Chapter 42

It was a forty-second turbolift drop to the Solos' floor in their Eastport residential tower, and forty seconds had never seemed so long. Leia pulled her lightsaber from the thigh pocket of her grease-stained flight suit, and Han checked the power level of his famous BlasTech DL-44. Given the tower's unobtrusive but watchful security department, Leia felt certain there would be a pair of guard droids and a sentient supervisor waiting with a retina scanner when they stepped out of the lift. As long as Han didn't start a firefight, that would probably even be a good thing. It was always smart to have a little support in situations like these.

"Can't this thing drop any faster?" Han grumbled.

"They don't put acceleration compensators in turbolifts," Leia reminded. "Be patient, Han. We'll be more useful without our knees in our chests."

Han was silent for a moment, then asked, "Did Adarakh say they were on the way, or already in the building?"

"On our floor," Leia said. "He said they were already on our floor."

With its rare red ladalums and milky larmalstone floor, the Solo atrium appeared as deserted and placid as the first time Viqi Shesh had visited it. Instead of ambling casually by as she had before, she walked straight toward the cul-de-sac, the looming figures of an entire Yuuzhan Vong infiltration cell following close on her heels.

Dressed in the blue jumpsuits of the Municipal Health Bureau and wearing conspicuously similar ooglith masquers, Viqi's companions looked more like a squad of sextuplet assassins than a vermin control team - though it hardly mattered. Droids were not capable of making the leap of thought necessary to interpret the odd similarity as a threat, and there would be no sentients awake inside to notice. Ten minutes ago, she had walked past and innocuously blown an ultrasonic whistle, causing her sensislug surveillance bug to self-destruct and release an invisible cloud of sleep-inducing spores. By now, everyone in the Solo apartment, including Ben Skywalker, would be slumbering peacefully.

Viqi had almost entered the atrium when a sudden rustle broke out behind her, and she turned to find the infiltrators opening their collars to reach for the gnulliths concealed beneath their jumpsuits.

"Not yet, gentlemen." In an attempt to keep the security system from identifying the stress pattern in her voice, Viqi spoke in a bare whisper. "We don't want to alarm anyone."

"But the spores -"

"Grow ineffective after five minutes, or so I was given to believe." Viqi was not at all happy about having her judgment questioned by a male inferior. "It has been ten minutes."

"They settle to the ground after five minutes," the leader corrected. His name was Inko or Eagko or something similarly odd. " If they are stirred into the air again -"

"We'll mask when we are inside, Inkle." Viqi pushed the leader's hand back beneath his jumpsuit, then tipped her chin toward the Serv-O-Droid GL-7 standing patiently outside the crystasteel door. "If the greeter droid sees a vermin control team approaching in gnulliths, he'll have tower security down here before we cross the atrium. We must disable him before revealing ourselves."

The leader considered this for a moment, then nodded to his warriors and removed his hand without the gnullith. "Ingo Dar," he said. "I am called Ingo Dar."

"Of course you are." Viqi rolled her eyes and turned back to the atrium. "Follow me, Ingo - and do only what I command."

Though Viqi was about to expose herself as one of the most notorious traitors in the short history of the New Republic, she had not bothered to mask either her appearance or her voice. A thorough analysis of the security data would penetrate such a disguise anyway, and she knew from her spy in the security department that any attempt to avoid all the tower's hidden holocams and microphones would be hopeless. Besides, there was a part of her - a big part of her - that wanted Luke Skywalker to know who had taken his son. No one could cross Viqi Shesh and hope to escape the consequences - not even the Master of the Jedi.

There would also be consequences for Viqi, of course. She would become a hunted woman and a reviled traitor, and her whole planet would be stigmatized by her betrayal - but not for long, she was certain. Since losing her seat on NRMOC, she had actually expanded her value to the warmaster, recruiting a network of spies who believed she was merely working to regain her lost prestige. She had provided him with not only the secret of the Jedi shadow bombs, but also the technical readouts of the gravity projectors aboard the Mon Mothma and the Elegos A'Kla and the disposition of the New Republic hyperspace mines now being laid between Borleias and Coruscant. Tsavong Lah knew that in commanding her to distract the Jedi in this manner, he was forfeiting his most valuable intelligence asset - and Viqi could think of only one reason for him to do that.

Tsavong Lah was coming to Coruscant, and soon.

As Viqi approached the door, the GL-7 swiveled its smiling face in her direction and made a show of scanning her features - though she knew that it had already done that from twenty meters away, when she stepped onto the hidden pressure pad at the entrance to the atrium. She smiled warmly and slipped a hand into her stylish hip pouch, reaching for the powerful two-shot hold-out blaster she had hidden inside a scan-proof cosmetics case.

"Senator Shesh, how kind of you to call!" The GL-7 radiated electronic enthusiasm. "See-Threepio informs me that the household is napping at the moment, but he expects them to awaken shortly. If you and your friends care to wait, he is prepared to offer refreshments."

"Refreshments?" It was hardly the type of greeting Viqi expected, but perhaps the droid's programming had not been updated since her "retirement" as the chair of SELCORE. Certainly, Leia Solo would have been eager to offer a warm reception to the senator in control of the refugee effort's purse strings. Leaving the hold-out blaster in her hip pouch, Viqi said, "Yes, refreshments would be nice."

