FORTY-TWO

Lando’s urgent comlink transmission from Errant Venture found Wedge in the chaotic situation room of Mon Mothma, where a holographic image of Zonama Sekot rotated slowly in a cone of blue light, and bezels of various colors showed the deployment of Alliance and Yuuzhan Vong vessels. Technicians and droids were busy at every duty station, and the scrubbed air was filled with the din of voices and the incessant toning of damage- and threat-assessment screens. In the thick of the fighting, enemy mataloks and yorik-vec were blinking out at the rate of one every five minutes, but closer to the living planet, coralskippers and yorik-akaga had swept through portions of the Hapan line and were strafing the boras and inhabited canyons of the Middle Distance. With Zonama’s mountaintop defenses either incapacitated or determined to be ineffective against the small craft, Mon Mothma was speeding for the planet.

Separate conversations among the tactical officers surrounding the holoprojector table made it impossible for Wedge to hear Lando clearly, so he moved to a corner of the vast room and slipped a headset over his ears.

“The battle at Muscave was nothing more than a diversion,” Lando was saying. “Nas Choka was hoping to keep us too occupied to notice the poisoned vessel he’s trying to get to the surface of Zonama Sekot.” He snorted. “One small ship, slipping past all the defenses. Does that sound familiar?”

“Vaguely,” Wedge lied. “Do you have information on why the Jedi fighters have gone to ground?”

“Negative.”

“Could the Vong have already delivered the Alpha Red?”

“That’s as good a guess as any,” Lando said. “Unless Sekot’s decided to surrender.”

“If that’s the case, then it’s grown weaker over the past fifty years.”

“Or the Vong have gotten stronger,” Lando paused, then said: “Booster’s going to take Errant Venture as close to Zonama Sekot as possible. We’ll evacuate as many of the Jedi and the Ferroans as we can.”

Wedge grimaced. “Lando, you can’t do that if the planet’s already been poisoned. I realize Alpha Red probably doesn’t pose a threat to humans or Bothans, but, after Caluula, we can’t be sure that it can’t be spread by other species.”

Lando was silent for a long moment. “Understood, Wedge,” he said in a resigned voice. “We’ll check with Kyp and Corran before we lift anyone up the well. What do you hear from Coruscant?”

“Tooth and nail. Shimrra is apparently dead—Luke saw to that. But Shimrra’s death hasn’t slowed Nas Choka. Even if we can eventually defeat his forces, there’s not much chance of forcing a surrender.”

“What’s the answer?”

“I’m worried that Kre’fey and Sovv are looking hard at Alpha Red.”

Lando exhaled audibly. “Seems to be everybody’s solution just now.”

Wedge signed off and removed the headset. He spent a long moment regarding the rotating holoimage of Zonama Sekot. He refused to accept that the poisoned ship had gotten through. Starfighters could prevent it from reaching the surface. He thought back almost five years to the decision he had made to come out of retirement. He hadn’t a notion then that he would end up piloting a starfighter at Sernpidal, be charged with holding Borleias, or attacking Corulag. But that was the way of war. You did whatever you could, hoping that even the smallest contributions affected the end result.

He moved to the nearest duty station and asked to be patched through to the senior mission officer.

“I want you to ready a starfighter,” he said when the female officer answered.

“For any particular squadron?” she asked. “They’re all so shot up the pilot can have his pick.”

“Who’s been tasked with protecting Zonama Sekot?”

“That would be Red Squadron, General.”

Perfect, Wedge thought. “Alert Red Leader to expect a reinforcement.”

“What’s the pilot’s call sign, sir?”

Wedge considered it, then said, “Vader.”

“Impossible,” Nas Choka told his tactician. “The Supreme Overlord is a ward of the gods. Should we fail in our task, he will be the last of us to die—and our success is assured.” He gestured toward Coruscant, readily visible through the blister transparency. “Zonama Sekot will die, and the battle here will turn as soon as I recall the rest of our forces from Muscave. We will chase the Alliance back to the Outer Rim, where they will spend the next ten years licking their wounds and dreaming of the day they will be strong enough to mount a second counteroffensive.”

The tactician inclined his head in respect. “But the announcement was made by Eminence Harrar himself.”

“Harrar!” the warmaster said in surprise. “I thought he was in the Outer Rim.”

“No, Fearsome One. Crossed over to the side of the enemy—at Zonama Sekot, when it was in the Unknown Regions. Prefect Nom Anor, as well, now revealed to be leader of the heretics.”

Nas Choka extended his hand to the bulkhead to steady himself. Harrar, a traitor? Nom Anor, an insurgent … Though painful to endure, those were reversals he could accept. But surely he would know if the Yuuzhan Vong had suddenly lost their conduit to the gods. He glanced around the command chamber at his commander and subaltern, his villip mistress and priest. Not one of them was distracted or apprehensive; all of them were attending to their duties.

