summit.” He screwed his eyes shut. “Shimrra is there. He has guards with him—”

“Not enough.”

“—and another.”

Once more they began to race up the stairway, dropping then leaping over the bodies of wounded or dead warriors.

Tapping deeper into his Vongsense, Jacen again reached out for the dhuryam, only to be staggered by what he felt in return. The brain was even more confused than before—by something else now. It felt threatened, concerned for its survival and for what might become of its creation—Yuuzhan’tar—should the brain be killed or forced to flee the planet.

Jacen stretched out with the Force.

Mom and Dad, he realized.

And Mara, Tahiri, and Kenth. They had fought their way into the Well, and were preparing to destroy the dhuryam with explosives.

The brain felt betrayed. It sent to Jacen that it should have killed him when it had him in its grip years earlier. It should have dragged him into the Well and let him drown. It should have ordered Sgauru to kill him.

It had been foolish to trust him.

Jacen reiterated what he had told the dhuryam two years earlier: Yes, I taught you to trust, and I taught you what it means to trust a traitor. But I have not betrayed you this time. I live in you. We’re partners in this experiment. You need only choose whose side you’re on.

As he had done while on Coruscant with Vergere, he shared with the dhuryam his experience with the spectrum of life: the featureless whiteout of agony, the red tide of rage, the black hole of despair, the gamma-sleet of loss … the lush verdure of growing things, the grays of stone and duracrete, the glisten of gemstones and transparisteel, the blue-white sizzle of the noonday sun and its exact echo in a lightsaber’s blade …

We are one, Jacen said with his thoughts. We are the union of all opposites. Reject the commands Shimrra sends you. Overcome your conditioning as you have shown yourself capable of doing. Show those who threaten you that you pose no threat—that in coming to you, that in risking death to reach you, they have rescued you. Choose life over death.

“Either you’re going to change its mind, or we’re going to change it,” Han told Qelah Kwaad. His right hand held one of the thermal detonators he had retrieved, his thumb close to the orb’s trigger. He waited for Harrar to translate the warning, then added: “There’s no two ways around this.”

The three of them, along with Leia, Mara, Nom Anor, and the droids were standing on a trembling ten-meter-diameter platform that overlooked the Well of the World Brain—a colossal bowl of yorik coral that climbed more than halfway to the vaulted roof of what had been the Great Rotunda. Even if Han and Leia managed to discover the exterior entrance to the secret passageway Jacen and Vergere had used, they wouldn’t have been able to reach the Well—yorik coral had overgrown the Kashyyyk delegation’s platform. Jacen had said that the circular platform and the cantilevered bridge that accessed it were a hundred meters above the dhuryam’s pool, but either both had been redesigned and rebuilt at a lower tier after being destroyed during Ganner’s last stand, or the nutrient level of the pool itself had risen, because the platform was now scarcely five meters above the turbulent surface.

The battle was continuing in the Atrium, but it was mostly a mop-up operation. The warriors who had been in charge of protecting the brain were fighting to the death, and the Shamed Ones and renegade troops were accommodating them. High Prefect Darthul was dead, strangled by Nom Anor. But Harrar had spared Jakan’s life, and the high priest was in the custody of Tahiri, Kenth Hamner, and the Noghri, who had remained behind to guard the tunnel entrance.

A sulfurous mist overlay the dhuryam pool, within which moved the bloated, fleshy black monstrosity Han and Leia had come to conciliate or kill. Some of the red-orange light Leia had observed was the product of massive patches of bioluminescent lichen that crusted the walls of the humid well. But most of it came from the pool, as huge bubbles broke the misted surface, washing the Rotunda with flares of scarlet and starflower yellow. Resembling nothing so much as an everted human stomach, the tentacled creature responsible for the explosive globules was thrashing about like a hooked fish.

Recalling what Harrar had said about the Well actually being a self-contained sphere, capable of surviving even the destruction of Coruscant, Han couldn’t help feeling that the entire quaking structure was either about to explode or lift off. Considering the grip Leia had on his right bicep, she evidently felt the same.

Han glanced at the shaper, then Harrar. “What’s it going to be?”

Harrar exchanged a flurry of sharp words with Qelah Kwaad. “She says that only Shimrra can communicate directly with the dhuryam.”

Han scowled. “Yeah, well, Shimrra’s not here, so she’s going to have to take a crack at it.” Reaching out, he grabbed the shaper by the arm and flung her to the edge of the platform. “Maybe if I just send you for a swim—”

“No!” Qelah Kwaad said in Basic. “The dhuryam cannot be touched! Take your hands from me and I promise to do what I can.”

“I figured you’d listen to reason,” Han said, grinning as he let go.

The shaper composed herself and leaned over the pool. Sweat began to bead her trestled brow, then fall into the agitated pool. Almost immediately the dhuryam breached the surface—a yellow eye as big as a starfighter glaring up at those on the platform. Then its mate appeared, blinking and fixing on everyone. A spray of powerful tentacles surrounding the creature’s mouth sliced through the humid air, faster than Han’s eyes could follow.

“Seems a bit upset,” he said, backing away from the edge and readying the detonator’s thumb trigger.

Inside the dhuryam’s tentacle-ringed mouth gnashed giant teeth shaped like swords.

“Perhaps we should all wait outside,” C-3PO started to say.

Then all at once the Well stopped shaking, and the dhuryam grew quiescent. Two of the longer tentacles stretched out to touch Qelah Kwaad, then Harrar, in what seemed a display of submission or compliance.

The shaper and the priest traded looks of incredulity. “It’s as pliant as a young yammosk,” Harrar said.