"See-Threepio is waiting for you inside." The crystasteel door slid open. "Please enjoy your visit."

Only her experience as a politician kept Viqi's jaw from dropping. "Thank you. I am sure we will."

Hoping that the infiltrators behind her were not doing something foolish like reaching under their jumpsuits for the amphistaffs twined around their waists, Viqi crossed the threshold and stepped into the foyer, a domed atrium similar to the one from which they had just come, though much smaller and even less grandiose. To the left, a large double door opened onto the apartment's skyway balcony, where, two meters below, a hoversled from a popular airbed vendor was waiting to provide a fast escape.

The Solos' golden protocol droid appeared from deeper inside the apartment. "I am See-Threepio, human-cyborg relations."

"The whole galaxy knows who you are, See-Threepio," Viqi remarked dryly.

"How kind of you to say so, Senator Shesh." C-3PO gestured at a set of pouf couches arrayed around a potted ladalum, then said, "We have been expecting you. Please be seated, and I will take drink orders for your and your friends shortly."

The droid's tone was so pleasandy matter-of-fact that the significance of what he had said did not strike Viqi until he had turned away and vanished around the corner. The infiltrators instantly began to rustle beneath their jumpsuits for their gnulliths, but Viqi pulled her hold-out blaster from its hiding place and started after die droid.

"See-Threepio! You were expecting us?"

"Why, yes, Senator Shesh." The droid reappeared instantly, his metallic hands grasping a delicate, Vors-glass orb spattered on the inside with some sort of organic material. "I was given to understand that this belongs to you."

Still struggling to make sense of the situation, Viqi leveled her hold-out blaster at the droid's head. "Stay there."

C-3PO stopped. "Oh my." The glass sphere slipped from between his hands. "Is that really necessary?"

Viqi had time enough to draw one breath before the orb shattered on the tile floor, then a small gray-skinned alien slipped past the droid with a T-21 repeating blaster in his hands. He was, she saw, wearing a breath mask.

Viqi fired once in his direction and heard the first infiltrator thump to the floor. The alien fired past her twice, and two more warriors crashed down. When a fourth fell, Viqi realized the situation was hopeless and turned to flee. Even if any of the Yuuzhan Vong remained conscious long enough to don their gnulliths, they would never fight past the Noghri.

As she approached the skyway balcony, the double doors slid open automatically, and a second Noghri dropped onto the floor. Viqi took two more steps and loosed the hold-out blaster's last bolt. The shot missed, of course, but it did force the alien to waste an instant pivoting away.

That instant was all Viqi needed. She raced across the balcony and hurdled the safety rail blind.

With any luck at all, the hoversled would still be there, two meters down.

 

The crook of Luke's arm felt strangely empty without Ben there to keep it occupied. At the oddest times, he found himself holding his hand in front of his belly and his elbow slightly out from his body, rocking from one foot to another and humming softly to himself. Sometimes, such as now, it even seemed to him that his ribs were warm where his son would be pressed against him, or that the air was sweet with the smell of the milk on Ben's breath.

Sensing a sudden silence in the air, Luke looked up to find the three women in the room - Mara, Danni, Cilghal - studying him with knowing smirks. He felt himself blush and knew there was no use denying that his thoughts had been elsewhere.

"Well, nothing else seems to work." He shrugged and smiled sheepishly, then looked through the transparisteel viewport at the writhing mass of tentacles in the nutrient tank. "I thought we might as well try music."

"Sure you did, Luke," Mara said. "I'm sure that every yammosk war coordinator will be mesmerized by 'Dance, Dance, Little Ewok.'"

"Why not?" Cilghal asked. "It works as well as anything we have tried. We know they communicate through gravitic modulation, but there must be something in the wave pattern we are missing. Whatever we try, it fails to answer."

"Fails, or refuses?" Luke asked, studying the creature more closely. "We keep talking about yammosks like they're animals, but I'm not sure. What if it doesn't want to answer? If they're smart enough to run a battle -"

"Then they're smart enough to avoid helping us," Danni said. She shook her head wearily. "For every step forward ..."

Luke's comlink buzzed, then Mara's.

Mara got to hers first. "Mara here."

"Everything's fine, but Leia thinks you should know we just had a little excitement here." Han's voice was tinny and scratchy, a result of the relay from Eclipse's comm center being split between two comlinks. Luke turned his off, and the voice sounded more like Han. "There's nothing to worry about."

Luke and Mara looked at each other, then Mara demanded, "What do you mean there's nothing to worry about? If there was nothing to worry about, would you be comming us to say there was nothing to worry about?"

"Viqi Shesh paid us a visit," Leia said. "She had a squad of infiltrators with her."

"They were after Ben?" Luke asked.

"That's how it looks," Han said. "Adarakh and Meewalh took them in the foyer. The Yuuzhan Vong are either dead or on their way to an NRI interrogation facility."

"And Viqi? "Mara asked.

"She jumped off the balcony," Leia said.

"She didn't fall far," Han added. "She had a delivery sled one floor below. NRI is tracing it now."

"But it won't take long to find her," Leia hastened to add. "Within the hour, every voice scanner on Coruscant will be trying to match her print."

Luke and Mara looked at each other again, then Mara shrugged.

"So who said I was worried?" Mara asked. "If anyone in the galaxy knows how to deal with kidnappers, it has to be Han and Leia Solo."

