THIRTEEN

The ychna led the attack on Caluula Station.

Towed into place by a special breed of dovin basal grown on faraway Tynna, the monster slug fastened itself to Caluula’s deflector shields like a leech, fattening as it absorbed every joule of ionized energy the generator could summon, then taking the suddenly vulnerable central module in its enormous mouth and crushing it like an eggshell. No sooner had the module depressurized than into the rend dropped hundreds of Yuuzhan Vong warriors, disgorged from landing craft and outfitted with armor and the star-shaped breathing creatures known as gnulliths.

Squadrons of battered starfighters streaked from the station’s launching bays to engage swift flights of strafing coralskippers. Close-in weapons traversed and fired, pouring storms of green energy at the approaching capital ships. In the intact modules, klaxons continued to wail, locks cycled, and blast shields descended to seal off corridors and vital enclosures. Against the barricades of solid durasteel, the Yuuzhan Vong splashed red-hot magma, and where that failed they loosed an improved stock of black-plated grutchyna, whose digestive acids were corrosive enough to burn through alloy.

Close to where the ychna was feasting, crouched behind a rampart of fuel-depleted loaders and stacked cargo crates, Han, Leia, and two dozen soldiers waited with hand weapons, assault rifles, repeating blasters, and a few grenades and rockets that had been scrounged from Caluula’s near-empty armory. Those droids that weren’t carrying ammunition or standing by to refresh weapons moved about in a daze, including C-3PO, who was walking in tight circles behind Leia.

“Don’t lose your head,” she told him. “Lend a hand.”

“But, Princess Leia, I’m scarcely a war machine. I’m useless for anything but protocol and translation. Oh, where is Artoo-Detoo when we need him?”

“Threepio, you’re forgetting that you’ve been as courageous as Artoo ever was.”

C-3PO came to a halt. “Have I? Well now that you mention it, there was that incident on—”

“Incoming!” a soldier yelled from down the line.

Fifty meters away something was burning an enormous hole in the lowered blast shield. Clouds of noxious vapor streamed from the ragged edges of a widening circle.

Han checked the charge of his DL-44 and drew a bead on the center of the circle. “Hold your fire,” he said. “Wait till they show themselves …”

First through the breach were a pair of grutchyna. The six-meter-long beasts leapt snarling from the acid clouds like apparitions, only to be cut to pieces by blasterfire before they had gone ten meters. Then the armored warriors came, rushing through in groups of three and four, hands gripped on amphistaffs or bandoliers of thud bugs.

“Now!” Han shouted.

Thirty blasters fired simultaneously, dropping the vanguard dozen, then a dozen more behind them. But the Yuuzhan Vong kept coming, treading on their fallen comrades in a mad charge and hurling plasma eels and amphistaffs on the run. The weapons thumped against the barrier and caught one or two of the defenders by surprise. But no razor bugs or airborne venom followed, making clearer than ever that the warriors wanted captives, not casualties. Advancing into the grid of laserfire with fists raised in overtures of personal challenge, they were mowed down by the fives and tens, seemingly ignorant of the fact that the Alliance soldiers were playing by a different set of rules.

The warriors would have called foul if they could—foul at being so dishonored. Their every action defied death and sowed confusion. And somehow that made them harder to kill, rather than easier targets.

Blasters fired nonstop, and the thrumming blade of Leia’s lightsaber batted away a hail of thud bugs. But the line couldn’t be held. Outnumbered, the defenders were forced to fall back. The Yuuzhan Vong pressed the attack, stopping only to drag away and bind those they had stunned. The warriors exulted at the taking of each captive, even though six of their number might have died to gain one victim.

Withdrawing deeper into the station, Leia was glancing over her shoulder as she approached a corridor intersection when Han suddenly threw his left arm around her waist and twirled her off to one side. From the scarlet glow of the intersecting corridor dropped an amphistaff thick as a war club, slicing the air where she would have been and hitting the deck with a hollow thud! The warrior attached to the amphistaff howled and sprang forward, falling victim to a precisely placed bolt from Han’s sidearm.

“You do care, after all,” Leia said around a short-lived grin. Still in his one-armed embrace, she went up on her toes to kiss him on the cheek.