Han thumbed the grenade’s arming trigger forward.

Leia blew out her breath in relief. “Jacen talked to it.”

Qelah Kwaad ridiculed the idea. “If anyone convinced the dhuryam to yield, it was the Supreme Overlord. He knows that whatever you do here won’t matter, because we will have proved our worthiness, and the gods will rid this galaxy of all infidels.”

Harrar shook his head ruefully. “If the gods judged us by our military might, they would never have banished us from paradise.”

The shaper sniffed in derision. “This war will take care of itself. We prove our worth by destroying Zonama Sekot.” She held Harrar’s gaze. “It is not long for this galaxy, Eminence. The Supreme Overlord discovered a way to poison it.”

“Shimrra lies,” Harrar said.

Mara shoved Nom Anor forward. “The shaper’s right,” she said in a grim voice. “Nom Anor can explain.”

At Zonama Sekot the battle had reached a fevered pitch. One thousand kilometers from the living world the Hapan line was holding, but three additional Yuuzhan Vong battle groups had arrived from Muscave to strengthen the original task force. The double hulls of many a Battle Dragon were perforated, or showed great crescents at their edges where plasma balls had seared through failing shields. Similarly overwhelmed, several Nova-class cruisers had been snapped in half or blown to pieces.

Because his fighter was without display screens of any sort, Kyp was left to imagine the intense fighting, but Lando had painted a vivid picture when he had commed Kyp from Errant Venture. Booster’s Star Destroyer had been forced to retreat, with both Lady Luck and Wild Karrde back on board, and six Smugglers’ Alliance ships unaccounted for. Under the joint command of Wedge Antilles and Keyan Farlander, elements of the Alliance Second Fleet had withdrawn from the engagement at Muscave and launched for Zonama Sekot, but without the blessings of Kre’fey and Sovv. With the shielding dovin basals at Coruscant overcome and thousands of commandos streaking for the surface, the two admirals had counseled for a full-scale invasion.

In contrast, Warmaster Nas Choka seemed to be concentrating the armada’s swiftest vessels at Zonama Sekot, as if the planet was somehow the key to winning the war. The fear among the Jedi pilots of the Sekotan fighters was that the Yuuzhan Vong knew something about Alpha Red that the Alliance didn’t. Perhaps winged-stars and flitnats weren’t the only life-forms that were susceptible to the bioengineered toxin, and all of Zonama Sekot was at risk.

Word that an enemy vessel contaminated with Alpha Red had been spotted flying with the original task force had placed the Jedi on the offensive. Although Jabitha had been unable to contact Sekot since, the planet showed signs of having grasped the enormity of the unforeseen threat. Columns of fiery devastation half a kilometer wide were streaming upward from summits of skyscraping mountains, boiling through layers of gauzy ice clouds to vaporize attacking coralskippers and picket vessels. Scores had already fallen to Zonama’s wrath, and scores more stood at the threshold of annihilation.

Defending close to the surface, Kyp would no sooner conclude one duel than another would present itself. Now that he and his ship had finally gotten to know each other, the fighter was responding to his every whim. But the Jedi fighters were only a dozen against hundreds, and skips were breaking through the Hapan cordon to assail the planetary weapons emplacements or make strafing runs through the deep canyons of the Middle Distance, where most of the Ferroans were holed up in the shelters. No less overwhelmed, Corran, Saba, Alema, and the others were streaking in and out of contests, their ships darting above the boras like soldier hornets protecting a nest. As had so often happened in previous battles, the Yuuzhan Vong were slowly gaining the upper hand through sheer determination and the strength of numbers. Whether the unrelenting assault echoed the will of the individual pilots or the resoluteness of the controlling yammosk, the invaders were finding soft spots and creating openings, to assure that the Alpha Red-poisoned craft would reach the surface intact.

Kyp was drawing on his ship’s extraordinary speed to intercept a pair of coralskippers when a sudden coolness enveloped his right hand—the hand that the control console had engulfed, and was in fact his interface with the ship. Almost instantly the fighter began to shed velocity and grow unresponsive. Kyp pressed the control stick trigger. Though the launchers were far from depleted, they refused to fire. Sensing that something had changed, the skip pilots began to harry him with plasma fire. With maneuverability lost, only the organic shields were keeping the ship from being destroyed.

Kyp’s first instinct was to blame himself. His ego had crept back into the fight, and he had lost his rapport with the ship as a result. Or maybe he had been doing too much thinking. The frequent updates from Lando, the comm chatter with Corran and the other Jedi, the upsurge in the savagery of the fighting since word of the poisoned ship had been received …

Then Kyp realized that it wasn’t only his ship that had powered down.

Throughout the fire-fractured sky other Sekotan ships were abbreviating their duels. The comlink grew noisy with reports from Corran, Zekk, Lowbacca, and Saba, confirming that their fighters, too, were no longer responding.

Chased by the same pair of coralskippers, Kyp swooped through evasive turns that took him over a sawtoothed mountain range just south of the Middle Distance, which had been responsible for some of the heaviest outpourings of defensive fire. Now, though, even some of those summit weapons were beginning to fall silent. Above Kyp, flights of emboldened skips were plunging deeper into the gravity well.

“The craft Lando reported seeing at Caluula could have been a decoy,” Corran said to Kyp over the comlink. “The Alpha Red vessel could have already crashed on the surface.”

“That would explain why no one’s been able to communicate with Sekot,” Kyp said. “The planet’s already poisoned.”

“Then the war is lost for everyone.”

Kyp gritted his teeth. “I’m not about to see another world die, Corran.”

“You and me both.”