This drew a laugh from both Han and Leia, who had almost lost count of the number of times their children had been abducted.

"But you two stay put," Mara ordered. "No more sneaking off on secret reconnaissance missions when you're supposed to be watching my son."

"'Firm that," Han said. "I could use some time on the couch."

After they clicked off, Luke could still sense a lingering uneasiness in Mara. He waited until they had stepped into the frigid corridor - Eclipse's heating system was again performing below specifications - then spun Mara around and zipped her thermasuit to her throat.

"It isn't easy being here," he said. "Not with the Yuuzhan Vong after Ben on Coruscant."

Mara managed a smile. "And with everything so quiet right now ..."

"You could probably take a few days. Ben might like to see his mother, too."

"And his mother would like to see him," Mara said. She fell silent, considering, then shook her head. "But she also wants to protect him, and the only way to do that is to keep the Yuuzhan Vong away from Coruscant. With all those refugee convoys disappearing from Ralltiir and Rhinnal, this is more than just quiet."

Luke nodded. "I feel it, too." He took her hand and started toward the hangar caves, where Corran Horn wanted to show him a supplemental targeting system being installed on the XJ3s. "This is the dark before the nova."

 

Chapter 43

"Good news - Master Lowbacca wishes to report that the Tachyon Flier will be ready for launch before you attack the queen."

Horrified that Em Teedee's sharp voice would carry down the dusty slopes to the grashal's protective thorn hedge, Anakin and several others fumbled for their hanging earpieces. They were studying the cloning lab from more than a hundred meters distant, but the air in this part of the worldship was so still that even soft sounds carried.

"He's reinserting the reactor cores now," Em Teedee said. "We're going home, Master Anakin. You're going to survive after all!"

"Affirmative." Anakin's voice was barely a whisper. Earlier, Jacen had felt a single voxyn presence inside the huge grashal, so it seemed likely they had at last reached the queen. Now all they had to do was kill her before the Yuuzhan Vong realized they were here. "Maintain comm silence."

"Comm silence?" Em Teedee's voice was quieter now. "Does that mean you're in -"

The question came to an abrupt end as the droid was switched off, then Lowbacca acknowledged with a comm click. Anakin responded with a double click and continued his reconnaissance. The cone-shaped grashal stood in the heart of what had once been a vaulted dome, but which had become an immense basin when the shapers reoriented the worldship's gravity. As the strike team had seen from the other side of the spaceport, the peak of the huge structure protruded through the outer shell of the worldship and - judging by the number of patching membranes - provided some much-needed support for the makeshift ceiling.

Whether Nom Anor understood that this was where his prey had gone was impossible to say, but Anakin felt an urgency in the Force. The strike team had escaped through the voxyn lair over an hour ago, so the executor certainly realized by now that his quarry had disappeared. Provided he knew a shorter route, he might even be waiting inside. Someone should have been able to help with this question, but Anakin could not think who. Alema? Tahiri? Both had experience with Yuuzhan Vong bases, but their knowledge of this complex was no more specific than anyone else's. He shook his head. There was someone else, but for the life of him he could not remember who ...

 

Inside the Tachyon Flier, a battered but serviceable Corellian Engineering Corporation YV-888 light freighter, Lowbacca tightened the last shielding bolt to its proper torque, then initiated a self-test. The instrument panel broke into a flurry of dancing lights as the reactor brain checked its circuits. Finally, bright green steam began to rise behind the shielding door's observation panel. When none of it appeared to be seeping through the seal, he authorized a pressure check, slipped the hydrospanner into his equipment belt, and started forward to check on his patient. Tekli had assured him that the dose of tranqarest would keep even a Jedi quiet until long after the others returned, but Lowbacca wanted to be sure. He had already been forced to secure Raynar in crash webbing after the feverish Jedi Knight thrashed his wrist against the bunk's safety rail.

As Lowbacca passed the air lock, he heard someone banging on the outer hatch. He went to the security panel and activated the external monitor. The vidcam was so dust-caked he could see only the vague shape of a small vac-suited human, hammering at the durasteel with the butt of a minicannon. He activated his comlink and started to ask what was wrong, then recalled Anakin's request for comm silence and stepped into the equalization chamber. He sealed his vac suit, then shorted two wires dangling from the control box.

As the outer seal broke, he experienced a sudden ripple of danger sense and snapped his lightsaber off his belt. The hatch opened, and Lomi Plo's voice came over his personal channel.

"There's no need for that." She tossed the minicannon at his waist, forcing him to lower his arms to catch it. "Come along - the scarheads have your friends cornered."

She turned and started down the boarding ramp, unslinging her own T-21 repeating blaster as she ran. Pausing only to clip his lightsaber on his harness, Lowbacca rushed after her.

The Wookiee was already at the bottom of the ramp when he sensed another human behind him, lurking somewhere beneath the Tachyon Flier. Instinctively bringing the minicannon up, Lowbacca spun around to find Welk stepping out from behind a landing strut, a blaster pistol aimed at his chest. Needing no further evidence of the pair's treachery, Lowbacca squeezed the minicannon's trigger.

The power pack did not even contain enough energy to activate the depletion alarm. Struck by the depth of the betrayal, Lowbacca lowered the minicannon and switched to Welk's personal channel, then growled a one-word question.