Han smiled and let her go. “What’s a star without his leading lady?”

“Combat always did bring out the romantic in you.” She started off after him, then stopped and turned to see C-3PO dithering at the intersection.

“This way, Threepio—hurry!”

He glanced at her, then gestured to the side corridor. “But, Princess—”

“Come on!”

C-3PO muttered something, then began to shuffle forward as fast as his squeaking legs would carry him. Leia and Han were waiting for him at the next blast shield. She palmed the operating stud as soon as C-3PO had crossed the threshold, but the shield closed only halfway. Han pounded the stud with his fist, then, stepping back a meter, fired a bolt into the control panel.

Leia ducked the ricochet and shook her head in dismay. “Anyone ever tell you you’re as hard on technology as the Yuuzhan Vong?”

The thick blast shield vibrated and slammed to the deck.

Han grinned smugly. “Only when technology puts up an argument. And speaking of which, where’d Threepio go?”

Taking a quick look around, Leia found him cowering in a corner.

“What’re you standing around for?” Han said. “You want to end up as a skewered droid?”

“No, Captain Solo, but the blast door—”

His words were garbled by the sound of approaching footfalls. Leia raised her lightsaber; Han, his blaster. But it was a dozen Alliance soldiers who showed up a moment later.

“You don’t want to go that way,” Han and one of the soldiers said at the same time.

“Yuuzhan Vong,” Han said, pointing toward the blast shield.

“Dead end,” the soldier said, pointing in the opposite direction.

Han stared at the blast shield, then whipped around. “Dead end?”

C-3PO raised his hands to his head. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!”

Something rammed into the far side of the blast shield, and within seconds wisps of stinging smoke began curling from a series of small perforations. Han and Leia looked at each other.

“Weren’t we just here?” she commented.

Everyone moved back from the shield to take up positions in the corridor. Again, Han checked the charge of his blaster, which was down to 50 percent.

“I’m not letting them take me alive, Captain,” a soldier nearby said.

Han aimed his forefinger at the young man. “You’re not going to be taken. Leave it at that, soldier.”

The soldier gulped and nodded. “Thank you, sir.”

The center of the blast shield was rapidly dissolving. War cries and shouts of personal challenge echoed in the corridor.

Han listened for a moment, then swung to Leia. “I’ve got something that just might pass for an idea. Threepio, get over here!”

The droid rose unsteadily from behind a rodent’s nest of corroded ventilation ducts. “Coming, sir.”

Han looked straight into C-3PO’s photoreceptors. “Three-pio, I want you to talk to the Yuuzhan Vong in their own language.”

“Talk to them? But I wouldn’t begin to know what to say.”

Han’s nostrils flared. “What, suddenly you’re at a loss for words? Tell them that all warriors are needed for individual combat in the number one module. Tell them it’s lunchtime for all I care!”

“I don’t believe the Yuuzhan Vong have a word for—”

“Do as Han says, Threepio,” Leia interrupted.

C-3PO’s head moved in fits and starts. “How can I possibly mimic—”

“Boost the bass settings of your audio output modifier,” a soldier suggested.

C-3PO canted his head. “Oh. I didn’t think of that.”

“Yeah, and throw in some sound effects while you’re at it,” Han added.

It took C-3PO a moment to realize that Han was joking. “Sound effects, indeed,” he muttered. “Why doesn’t someone just paint a target on my recharge coupling.”

Han hurried him to a public address comlink mounted on the interior bulkhead. “Say something!”

Placing his vocabulator close to the mike grate, C-3PO began to speak. “Bruk tukken Vong pratte, al’tanna brenzlit tchurokk …”

Almost instantly, the war cries ceased.

“That’s the idea!” Han encouraged. “Keep talking!”

The droid carried on for another minute, finishing with the phrase: “Al’tanna Shimrra knotte Yun’o!”—Long life to Shimrra, beloved of the gods!

“They’re withdrawing!” the soldier closest to the blast shield reported.

Han clapped C-3PO hard on the back, then wrung his hand in pain. “Good going, Goldenrod! You did it!”

C-3PO straightened. “I do have my moments.”