“A lie by renegades,” he said to the tactician at last. “A cowardly attempt to throw us into confusion.”

Again, the tactician inclined his head. “Warmaster, my feelings echo yours. I should know—inside—if our Supreme Overlord is dead. And yet the villip reports from other commanders on the surface confirm that warriors and Jeedai have overrun the Citadel, including Shimrra’s coffer.”

“Jeedai,” Nas Choka repeated.

“May I speak my thoughts?”

“Quietly,” the warmaster cautioned.

“Why should Zonama Sekot’s planetary weapons cease unless the living world is fearless? Could Shimrra somehow have been duped into playing into the hands of the gods, when their true aim is to punish him for arrogance—and us, for our faithfulness to him?”

Nas Choka’s slanted forehead furrowed. “I—”

“Warmaster,” Yammka’s Mount’s Supreme Commander interrupted, with a brisk salute. “Lord Shimrra’s personal vessel has launched from the Citadel, and even now emerges from the atmosphere to join us in battle.”

“Show me!” Nas Choka said, whirling to the transparency.

The commander pointed to a section of the blister, which showed an enhanced view of the Supreme Overlord’s projectile-shaped coffer, its powerful dovin basal tugging it swiftly from the gravitational grip of the planet. Alongside the vessel, though not yet engaging it in battle, flew two Alliance starfighters and a battered, saucer-shaped freighter.

Nas Choka showed the tactician a brief nod of acquittal. “You see, a trick by renegades. Not only does the Supreme Overlord live, he seeks to reinvigorate us personally.” He looked at the commander. “We will demonstrate our gratitude to Shimrra by immolating the flagship in his honor. Order all vessels to converge on Ralroost.”

On the bridge of the vessel whose every component answered to him, Onimi sent a blur of objects racing for Jacen, beginning with the carved idols that flanked Jaina: cloaked Yun-Harla, many-armed Yun-Yammka, thousand-eyed Yun-Shuno, and the rest. But Jacen stood firm. Not wanting to risk hurting Jaina inadvertently by deflecting the objects, he pulled everything into a whirling cloud, as if in orbit around him. Beyond the cloud, he was dimly aware that a transparency had formed above the console, and that constellations of stars were winking into existence, smeared in places by the explosive exchanges among the hundreds of warships battling at the edge of Coruscant’s envelope.

Jacen’s steadfast defense infuriated Onimi. Reaching deeper into himself, the Supreme Overlord used his telekinetic powers to create cracks in the bulkheads and ceiling, hoping to add chunks of unrooted yorik coral to his conjured storm. But as fast as the fissures formed, Jacen repaired them, and those chunks that were torn away he ordered the vessel to cement in place.

Mismatched eyes opened wide in disbelief, Onimi charged, his feet moving so rapidly that he might have been gliding across the deck.

Though crippled by the deformations that had resulted from poorly healed enhancement surgeries and the consequences of experimental escalations, the former shaper was still taller than Jacen and pound for pound more powerful. But the struggle had nothing to do with size and less to do with brute strength. Onimi’s true potency lay in his abilities to amplify the electric current that flowed through his body, or—like Vergere—to call on his refined metabolism to fashion molecules and compounds, and deliver them through his curving yellow fingernails, his single fang, his blood, sweat, saliva, and breath. But where Vergere had learned to produce emollients and healing tears, Onimi was capable of producing a brew of fast-acting and deadly toxins. Compared to the former shaper’s mastery of Yuuzhan Vong bioscience, Vergere had been a mere adept.

He flew at Jacen with hands upraised and mouth ajar. Jacen lifted his hands in defense and he and Onimi met with blinding discharges of electrical energy that entangled both of them in a flashing web. Their hands interlocked, they whirled from one side of the bridge to the other in a kind of mad pirouette, caroming off the coarse bulkheads and smooth instrumentation. Jaina sent her twin what reinforcement she could summon, but he told her to conserve her strength.

The transmutated secretions from Onimi’s palms and fingertips sent hallucinogens through Jacen’s skin and capillaries, and coursing through his bloodstream. Onimi’s paralyzing fang struck repeatedly for Jacen’s temples and neck. Poison wafted on his forced sighs and rode within the droplets of his frothing saliva.

But the Jacen that the Supreme Overlord had in his taloned grip was not there. Where once Jacen had been unable to find Onimi through the Force, now it was Onimi who couldn’t find Jacen. What he found instead was formless, supple, and fathomless—an infinite emptiness, but as serene as a wind toppling trees to encourage new growth.