"Because your friends are going to get themselves and everyone with them killed, that's why," Welk answered.

He fired, catching Lowbacca full in the chest with a blue stun bolt. The Wookiee choked out a pained growl and dropped to a knee, drawing on the Force to keep himself conscious. He hurled the minicannon at Welk and reached for his lightsaber, then rolled over his shoulder and came up on a knee, molten bronze blade slashing toward the Dark Jedi's waist.

Stun bolts began to pour in from behind.

"Play nice, Wookiee," Lomi said. "We could have set our weapons to kill."

 

Anakin had almost finished explaining his plan when a blue glow shone down through the transparent ceiling patches. He lifted his gaze and saw the Tachyon Flier shooting into the green sky, its efflux nacelles glowing brilliantly as the ion drives flared to life.

"Lowie?" he gasped.

Jaina and the others were instantly on their comlinks, trying to raise Lowbacca and find out why he was leaving. They received only static in return.

"Strange," Tesar Sebatyne rasped. "This one has always heard that nothing is more loyal than a Wookiee."

"That's right," Jacen said. "And Lowbacca is more loyal than most. Something's wrong."

"Fact," Tenel Ka said.

The strike team stared at each other blankly while Anakin tried to raise Lowbacca again. When that did not work, Jaina switched channels and sent an activation signal to Em Teedee.

"- danger?" the droid asked, finishing the question that had been in his circuits when Lowbacca shut him down. "Oh dear, when did we launch?"

"Em Teedee, what's Lowie doing?" Jacen asked. "Why's he leaving?"

"Leaving? Why, Master Lowbacca is doing nothing of the sort. He's right here with ..." The droid let the sentence drift off, then screeched, "Help! They're stealing me!"

"Who?" Anakin asked.

"Who?" Em Teedee echoed. "Lomi and -"

The explanation ended in a crackle of static.

"Welk," Zekk finished, his voice hard and angry. "Lomi and Welk."

As soon as he heard the names, Anakin recalled the Dark Master who had guided them through the training course - and whose last sentence to him had been something along the lines of "We were never here." He had seen her hand rise and felt the Force behind her words, but Lomi was as subtle as she was powerful. He could not even remember if there had been time to resist.

Ganner might not have been the first to realize what the ship's theft meant for Anakin, but, as usual, he was the only one bold enough to say it. "Anakin, I'm sorry. Once we found out they were Dark Jedi, we should never have -"

"Yes, we should have," Anakin said. He was surprised to discover how calm he felt, how focused he was on the duty at hand. "Without them, we wouldn't have made it this far - and I would have died in the arena anyway."

"Not anyway," Tahiri insisted. "We'll find another way off this rock."

"First things first," Anakin said softly. Though Tekli was still working on him, reaching into his wound with the Force to repair his torn organs, he could feel his strength fading and his pain rising. "Let's concentrate on the mission."

The blue dot of the Tachyon Flier's ion drives blinked completely out of sight, then a flight of coralskippers streaked across a patching membrane and shot into space. A moment after that, the dark shape of Nom Anor's frigate floated over the horizon, also pursuing the YV-888.

"I hope the scarheads catch them," Alema Rar said, her voice full of bitterness. "I hope they dump 'em in a voxyn pen."

"I do not." Tenel Ka displayed her comlink, which was already pulsing static as the first plasma balls battered the Flier's shields. "Our friend Raynar is still aboard."

The sinking feeling in Anakin's chest was all too familiar. He activated Lowbacca's comlink remotely and found it completely silent.

"But not Lowie," he said. "And if he had been killed, I'm pretty sure we would have felt him die."

When no one said anything, he looked up from his comlink and found everyone else studying him. There were tears welling in Jacen's and Jaina's eyes, and Tahiri was wiping her cheeks with the cuff of her sleeve.

"We'd better do this now," Anakin said, not wanting to lose focus. He disengaged from Tekli, then took Raynar's G-9 power blaster off his shoulder and raised the long-range sight. "Jaina, keep a channel open to Raynar. Maybe we'll hear what becomes of him."

And maybe they wouldn't, Anakin knew. In war, people sometimes just disappeared. No one ever found out what had happened to them, leaving friends and family with lifetimes of longing and uncertainly.

When no one moved to ready themselves, Anakin said, "Now might be nice."

Spurred into action, the strike team readied their weapons and opened their emotions. Despite the lingering outrage - and some feelings of blame - over the Dark Jedi's betrayal, the battle meld felt the tightest it had been since the detention warrens. Anakin knelt a few meters from the passage mouth and took aim at one of the dark shapes visible through the thorn hedge. When he felt the others also find their targets - two to each guard - he fired.

Eight streaks of color fanned down the dusty slope and tore through the hedge into the four dark shapes beyond. None of the bolts missed. No Jedi would bungle such an important attack, not with the Force to guide his aim. But only two shots burned through. Six ricocheted off the guards' vonduun crab armor, blasting dust columns into the air or burning pits into the grashal wall.

The surviving guards dropped and crawled for cover. Half the strike team was already rushing down the slope, firing as they ran, their T-21 repeating blasters keeping the Yuuzhan Vong pinned and clearing the hedge for the more powerful weapons behind.