“Of course you do. Now let’s get out of here!”

They waited to make certain that the warriors were gone, then one by one they squeezed through the hole in the blast shield and took the corridor Threepio had wanted everyone to take to begin with. Not one hundred meters along, however, they ran smack into an enemy hunting party. But this time C-3PO was prepared. Adjusting the audio output modifier, he began to speak, completing just two sentences before a storm of thud bugs whirled through the corridor, prompting Han, Leia, and the rest to hit the deck.

“What’d you say to them?” Han asked, up on one knee, with his blaster raised.

C-3PO thought for a moment. “Oh, my. I may have mixed up my words.” He looked down at Han. “I think I insulted them!” “Well, that’s just great.”

“Really, Threepio,” Leia said. “Now you’ve made them angry.”

Everyone raced back to the intersection, but with a dead end in one direction and Yuuzhan Vong in the other, there was no safe turn.

They had to make a stand.

The band of warriors C-3PO had insulted surged down the corridor. Forty strong, they outnumbered the defenders better than two to one. Fusillades of blasterfire improved the odds somewhat, but also depleted many of the weapons. Exhilarated by the sight of empty blasters being hurled aside, the warriors ordered their amphistaffs to curl about their forearms, and began to strut forward, determined to go hand to hand with their quarries. Several of them had their sights set on Leia, who was parrying the last of the thud bugs with nimble twists of her lightsaber.

Han broke for her side, shooting from the hip to drop two of Leia’s would-be contenders. Two others were quick to fill the gap. One lost his head to Leia’s blade. The other flew straight at Han, driving him clear across the corridor and hard into the exterior bulkhead. Dodging hammer blows, Han slid down the wall and squirmed between the warrior’s legs, hoping to be able to choke him from behind. But the warrior spun while Han was struggling to stand, vising his huge hands around Han’s neck in an asth-korr throat hold and whirling him back against the bulkhead.

Han saw stars; then darkness made a narrow tunnel of his vision. He was gasping for breath when the warrior’s head suddenly exploded. The hands on Han’s throat loosened, and the body crumpled to the deck, taking Han with it. Certain that Leia had saved him, he tried to crawl out from under the Yuuzhan Vong, but the corpse wouldn’t budge. His outstretched right hand seized on a small object and he held it up to his eyes. As long as a human finger, and somewhat thicker, it was an older-generation rocket dart, with its obviously defective explosive tip still attached.

Han wriggled free of the fallen warrior in time to see four more Yuuzhan Vong felled from behind by blaster bolts and rocket darts. The fatal volley was coming from halfway down the corridor, where half a dozen soldiers were crouched, kneeling, and prone on the deck.

They wore pinch-cheeked helmets that were as domed as an R2 unit, bisected by horizontal viewplate strips and surmounted by flaglike targeting range finders. Their gray uniforms were exoskeletoned by blast dissipation vests, forearm gauntlets, kneepads, armor-mesh gloves, and alloy boots with zero-g gripsoles. They were armed with blaster rifles, handguns, combat knives, rocket dart launchers, and whatever else might have been hiding in the alloy utility pouches affixed to their broad belts.

A weapons system all his own, the leader wore a combination jet pack and antipersonnel missile launcher, and his belt was red. Catching sight of Han, the trooper tendered a distinctive fingertip salute before hurrying off.

Leia was suddenly alongside Han and helping him to his feet, but her gaze was directed down the corridor. When she finally turned to Han, her eyes were wide, her mouth a rictus of astonishment.

“Fett?” Han managed. “Fett?”

Leia shook her head in refusal. “It can’t be him. Anyone could be inside that armor!”

Han nodded his head in agreement. “That’s gotta be it. Besides, I mean, even if it is him, he was probably trying to kill me, not save me.”

The galaxy’s most notorious bounty hunter, Boba Fett had nearly been the death of Han, Leia, and even C-3PO following the Battle of Hoth, during the Galactic Civil War. But the then-Rebels had evened the score on Tatooine by dropping Fett into the hungry maw of a Sarlacc that resided in the desert world’s Great Pit of Carkoon. Many believed that Fett had ended his days there, but Han and Leia knew better, having encountered Fett on several occasions since his escape from the Sarlacc. However, there had been no accounts of the man since the start of the Yuuzhan Vong war, and Han was inclined to agree with Leia that the trooper who had saluted him could have been anyone. And yet there was the familiar voice of the man who had called himself “Hurn.”