A being of light, Jacen was drawing into himself all of Onimi’s lethal compounds, neutralizing them and casting them out as sweat, tears, and exhalations.

He understood at last why he had failed to catch Anakin’s lightsaber when Luke had tossed it to him: he was never meant to catch it, because he had become the lightsaber.

He had attained the ability to cut through any resistance in himself; to sever the bonds of preconception; to open a gaping hole into a reality more expansive than any he had ever dared imagine; to heal. As his grandfather had done, he had broken through the apparent opposites that concealed the absolute nature of the Force, and found his way into an unseen unity that existed beyond the seeming separateness of the world. For a moment all the cosmic tumblers had clicked into place, and light and dark sides became something he could balance within himself, without having to remain on one side or the other. The consciousness that was Jacen Solo was strewn across the vast spectrum of life energy. He had passed beyond choice and consequence, good and evil, light and dark, life and death.

All that had been required of Jacen was complete surrender—a technique once mastered by the Jedi Order but at some point misplaced; transposed to an emphasis on individual achievement, which had opened a way to arrogance.

In that the path was available to any who chose to seek and follow it, Jacen understood that the discovery was really a rediscovery. Indeed, the ur-Yuuzhan Vong had adhered to it when they had lived in symbiosis with Yuuzhan’tar. In that dim protohistorical time, they had been group-minded, living in a world where the boundaries between self and other were permeable. By cutting that bond they had isolated themselves from the Force. They had deluded themselves into thinking that they were worshiping life, when in fact they were worshiping the only route to symbiosis left open to them, which was death.

Jacen realized that, in a sense, he had paraphrased Onimi. He had passed beyond the tradition of the Jedi Order into a more embracing reality. But instead of attempting to steal the authority of the gods, or to become a god, he had finally allowed himself to merge with the Force in its entirety and become a conduit for its raw power, which flowed through him like the thundering headwaters of a great river. The conjoining of the Force and his Vongsense enabled him to render himself small enough to follow Onimi wherever he went or attempted to hide; to counter Onimi’s every action, and merge with his living vessel on a molecular level.

Jacen ended their spinning, bringing them to a halt in the center of the bridge, where he continued to parry Onimi’s strikes. The Supreme Overlord’s lolling eye fixed him with a gimlet stare.

Gradually Onimi began to understand, as well. He grasped that Jacen wasn’t defending himself so much as using Onimi’s own strengths against him. Jacen was fighting without fighting; drawing Onimi deeper into the struggle by demanding more of Onimi’s indigenous toxins, to the point that he couldn’t keep up. Jacen was the vacuum, the dovin basal singularity into which Onimi was being sucked. Jacen had become the dismantling void that was drawing Onimi into a slender thread, attenuating him to the point of infinite smallness.

Onimi’s self-deformed face began to change. His arteries pulsed and his veins bulged from beneath his pale skin.

Onimi fought with everything that remained in him, but Jacen could not be overwhelmed. As a pure conduit of the Force, he was incapable of taking missteps or making wrong moves. He stood not at the edge of the tilting ecliptic of his vision, but at the center, as a fulcrum. The weight that would disturb the balance was Onimi, but to Jacen, that weight was no longer of sufficient mass to make a difference.

The Force encased Jacen like a whirlwind, moving deep into the darkness the Yuuzhan Vong had brought to the galaxy, and gathering it and sending it up the spout into the funnel cloud, where it was transformed and dispersed.

Onimi was becoming more insubstantial by the moment.

Jacen continued to stand firm, righting the world.

He had become so powerful as to be dangerous to his own galaxy, for he could see clearly the temptations of the dark side and the desire to force one’s will on others—to so completely dominate that all life would kowtow to him.

He purged his mind of all pride and evil intent and entered a moment of unadulterated bliss, where he seemed to have unlocked the very secrets of existence.

He knew that he would never again be able to reach this exalted state, and at once that he would spend the rest of his life trying.

Neither Jaina nor Jacen had answered Leia’s calls as Nom Anor had led the search for them, but the reason for their silence became clear the moment she entered the bridge of the accelerating alien vessel.

She was last to arrive in the cavernous chamber. Nom Anor and Han, blaster in hand, had raced in ahead of her, only to be transfixed by the spectacle unfolding before their eyes—a sight Leia knew she would carry to her grave, and all the more spellbinding for the backdrop of familiar stars, hyphens of coherent light, roiling plasma missiles. She felt as if she were wedged between a dream and a vision; lifted into a realm that was usually denied to mortal beings.

In the center of the bridge Jacen stood like a pillar of blinding light, feet planted, arms at his sides, chin lifted. The dazzling light seemed to spin outward from his midsection and surround him like an aura. His face was almost frighteningly serene, and perhaps a touch sad. The pupils of his eyes were like rising suns. He seemed to age five years—features maturing, complexion softening, body elongating—as Leia watched breathlessly.