Anakin and Jaina fired again. Prone to deflection and straying at that distance, their power blasters could only flush the guards. One warrior fell to Alema's longblaster. The other was staggered by Tesar's minicannon, then finished by the T-21s as they reached effective range. Now the second wave was up and running. Despite the strength Tesar was sharing, Anakin could not keep pace. Tahiri, Jaina, and Tesar dropped back to stay with him.

"Go! I'll catch up."

"When Jawas swim!" Tahiri shot back.

"Anakin, you're in no condition," Jaina said. "Go back to the equipment pit and locate Lowie. Maybe if you find a safe place to hole up and go into a healing trance -"

"Too late for that," Anakin said. "I'm seeing this through."

"Even if it means putting others at risk?" Jaina demanded. "If you're slow, you're a danger to us all. At least try a trance."

Things had gone too far for a trance, Anakin knew. He was thirsty enough to drink sweat, and his abdomen was hard with trapped blood, and the effort of finding a place safe enough to enter a trance would probably kill him anyway. But the thought that he might be endangering others did give him pause. It was one thing to face the inevitable, quite another to take others along. He sought guidance from the Force, opening himself to its tide, trying to sense where it was carrying him.

The sound of the ruffling voxyn scales rose to mind. He felt again the awe he had experienced in the arena, when he realized it had been Yuuzhan Vong patricians who fought there. The Force had spoken to him then.

"I'm going," he said.

Jaina clenched her jaw, then looked away. "I thought so."

The first wave reached the hedge and ducked through the burn holes. Stalks began to strike like snakes. Half a dozen lightsabers snapped to life and hacked the brambles away, then the Jedi stumbled out the other side ripping thorn tangles from around their throats and legs. The hedge struck again as the second wave crossed. The first wave left them to their own devices and continued on toward the grashal. Speed was crucial. During their reconnaissance, Anakin had sensed a company of Yuuzhan Vong lurking a few hundred meters beyond the cloning lab, presumably where the strike team had been expected to leave the voxyn warrens.

By the time Anakin and his three companions penetrated the hedge, the first wave had already cut through the grashal wall. Tenel Ka, Zekk, and Alema pressed themselves against the block and rode along as Ganner used the Force to shove the monolith inside.

A burring cloud of bugs came boiling out. The Jedi huddled down in their armored jumpsuits, their blades tracing crackling color fans as they batted insects from the air. A grenade explosion rocked the grashal, then another and another, and the bug storm withered to a trickle.

"Clear!" Zekk yelled.

Ganner and Jacen ducked inside. Jaina hefted her power blaster to follow, but then everyone's comlinks popped and hissed static. There came a ripple in the Force, maybe strong enough to be Raynar's death. Anakin looked to the ceiling, saw nothing through the patching membranes but Myrkr's green glow. He would never know.

"They'll pay." Jaina tore her eyes from the ceiling. "They will pay."

"Then so will we," Anakin said. Jaina's eyes were sunken with fatigue and her mouth was drooping with sorrow, and she looked more frail and troubled than Anakin had ever seen her. "We're here to destroy the queen, not take revenge."

"Right." Jaina stepped through the opening. "Revenge comes later."

Anakin left Tahiri and Tekli at the breach with Alema's longblaster and followed his sister into the grashal. It was like stepping into a Yavin 4 nightstorm, a dark fog hanging overhead, glow lichen up there somewhere casting sallow halos, blaster bolts and lightsabers flashing like colored lightning - and the humid air muffling the scream and roar of combat, making all that death seem more distant than it was.

Anakin spun out from behind the door block and batted a razor bug from the air, found himself staring through a jungle of pulsing white vines, their corkscrew stalks rising out of planting bins filled with briny-smelling mud. The Yuuzhan Vong were ahead everywhere, their presence too dispersed and indistinct to tell him much. A pair of thud bugs sent him diving for cover. He exchanged his lightsaber for the power blaster and came up firing.

The first shots left him so light-dazzled he glimpsed only a dark shape on the opposite side of the bin, diving for cover. He spun around the end of the box, heard the snap-hiss of an igniting lightsaber, then Tesar Sebatyne's familiar hissing. The Yuuzhan Vong had thrown his last bug.

Anakin reached out with the Force and found the rest of the strike team taking heavy swarm, pinned down in the darkness. Easy enough to fix. He reached for his incendiary grenades, but felt Tesar already lifting three objects into the dark fog overhead.

A smug Yuuzhan Vong presence drew Anakin's attention to the next planting bin. Rolling from his hiding place, he saw a dark figure leaping across the aisle ahead, amphistaff poised to strike. He lifted his power blaster ... and pitched forward as a razor bug sliced across his neck from behind, vibro-sharp mandibles gliding off his jumpsuit's armored lining. The insect banked and came back, pincers stretching for his face. Anakin pivoted and took a cheek slash, fired at his original target.

The bolt caught the Yuuzhan Vong in a shoulder seam and spun him around. An arm flew off trailing the smell of scorched flesh, but the warrior did not even scream. He just pirouetted and, now swinging one-armed, brought his amphistaff down.

Anakin's razor bug came around again, this time slashing for the throat, and he had to turn away. Behind him, Tesar's lightsaber snapped to life and sputtered harshly. Anakin blocked with the body of the power blaster, then took a pair of thud bugs in the flank and slammed to the floor. He heard the dull thump of an amphistaff hitting a thick reptilian skull, and the flow of strength trailed off as the Barabel plummeted into insensibility.