Han, Leia, C-3PO, and the surviving Caluula soldiers stepped over the bodies of the Yuuzhan Vong and raced after the troops in Mandalorian armor, who had already moved off.

Dozens of Yuuzhan Vong lay dead or dying in the corridor, and fierce fighting was under way in the high-ceilinged hold into which the corridor debouched. Han watched a warrior battle vainly against a whipcord that had lashed around his neck, and was just then dragging him into an area of the hold Han couldn’t see. He saw two more warriors nearly halved by rocket darts. The sibilant reports of blasters were momentarily overwhelmed by the ear-shattering explosion of a concussion missile. Six warriors, lanced by shrapnel, flew backward into the hold. But still others attacked. A strapping warrior with a coufee in each hand charged screaming around the corner, only to reappear moments later, black with blood.

Leia clamped her left hand on Han’s upper arm. “Didn’t that one have hair when he went in?”

Han nodded in shock. “I think they’re taking scalps.”

A knot of Yuuzhan Vong warriors had formed in the hold, many of them gesticulating wildly and all of them talking at once.

“Princess Leia, Captain Solo,” C-3PO said from behind them. “The Yuuzhan Vong are very excited. They have sent runners to other parts of Caluula Station to report that they have found warriors who are exceptionally worthy of captivity.”

“I’d say that’s pretty optimistic of them,” Leia said.

She and Han fought their way into the hold. The armored soldiers had been backed into a corner. Two of them were certainly dead, and several others were in danger of being overpowered by groups of bloodied Yuuzhan Vong. The Caluula forces gathered what weapons they could find and dashed forward to help.

Han was searching for the leader when he heard a loud whoosh! and saw the trooper who might have been Boba Fett streaking toward the ceiling. Blades of fire shot from the jet pack’s hornlike gimbaling servos, and bolts rained down on the warriors from his twin hand blasters, which he twirled expertly before slipping them back into their holsters. Amphistaffs flew at him from all quarters, one of them catching him in the chest and sending him off course into a bulkhead.

Fighting broke out among the Yuuzhan Vong for the privilege of being the first to reach him. Two warriors were climbing over the others, almost within arm’s reach of the rocket man, when Han raised and aimed his blaster.

“Just in case it is him,” Leia said, “try not to hit the jet pack.”

“He has returned! Yu’shaa has returned!”

The gathering was small, numbering no more than two hundred Shamed Ones, but word of the Prophet’s return was spreading through the underbelly of Yuuzhan’tar, and given enough time the audience would swell to thousands, perhaps tens of thousands.

Nom Anor gazed down from what had once been the elevated rail of a magnetically levitated transport, to what had been a broad boulevard of nightclubs and restaurants, where his followers stood with faces raised in renewed hope and expectation.

For a moment—and just that—it felt good to be back.

From his residence he had retrieved the ooglith cloaker that disguised him as Yu’shaa. He had told his servants that he was not to be disturbed, and, attired in the garb of an ordinary worker, he had let himself out through a secret passage and wound his way through the sacred precinct, past the Temple of the Modeler and the Place of the Dead, through the districts of Vistu and Bluudon, shaking spies perhaps only imagined, then on along well-trodden paths that led down below the verdant surface growth, down into the deep canyons that had once harbored Coruscant’s poor and disenfranchised and, with the arrival of the Yuuzhan Vong, had become the realm of the Shamed, where outsiders were met with suspicion, and anyone not Shamed had to tread carefully, for fear of never surfacing again.

At certain crossings he had uttered passcodes that had opened the way to even lower levels, not merely populated by Shamed Ones, but also ruled by them. He recalled having spied Onimi on a path much like the ones he was forced to follow; Onimi, doing Shimrra’s bidding, who had unwittingly led Nom Anor to the knowledge that the ultimate repository of the shapers’ arts, the so-called eighth cortex, was empty. Now he, too, was doing Shimrra’s bidding and, like Onimi, had become Shimrra’s puppet and pet, tasked with safeguarding secrets.