What youth might have remained in her son vanished.

Across the bridge, Shimrra’s Shamed familiar, Onimi, was pinned to the coarse bulkhead like a captive shadowmoth, uneven eyes rolled up into his deformed head and slavering mouth opened wide in wonderment, agony, despair—it was impossible to know.

Jaina dangled limply between her brother and Onimi, as if a mournful sculpture, fragile but growing stronger by the moment.

And as she strengthened, Onimi began to wane. For an instant it appeared that the surgeries, mutilations, and disfigurements were reversing themselves. The Shamed One’s facial features became symmetrical. His twisted body straightened, assuming its original size, shape, and aspect—more human than not, though taller and leaner, with long limbs and large hands. But life deserted him just as quickly. He slid to the deck as if his bones had dissolved. Poured from his mouth, eyes, and ears, corrosive fluids began to consume him, leaving nothing more than a puddle of foul hydrocarbons, which the yorik coral deck absorbed as it might a stain.

Immediately the vessel spasmed, as if it had been struck by turbolaser fire, or had in fact sustained a kind of stroke. Color and warmth drained from the living console, and the instruments took on an arthritic look. Cognition hoods and villips grew desiccated. Blaze bugs fell out of formation and died on the floor of their niche. Coral fractured, and the already scant green light faded. With its dovin basal dying, the vessel almost succumbed to a last grab by Coruscant; then it lurched forward once more, aimed resolutely for the heart of the battle.

When Leia finally came back to herself, Jacen had lifted Jaina from the horns on which she had been suspended, and was cradling her in his arms.

“You wouldn’t let me help you,” she said.

Jacen comforted her with a smile. “I needed you to help yourself.”

Nom Anor watched in awe as Onimi disappeared into the deck of the bridge, his body dissolved by whatever corrosive poisons he had fabricated to use against Jacen Solo. Death had come to the Shamed One who had brought shaper Nen Yim to Coruscant; the Shamed One whom Nom Anor had once followed to a secret shaper grashal; the Shamed One who had sat at the feet of Shimrra, and whose rhymes had been a constant irritant to the elite.

The Shamed One who had tricked everyone into believing that Shimrra was the Supreme Overlord.

The Supreme Overlord who was now dead.

Nom Anor stared at the discoloration that had been Onimi. Even if he lived to tell it, would anyone believe his tale? Would the Jedi be willing to corroborate it?

A prolonged paroxysm from the vessel snapped him back into awareness of his perilous dilemma. His real eye darted from the Jedi twins to their parents. There was still time to render them unconscious where they stood, then pilot Onimi’s vessel to rendezvous with whatever was left of Nas Choka’s mighty armada—

But perhaps not.

Jacen Solo was as dangerous a foe as could be imagined. What’s more, Onimi’s vessel, though roused from stasis, might not respond to Nom Anor. If he was to escape with his life, he needed a more foolproof plan.

The solution presented itself when the vessel lurched again, and the controls began to surrender their suppleness.

“Onimi was wedded to this ship,” he said in a rush. “With his death, it has begun to die, and we will perish with it.”

When Jacen nodded in confirmation, Jaina said, “Mara is searching for us.”

Han rushed to the console and peered through the blister transparency. “Then the Falcon’s, gotta be out there somewhere.” He turned to Nom Anor. “I’ve seen Yuuzhan Vong evacuate their ships, wearing those gnullith masks—”

“There’s a better way.” Nom Anor cut him off. “This vessel is equipped with a yorik-trema. What you call a ‘crate’—a landing craft.”

Han showed him a long-suffering look. “What, you were waiting for me to ask?”

Quickly, Nom Anor led the Solo family out of the bridge and through a bewildering maze of corridors, whose throbbing walls were already showing signs of imminent collapse. The palm of his right hand opened lock after dilating lock, allowing them to weave their way clear across the vessel to the port-side bulkhead, and ultimately into a small grotto, equipped with a semicircular array of locks.

Nom Anor opened what appeared to be the most exterior of the locks, and gestured everyone inside. “Get settled, while I arm the launch organ!”

Han clasped his left arm around his daughter’s waist and started for the lock. But Jacen stopped him.

“This doesn’t lead to the yorik-trema.” He turned slightly and pointed to the innermost lock. “That’s the correct one.”

Jaina glanced around the grotto. “Jacen’s right.” She nodded to the lock Nom Anor had opened. “It leads to a waste disposal area.”

Jacen regarded Nom Anor. “Once you had sealed us inside, you would have been able to pilot the landing craft to safety.” Disappointment tugged at his features. “And yet despite your attempt at treachery we owe you our lives, because I doubt I would have been able to find my way to this grotto.”