Anakin did not consciously fire his power blaster. He was too busy reaching up into the darkness, searching for falling grenades. How many seconds left? The power blaster just flashed, and Tesar's attacker crashed to the floor.

Anakin found what he was looking for and pushed. A ripple of danger sense made him roll away as the razor bug crashed to the floor where his head had been. He hammered the thing dead, then heard the telltale crackle of the grenade detonations. Hoping he would still be there when the sound fell silent, he closed his eyes and reached out to find his attacker through the lambent crystal.

Not easy - too many Yuuzhan Vong in too many places - but he felt something off to his left. He spun and fired.

The depletion alarm sounded, just loud enough to be heard over the crackling flames above. The Yuuzhan Vong presence was closer now, eager. Flinging the useless blaster aside, he plucked his lightsaber from his belt and thumbed it to life, brought it into a cross-body guard - caught an amphistaff descending toward his head. Eyes still squeezed shut against the brilliant glare above, he swung his legs around and scissored his attacker's knees. The contest ended in a quick lightsaber thrust.

The flames crackled out. Anakin opened his eyes and saw yellow glow lichen shining bright, the last wisps of vapor cloud evaporating into the hot air. He lay there for a long time, taking stock of his condition, trying to fight off his anguish. It took five full breaths to establish that the pain was caused only by his old wound, ten heartbeats more to bring it under control.

Gradually, Anakin grew aware of the battle meld again, of the strike team's mounting elation. Pushing his agony aside, calling on the Force, he lifted himself to his feet. The Jedi were advancing on the left side of the grashal, driving back the last handful of shapers and guards, slashing nutrient vines and cloning pods as they went. Through the pulsing tangle of stalks, he could not see what they were hunting - but he could feel it, over by the grashal wall, trapped a little below floor level, unsettled, wild, ferocious. Afraid.

Behind Anakin, the longblaster boomed. He felt panic from Tahiri and turned to find her rushing into the grashal. A ball of fire followed her through the breach and exploded into the monolith standing there, and Tahiri went flying.

Anakin rushed to help, but she was up before he took two steps. "Magma spitters! We're cut off."

Anakin did not bother to look. "Tekli?"

Tahiri pointed behind him, where the Chadra-Fan was sprinkling stinksalts on Tesar's forked tongue. The Barabel was smiling, but not waking.

"Take him ... and go." Every word filled Anakin's belly with fire. He pointed toward the others. "You may need to cut a way out."

"'You'?" Tahiri said. "I'm not going -"

"Do it!" Anakin snapped. When Tahiri's face fell, he spoke more gently. "You need ... to help Tekli. I'll be along."

"Yes, Tahiri," Tekli said. She cast a knowing glance at Anakin, then kneeled astride the Barabel and began to slap him. "Tesar is not responding. I cannot move him and work on him both."

Tahiri looked doubtful, but could hardly refuse to help. Blinking back a tear, she stretched up to kiss Anakin on the lips - then caught herself and shook her head. "No - for that, you have to come back."

Anakin gave her his best lopsided smile. "Soon, then."

"Soon," Tahiri repeated. "May the Force be with you."

This second part, she added so quietly that Anakin did not think she meant him to hear it. All too aware of the growing weakness in his legs, he went to the makeshift doorway and peered around the edge. An artillery squad had set up beyond the thorn hedge, their four magma spitters trained on the opening. No one was attempting to move closer, which meant the main force would be attacking from the other side. Anakin turned toward the primary entrance and focused on what he felt through the lambent crystal. It did not surprise him at all to sense a heavy Yuuzhan Vong presence streaming in from the ambush site.

He set off at a painfully slow run. Twice, he dropped to a knee when his legs buckled - once while trading blows with a glassy-eyed Yuuzhan Vong who had no more business in hand - to-hand combat than he did. He won that fight by slashing open a planting bin, then levitating himself while the nutrient mud spilled out and swept his foe off balance. The next combat he nearly did not survive at all, catching an amphistaff butt in his wound and popping the external stitches. His life was saved only when he used the Force to bounce his blaster off the warrior's tattooed brow.

As he retrieved his weapon and rose, Anakin vomited blood. Even before he was finished, he was using the Force to lift himself to his feet, willing himself to run. He had to beat the enemy assault force to the door. At last, he cleared the planting bins and spied the door membrane twenty meters to his left, as wide as an X-wing was long and twice as high. The far corner of the membrane rose slightly. Anakin ducked back into the planting beds, free hand already pulling a thermal detonator from his harness.

When Anakin saw the figure who stepped through, he nearly dropped the detonator. The newcomer's back was turned, but he wore a tattered jumpsuit and stood a head taller than most humans. He set off for the voxyn pen at a sprint.

"Lowie?" Anakin called, using the Force to make his weak voice carry.

He reached out, but felt only the same hazy Yuuzhan Vong presence as before. The newcomer turned, revealing the profile of a sandy-haired human, and raised an old E-11 blaster rifle.

Anakin was already behind a planting bin, activating his com-link. "Impostor!" he warned. "Trying for pens."

The blasterfire crescendoed to a deafening roar, as did the Jedi frustration. The firing angles were impossible. A grenade detonated somewhere, and Jaina yelled for a charge.