Long before Nom Anor had been able to seek out his former confederates he had been recognized, and Shamed Ones in filthy frocks and tattered robeskins had flocked to his side, in awe of Yu’shaa’s unannounced reappearance.

“The rumors of my death were greatly exaggerated,” he had tried to tell them.

Only to hear someone respond: “The Prophet has defeated Shimrra! He has defeated death!”

“No, you miscomprehend,” he had said. “I was never taken by Shimrra.”

“The Prophet evaded Shimrra. He has been waiting only for the right moment to reappear among us!”

His carefully conceived plans went further downhill from there.

By the time he had reached what was the broad boulevard—now grown over with shrubs and saplings—a small crowd had already formed. No one seemed to care that Shimrra had expressly forbidden such gatherings, under penalty of dishonorable death.

“He has returned! Yu’shaa has returned!”

Nom Anor scanned the crowd. Below the elevated track, pushing their way forward, came Kunra, Idrish, and V’tel. A Shamed warrior, Kunra had been Yu’shaa’s bodyguard and chief disciple, and the only one who knew of Nom Anor’s visit to Zonama Sekot.

“We knew you would return,” Kunra said when he and the others had climbed to the top of the rail. “You promised that you would elevate us once you had regained your status, and you have been escalated beyond the rank you held. You’re in a position to help us beyond our boldest imaginings. Guise or not, you are indeed the Prophet.”

Nom Anor recalled his words to Kunra and the late Niiriit. Indeed, he had vowed to restore the honor of the Shamed Ones.

If they only knew how he had betrayed them.

“Yes, I promised to lift you,” he said to Kunra. “But we must wait a while longer. This time I come only to warn you. Shimrra knows what you’re planning to do at the sacrifice, and you must trust me when I tell you that he will respond wrathfully.”

Kunra spread his arms and raised them over the crowd. “Yu’shaa says that we must restage our plan—that we must attack in greater numbers.”

“No, no,” Nom Anor said while the crowd cheered. “You must rethink the plan entirely, or Shimrra will eradicate you!”

Kunra raised his arms again. “Shimrra plans to eradicate us! We must make the first move!”

Nom Anor bellowed to the Shamed Ones, “You can’t look to me, the Jeedai, or anyone else to deliver you from your lowly stations! None of us can repair your disfigurements or modify your rejected enhancements!”

“Yu’shaa calls on us to accept that our blemishes are only surface imperfections, and that we must look past them to see our true selves,” Kunra said. “He tells us to follow the authority of our inner selves; to steer by our inner rudders for all important decisions, rather than pray to the gods, consult with the priests, or fear what actions the warriors and intendants might take against us!

“Individualism is the greatest threat to the hierarchy supported by Shimrra’s elite. Shimrra relies on the elite, in order to preserve a system that perpetuates inequity. He wishes to keep us anchored to ritual and domain, so that he and the elite may prosper. But the Prophet tells us that we are individuals first, and citizens last!”

A chill passed through Nom Anor. He finally understood what Kunra was doing. Kunra—who had saved his life after an assassination attempt by Shoon-mi Esh, and who burned with a warrior’s fire—was not about to let Nom Anor shrink from the promise he had made.

What was supposed to have been a final sermon had become a contest of wills.

Nom Anor tried once more to persuade the crowd.

“You err by looking to me or my disciples for signs!”

Kunra showed him a covert grin. “The Prophet tells us to look to nature, to the sky, and to the stars—to the planet of redemption, whose coming he foretold!”

The Shamed Ones cheered and lifted their faces higher, beyond the elevated train rail, as if searching the sliver of purple sky for signs. Kunra moved close to Nom Anor, close enough so that Nom Anor could feel the tip of a coufee against his ribs.

“Well done, Yu’shaa,” he said quietly. “The multitudes are heated to the point of boiling over. We couldn’t have done this without you.” He paused, then added: “And remember, Prefect: Just as all things are possible on Yuuzhan’tar today, all things will be possible tomorrow.”