Nom Anor glanced from the first lock to the second, then forced a relieved sigh. “Thank you for catching my error, Jacen Solo. What with leading the Shamed Ones in rebellion and witnessing Onimi’s death, I was momentarily confused—”

Han drew his blaster. “Save it.”

Nom Anor raised his hands in surrender. “It was an innocent mistake! Now isn’t the time to argue!” He risked a step toward Han. “We must board the escape craft before this vessel—”

Nom Anor lunged forward.

“His eye!” Jaina yelled.

Poison spewed from the plaeryin bol. Han was too encumbered to twist himself or Jaina out of its path. In a blur, Jacen interposed himself between Nom Anor and his father, and took the lethal gush full in the face.

Even better than hoped for! Nom Anor thought. With Jacen out of the way, he could easily incapacitate the others. With his right hand, he reached for the little finger of his left. At the same time, he steeled himself for a dash across the grotto. It would take a moment for the knockout gas released by the false digit to reach full effect, and that moment constituted all the time he had to reach the escape craft lock and seal it behind him.

In the instant his hands met, he heard the snap-hiss of a lightsaber.

And in the interminable instant that followed, he watched Leia’s energy blade sever his left hand at the wrist, and watched himself falling to his knees in shock and searing pain. Worse, it was Jacen who came to his side, weakened by the plaeryin bol’s venom, but very much alive.

“It didn’t have to be this way,” the young Jedi said.

Nom Anor clasped his stump of forearm in his right hand. “Didn’t it, Jeedai?” He smirked. “Even if words from you kept me from execution or life imprisonment, what course was left to me? Just as my atheism renders me unfit for Yuuzhan Vong society, my utter contempt for the Force makes me unfit to live among any species that recognize it. I’ve been a stranger to all worlds. Even Yu’shaa, leader of the Shamed Ones, was just another role for me—another lie.” A rueful laugh escaped him. “Ooglith masquers can’t hide everything, Jeedai.”

On the other side of the grotto, Jaina was pressing her hand against the lock’s sensor organ, to no apparent effect.

“It responds only to the flesh of Yuuzhan Vong,” Nom Anor said. He felt Jacen’s eyes on him.

“Then we’ll use your severed hand,” Jacen said.

Nom Anor blew out his breath and rose to his feet. Crossing the grotto, he pressed the palm of his right hand to the bulkhead sensor. “Get inside,” he said when the lock dilated. “The landing craft will scarcely outlive the vessel that birthed it.”

Han and Leia helped their daughter into the yorik-trema; then Han reappeared, blaster in hand, to usher his son aboard. He stood at the lock for a long moment, coming to his own decision. Nom Anor watched Han’s jaw bunch with fury, then relax. In the end, Han lowered his blaster and gestured for Nom Anor to enter the craft.

Instead, Nom Anor took a backward step and shook his head. “If I’m clear on one point, it’s this: I want no part of whatever new order is in the making. I will die here with Onimi, for we have been two of a kind from the start.”

With that, he shoved Han back through the lock and pressed his right hand to the bulkhead, launching the craft into space.

*  *  *

Nas Choka paced back and forth in front of Yammka’s transparency, his troubled gaze fixed on Shimrra’s vessel as it climbed out of Yuuzhan’tar’s reach in fits and starts.

“Ralroost wallows in our sights,” the tactician reported.

“Shimrra approaches,” the Supreme Commander said from beneath his cognition hood, “though he still refrains from communicating with us.”

Nas Choka traded glances with the tactician before replying. “Give him time.”

He had no sooner swung back to the transparency to track the vessel’s course than it began to stutter in flight and enter into an end-over-end roll.

“The dovin basal has failed!” the commander shouted. “The vessel is dismembering!”

Nas Choka wanted to tear his eyes away but couldn’t. Atmosphere and other gases were beginning to puff and stream from fractures in the vessel’s hull. Fluids leaked from the dovin basal blastulas, trailing behind like frozen streamers. Vital components shut down and went spinning off into space. Broadening and deepening, the fissures joined, creating a network of cracks, from which hunks of yorik coral began to tumble. Then, just at the leading edge of the planetary flotilla, Shimrra’s coffer exploded, sundering like a disintegrated planet and loosing a shock wave that crippled countless war vessels before it dispersed.

A fearful silence descended on Yammka’s, command chamber. For a long moment, Nas Choka could only gape in incredulity at what had occurred. Never in their long history had the Yuuzhan Vong been without a Supreme Overlord—their holy intercessor. Despite the success at Zonama Sekot, the armada was nothing without Shimrra. They had been cut off from the divine, deprived of any means of appealing to Yun-Yuuzhan or Yun-Yammka for guidance or support.