The door membrane began to roll upward, revealing forty pairs of Yuuzhan Vong feet waiting to rush inside. Anakin opened himself to the Force completely, drawing it into himself through the power of his emotions - not through his anger or fear like a Dark Jedi, but through his love for his family and his fellow Jedi Knights, through his faith in the Jedi purpose and the promise of the future. The Force poured in from all sides, filling him with a swirling maelstrom of power and purpose, saturating him and devouring him. There was nothing to be frightened of, no reason to grieve. He could feel it flowing into him and himself flowing into it. Anakin was the Force, and the Force was Anakin.

Anakin rose. His body emitted a faint aura of light - the glow of his cells burning out - and the air crackled around him. His injuries no longer pained him. He was acutely aware of everything in the grashal - the musty smell of the droning thud bugs, the sultry heat rising from the planting bins, the huffing breath of his fellow Jedi, even the Yuuzhan Vong. Their presence was as distinct to him as that of his own companions, almost as though the Force had somehow expanded to include them.

Firing as he ran, Anakin raced along the rising door. Every bolt blasted a Yuuzhan Vong foot. Muffled roars reverberated through the membrane. Ahead of him, half a dozen warriors dropped and rolled into the grashal. He blasted these before they could rise, then reached the other end and stroked the tickle pad. The door lowered again.

"Hutt breath!" Jaina cursed over the comlink. "She's escaping."

Anakin could feel it, too. The voxyn was moving down and away. He activated his own comlink. "The impostor must have opened an escape tunnel." It no longer hurt to speak, but his aura had gone from faint to bright. His cells were burning like fire. "Jacen, you're in charge. Take everyone and go after her."

Jaina's surprise at not having her own name called carried through the Force like a shout across water, but she stifled any resentment she felt and said, "Can't get there, Little Brother."

"The path will clear."

Anakin slashed the membrane tickle pad and circled toward the empty voxyn pen. He could feel Yuuzhan Vong ahead, crouching behind the last row of planting bins, secure in the knowledge that help was coming. That changed a moment later, when Anakin began to pour blasterfire into their flank. His angle was poor for head shots and his bolts too weak to penetrate vonduun crab armor, but by the time the Yuuzhan Vong realized that, they were being overrun by Jedi.

A plasma ball roared through the grashal door and set fire to a twenty-meter swath of cloning vines. Anakin charged back toward the melted membrane, miniature forks of lightning dancing off his arms and legs, the Force swirling through him like fire, burning more ferociously every moment. He was completely filled with the strength of the light side now; his injured body could hold no more. The energy was burning its way out of him, consuming a vessel too weakened to contain it.

Yuuzhan Vong - their feet fully intact - poured in five abreast. He dropped the first rank from fifteen meters out, his blaster pistol singing out twice between each step, every bolt burning through a face or a throat. The volcano cannon roared again, and a sphere of white fire blossomed in front of him, seemingly from nowhere. Anakin dived and rolled into the wall, hit boots-first, sprang into a back flip, returned to his feet ten meters from the explosion.

"Anakin!" Jaina's cry resembled a scream.

Go! He commanded her through the Force. She's getting away!

The blaster sang out in Anakin's hand, dropping Yuuzhan Vong as fast as it could fire. More warriors poured in. A razor bug buried itself in his shoulder, his jumpsuit half disintegrated by the Force energy escaping his body and no longer much protection. He allowed the impact to spin him around, fired again and once more, heard the depletion alarm. The Yuuzhan Vong hurled handfuls of thud bugs and rushed, already pulling amphistaffs off their waists.

Anakin threw the blaster pistol at the first and dropped him and leapt the second, thumbing his lightsaber to life in the air. He landed in front of the entrance and began a whirling dance of slash and parry, blocking once and striking twice, every attack a killing blow. His aura was burning so brightly that he cast shadows behind his foes. He batted the blade left to right, overpowering two blocks to open two throats, then sent another warrior tumbling with a hook kick to the head.

And still they came, piercing Anakin in three places, one amphistaff sinking its fangs into his flesh. The Force scalded the poison from his system before he felt it, and the new wounds troubled him less than the old one - but there were a dozen more warriors behind them, and he could not hold forever. He killed another, then another, took a crippling slash to his thigh, and gave ground. The Yuuzhan Vong rushed, trying to slip past to the right.

The longblaster roared from the pen area, blowing a head-sized hole through one Yuuzhan Vong and a fist-sized hole through the one behind him. Anakin launched himself into a back flip and landed five meters away. His aura flickered wildly as his cells began to burn and burst. He hazarded a glance over his shoulder and saw Jaina peering over the pit wall, tears streaming down her cheeks, the longblaster propped against her shoulder. Jacen was beside her, likewise weeping, trying to pull her away.

Go! Anakin said through the Force. I can't hold.

The Yuuzhan Vong charged again, and Jaina fired. Another warrior fell, and the rest came. Anakin flipped another five meters back - then felt someone, a Yuuzhan Vong, creeping along the far wall of the grashal. He retreated until he could see the figure: the Jedi impostor, perhaps thirty meters distant, dragging a heavy cargo pod toward the strike team's makeshift opening.

The warriors arrived again, and Anakin had to defend himself. Purple blade ticking back and forth, blocking and parrying and slipping strike after strike, he faded two steps and saw an opening. He brought his feet up and planted his heels in the center Yuuzhan Vong's chest. His lightsaber flashed twice, cleaving the skulls of the adjacent warriors, then he kicked off, launching himself into a series of Force-assisted cartwheels.