What had lighted the Yuuzhan Vong universe had been extinguished. Truly the gods had abandoned the Yuuzhan Vong and allied with the infidels. They had withdrawn their guardianship of Shimrra, and the Yuuzhan Vong had become Shamed Ones—rejected, passed over, a hopeless godless species.

Defeated!

Nas Choka could feel the expectant gazes of his commanders and subalterns. He grasped the question implied by every look—the question every Yuuzhan Vong on or off Coruscant was asking: Is there purpose to fighting to the death without any hope for salvation in the afterlife?

Nas Choka martialed his pride and moved to the villipchoir. “All Supreme Commanders,” he told the villip mistress; then, when the villips had taken on the likenesses of his chief subordinates, he said: “The war is ended. We are defeated by the gods and by their allies. Though they have abandoned us, we will suffer our defeat with honor, because it is what the gods would expect. But any of you who wish to follow the Supreme Overlord’s example and die as warriors may do so; just as any of you who wish to commit ritual death may do so. Those who choose neither will join me in accepting the shame of surrender, and finding what nobility we can in capture and graceless execution.

“Rrush’hok ichnar vinim’hok!”

Even while the vessel’s Supreme Commander, chief tactician, and priest were opening themselves with coufees, Nas Choka moved back to the transparency. Across the entire embattled face of Yuuzhan’tar—of Coruscant—coralskippers, pickets, and cruisers were veering into collision courses with Alliance ships.

Errant Venture hung over Zonama Sekot like a freshly forged spearpoint, her blazing turbolasers providing cover fire for the modified shuttles, yachts, and blockade runners that plummeted from the forward launching bay. On detecting the smugglers’ ships, the coralskippers that had been harassing the Star Destroyer regrouped and set after what must have seemed like more assailable prey.

Lady Luck had been first out of the bay, with Wild Karrde close behind. In the cockpit of the SoroSuub yacht, Lando and Tendra were busy at separate tasks when Talon commed them.

“Two skips on your starboard,” he warned.

“Got ’em,” Lando said into his headset mike. He nodded for Tendra to raise the yacht’s rear deflector screen.

“If you two would allow me the honor …”

“No need to stand on ceremony, Talon.”

Lando pushed the control yoke away from him, dropping Lady Luck into Zonama Sekot’s gravity well. The ship bucked and began to vibrate as the atmosphere thickened. Tendra called a starboard view to the console displays in time to see angry bursts of laserfire spew from the Corellian transport’s triple batteries. Struck full force, the lead coralskipper farthest from Lady Luck crumbled. The second skip slewed hard to port in an effort to come alongside the yacht, but Wild Karrde’s, follow-up bursts caught the enemy vessel while it was still outside the yacht’s shields, and it, too, disintegrated.

“We owe you one,” Lando said.

“Actually, that’s two,” Talon replied. “But who’s counting?”

Tendra eased the angle of the yacht’s descent and set a course for the Middle Distance. By approaching from the east, they could avoid the hail of plasma missiles that were pounding the central canyon. The adjusted course took Lady Luck, Wild Karrde, and some of the other rescue craft almost directly beneath Jade Shadow. While it remained in stationary orbit, Mara’s ship had sustained heavy damage.

Below, youthful mountains poked from opaque white clouds, their flanks and foothills cloaked with unspoiled boras. To the west the forest was interrupted by expanses of grasslands. Where those ended, the virgin terrain undulated, rose again to lofty heights, then angled down toward the central canyon, which was blanketed in layers of thick smoke.

Toning proximity alarms told Lando and Tendra that Lady Luck had attracted the attention of some of the coralskippers that were strafing the canyon and surrounding woodlands. Four skips were already climbing out of the smoke to welcome the yacht to the fight.

“Talon, we might need your help again,” Lando started to say when two of the coralskippers were cracked open and knocked out of the sky by laserfire. The trailing pair deployed singularities, but the shields bought them mere moments of refuge before proton torpedoes blew them apart.

An instant later, two red X-wings streaked past Lady Luck from astern, banking broadly to the south before coming about to assume the same approach vector the smugglers were taking. Lando opened a channel to the starfighters.

“Thanks from Lady Luck for clearing the way.”

“Red Two at your service,” a familiar voice responded.

“Wedge!” Lando said around a broad grin. “How much grease did it take to get you installed in that snubfighter?”

“Less than half what it took at the start of this war.”

“Yeah, I suppose we’re all back to fighting trim.”

Tendra stretched out her left hand and patted Lando’s slight paunch. “He means, most of us,” she said into her headset.

Lando cocked an eyebrow at his wife, then said, “Where’s that poisoned vessel, Wedge?”

“Tell your scanners to look due north-northwest.”

Tendra tasked the instruments to provide a close-up view. Defended by a ring of eight coralskippers, the six-armed slayers’ vessel was swooping down toward the south rim of the canyon. As many Red Squadron X-wings were in close pursuit, needling the enemy with lasers and torps. But instead of answering them with plasma missiles, the skips were devoting all their power to fashioning shielding singularities to protect the poisoned craft.

All the levity had left Wedge’s voice when he said, “There’s no stopping it now.”

Lady Luck’s proximity alarms began to blare again. Lando watched the friend-or-foe identifier cycle in apparent bewilderment, then he glanced around the sky.

“Wedge, our scanners are showing unfriendlies, but they’re not registering as skips.”

“Because they’re not,” Wedge said flatly. “Whatever they are, they’re rising out of the forests—hundreds of them!”

Lando leaned toward the forward viewport. A swarm of insectile ships, showing green wings and red carapaces, was corkscrewing up toward the Smugglers’ Alliance ships. As they drew nearer, singularities formed to both sides of Lady Luck. The yacht pitched violently to port and began to slide for the surface. Lando lifted his hands from the control yoke and turned to his wife in wide-eyed confusion.

“That’s not me piloting!” He commed Wedge. “We’re caught up in some kind of tractor beam. It’s dragging us down!”

“Wish I could help,” Wedge said a moment later. “But they’ve got me, too.”

Corran had been the first to spot the ships—or creatures—rise from the tampasi east of the canyon. He, Kyp, Lowbacca, Cilghal, and the rest of the downed Jedi pilots were gathered on the landing platform now, watching the red and green craft dart through the sky like maidenflies, making use of grasper claws and dovin-basal-like gravitic anomalies to bring down Red Squadron starfighters and Smugglers’ Alliance ships alike.

A few kilometers east of where the Jedi were grouped, Lady Luck, Wild Karrde, and two X-wings were descending to treetop level.

“We don’t know what they are, Lando,” Corran was saying into his comlink. “We’ve never seen them before.”

“Another of Sekot’s surprises,” Talon added to the conversation.

“Here’s a piece of good news,” Kyp interrupted. He pointed to the southern sky. “Sekot’s chasing the skips, too.”

The southern sky was a frenzy of insectile craft. But unlike the Alliance ships, the coralskippers were not going quietly to ground, and many of the swift darters were being annihilated by plasma missiles. A sudden growl from Lowbacca brought everyone about-face to see Danni Quee and Magister Jabitha approaching the landing platform, trailed by a crowd of perhaps one hundred wary Ferroans, who had emerged from the shelters.

Kyp met the two women halfway. “You spoke with Sekot?” he asked Danni.

Her “yes” was breathy with awe, but she offered nothing more.

Corran looked hard at Jabitha. “Who’s piloting the insect craft?”

“Sekot,” the magister said.

Corran gave his head a confused shake. “I thought the idea was to keep the fight from the surface?”

“Only until Sekot was ready to launch the grappler ships,” Danni explained at last. “Sekot’s promise to Jacen was that the planet would only fight without fighting.” She saw from the expressions that greeted her that she’d opened the floodgates. “Sekot is only interested in welcoming the Yuuzhan Vong home.”

“Home?” Corran and Kyp said at the same time.

There wasn’t time for further explanation. Dozens of coralskippers were being hauled down into the boras by grappler ships—all except for the poisoned vessel, which six unpiloted insectile craft were tugging back up the gravity well.

The Jedi, Danni, Jabitha, and some of the Ferroans hurried into the forest to be on hand when the coralskippers landed. Two kilometers along, the ragtag group was joined by Lando, Tendra, Talon, Shada, Wedge, and several other Red Squadron and Smugglers’ Alliance pilots.

Running at the head of the pack, Kyp and Corran ignited their lightsabers as soon as they saw the coralskippers and grapplers drifting down between the massive trunks of the balloon-leafed boras. The first of the coralskippers settled into the loamy shade like sculptures in a garden. Dovin basals housed in the blunt noses of the vessels sent slender blue-veined feeders into the soft ground. In response, creepers and vines writhed to touch the coarse hulls of the skips. Some writhed into the seams that defined the edges of the mica canopies and popped them open.

Shucking out of their cognition hoods, four Yuuzhan Vong leapt from the cockpit cavities, brandishing short amphistaffs. The Jedi stepped in to engage them, but stopped short when they saw the amphistaffs slip from the hands of the enemy pilots and slither off into the lush woodland. Breather masks and shoulder-borne tactical villips dropped from the pilots like ripe seedpods. Two dozen thud bugs burst from one pilot’s bandolier and took to the treetops.

The Yuuzhan Vong gazed at the Jedi like bewildered children. Caught between worlds, unacquainted with surrender, they did as they had seen their captives do and fell to their knees, their heads bowed in disgrace and their wrists pressed to their opposite shoulders.

Kyp was the first to deactivate his lightsaber; the rest followed.

Cilghal loosed a joyful exhale and put her arm around Danni’s waist. “These warriors will be the first converts,” she said. “This ground will become a hallowed place.”

Transfixed by the scene, Kyp clapped his hand on Corran’s shoulder and muttered, “A world has been saved from destruction.”

Dying rapidly, the yorik-trema was no longer accelerating but tumbling through space. Whatever flora was responsible for providing breathable atmosphere was failing, as the interior walls’ bioluminescent lichen already had.

“It doesn’t want to respond to me,” Jaina said from the controls. The hull’s transparency was filmed by a thickening cataract, but Han and Leia could still discern the distinctive shape of the Millennium Falcon, racing to come alongside, escorted by two battle-scarred X-wings.

“Come on, Mara,” Han said through gritted teeth. “Use the tractor beam.”

“That won’t help,” Jaina said as she tugged the flimsy cognition hood from her head. “Our only chance is to get aboard the Falcon.” Her eyes roamed over the irregularly pulsing control console. “There’s just enough life left in this ship for it to extend an umbilical.”

“Oh, no,” Han muttered. “Not again.”

Jaina tweaked one of the organiform control arms that grew from the console. Accompanied by wet, squishy sounds, the central section of the craft’s cramped deck softened, and an osmotic membrane began to form. Han glanced at the expanding circle in growing dismay, imagining the craft’s intestinelike cofferdam flailing in space as it attempted to vacuum-seal against the Falcon’s portside docking ring or dorsal hatch.

Abruptly the freighter snagged the yorik-trema, stopping it from tumbling. The deck membrane irised open, and a nauseating odor invaded the cabin space.

Han clamped his right hand over his mouth. “How do we know the umbilical’s properly sealed against the hatch?”

“It’s not the tightest fit, Dad,” Jaina said, “but it’s one we can survive.”

Jacen peered into the confined, throbbing tube. “Guess we’re going to have to crawl.”

Han’s face fell. “Ah, this is too much—even for me.”

Leia glanced at him. “I’ll go first, if it’ll make you feel better.”

“Only thing that’s gonna make me feel better is an EVA suit.”

Leia stroked his whiskered face. “Be brave, darling.”

Lowering herself to the deck, she wormed through the membrane and began to elbow-crawl through the tube. Han took a deep breath and followed, his hands disappearing to the wrist in the slime that covered the floor. Two minutes later Leia disappeared from view, and Han’s hands touched the comforting solidity of the Falcon’s air lock.

One by one, coated with slime and reeking of putrid organics, the four of them squeezed into the freighter’s portside docking arm, where Kenth, Harrar, C-3PO, and R2-D2 were waiting.

“Oh, my,” the protocol droid said. “I’ll activate the sonic shower at once.”

R2-D2 rocked on his feet, whistling and tooting.

No sooner had Kenth dogged the hatch than Mara came running through the forward compartment, calling over her shoulder to Tahiri and the Noghri that everyone was safely aboard.

“Where’s Uncle Luke?” Jacen asked.

Mara grabbed him by the arm and hauled him into the aft cabin space, where Luke was laid out on one of the small sleeping platforms. Han, Leia, and Jaina crowded in behind them.

Jacen kneeled by the bed and carefully removed the dressing Kenth had placed over the deep puncture wound in the left side of Luke’s chest. Luke’s face and hands were white. His lips and the beds of his fingernails were slightly blue. His eyes were closed and his breathing was shallow.

“Shimrra’s amphistaff,” Mara said anxiously.

Jacen looked up at her and nodded. “I saw him get stabbed.”

Mara pressed her hands to her eyes and began to cry. Jacen took her tear-moistened hands in his and brought them to Luke’s chest wound. He held them there for a long moment, removing his hands only once, to convey some of his own tears to Luke’s wound.

Luke’s chest heaved as he took a sharp inhalation, and his eyelids fluttered open. Sobbing openly, Mara laid her head on his chest, and slowly Luke’s left hand rose to caress her red-gold hair.

“I’ll live, my love,” he said weakly.

Leia kneeled down to wrap her arms around her son and Mara and cry with them. Swallowing the lump in his throat, Han put his arm around Jaina’s shoulders, then the two of them all but fell on top of Leia and Jacen.

C-3PO and R2-D2 appeared at the hatch in time to see the Skywalkers and Solos in a weeping tangle. The astromech made a fluting sound that was at once rejoicing and forlorn.

“I know, Artoo,” C-3PO said quietly. “There are few occasions when I envy humans, but this is certainly one of them.”