Anakin continued far enough to see where the impostor had come from, a work area near the queen's pen. Dozens of tendrils lay stretched along a workbench, each ending in a small cloning pod, some open, some closed. It looked like a tissue transfer station.

That was what the impostor had, a cargo pod full of voxyn tissue, enough to clone a million. Anakin's aura flashed and dimmed, flashed again and dimmed more, his cells rupturing in chain reactions, the cycles coming faster and faster as less of him remained to contain the energy. He felt himself not exactly departing, but melting back into the Force. He pulled his last thermal detonator off his harness and thumbed the timer three clicks.

Go now.

"Anakin, I can't!" Jaina commed.

Anakin raised the detonator so his brother and sister could see. Thirty seconds. He released the trigger. Take her, Jacen. Kiss Tahiri for me.

With the charging warriors almost on him again, Anakin threw the detonator across the grashal. He wasn't conscious of using the Force to guide it, but he must have, because it hit the impostor in the head.

Anakin was too busy parrying to see what happened for the next few seconds, but when he finally managed to spring away from his attackers - he was no longer strong enough to flip or cartwheel - the impostor was gathering himself up, rubbing his head and searching for what had struck him. Even from thirty meters, his broken nose and misshapen eye orbit identified him clearly as Nom Anor.

When the executor's gaze fell on the silver sphere, his real eye grew as large as his plaeryin bol. He reached down.

Anakin used the Force to nudge the sphere away, then caught an amphistaff in the ribs and went down hard, letting his lightsaber fall from his hand. His aura was only a faint glow, flickering between dim and nonexistent. The maelstrom inside was dying away now, flowing back into the Force.

Nom Anor rushed for the detonator again. Anakin waited, waited until the executor was almost on it, then reached out with the Force one last time, rolling the sphere toward the cargo pod.

He did not hear the angry curse that followed, nor did he see Nom Anor fleeing at a dead run.

By then, Anakin was gone.

 

Chapter 44

"No way they're coming for Eclipse, not with the armada that left Borleias," Kenth Hamner was saying. Now serving as the official liaison between the Jedi and the New Republic, he had arrived an hour before to report some alarming Yuuzhan Vong fleet movements. "Even if they could bring that many ships in here, it would take a standard year to stage through the hyperspace gauntlet."

The Jedi's best tacticians were gathered in the Eclipse war room, studying the three displays Luke had put up. One hologram showed the array of hyperspace routes spraying outward from the planet Borleias. Another showed the tortuous route into Eclipse, along with the planet itself hidden behind its screen of asteroid belts and gas giant neighbors. The third hologram showed the entire Coruscant system, and it was to this map that everyone's eye kept drifting - specifically, to an obscure cluster of comets on the capital planet's side of the system.

Mara pointed into the swirling mass of comet tails. "And there are uncharted asteroids orbiting with the OboRins?"

"We're keeping an eye on them," Kenth said. "We can take them out anytime."

No one suggested that the asteroids might be anything but reconnaissance vessels. Corran Horn, who was one of the Jedi studying the display, had confirmed not long before that space rock was a favorite camouflage for Yuuzhan Vong scout ships.

"This is it, then," Luke said.

He adjusted the holoprojector, annulling the displays of the Borleias hyperspace routes and the Eclipse system - then, when his connection to Anakin suddenly began to strengthen, failed to enlarge the Coruscant map. He flashed on an image of Yuuzhan Vong charging past a tangle of burning vines, of a purple blade ticking back and forth, of a golden light burning in a dark place. Luke could feel that his nephew was calm and focused, in harmony with the Force and himself - but weak and growing weaker.

"Master Skywalker?" Corran asked. "What is it?"

Luke turned away and did not answer. He knew that Saba Sebatyne had felt the Hara sisters die, and others were gone, too - he could not feel who, only that there was a growing Jedi absence in the Force. Now the strike team was losing Anakin, as well - and Luke had sent him, had sent them all.

"Luke?" Mara was standing behind him, taking his hand.

Luke let her, but reached out for Jacen and Jaina, found them filled with sorrow and horror, fear and rage, but alive, at least, and strong.

Then Anakin was gone.

Luke felt like the Yuuzhan Vong had reached inside and torn his nephew out of his own body. There was a black void in his heart, a tempest so fierce and cold he began to shake uncontrollably.

"Luke, stop!" Mara's fingers dug into his arm and jerked him around to face her. "You've got to shut it down. Ben will feel you. Think of what this will do to him!"

"Ben ..."

Luke covered Mara's hand with his and drew in on himself, dampening his presence in the Force - and losing his connection to the twins. Unable to contain the anger rising up inside him, and unwilling to inflict it on his son, he turned and brought his hand down on the holoprojector.

"Master Skywalker!" Kenth gasped.

"It's Anakin," Mara said.

"Anakin? Oh ..." The room broke into groans and startled outcries, then Corran managed to ask, "Master Skywalker ... what can we do?"

What indeed, Luke wondered. He looked to Mara, struggling to regain his composure and focus his thoughts. The question was not what they could do, but what they had to do.

"Anakin ..." Luke choked on the words, tried again. "Anakin died for a reason."

Corran and the others waited in silence, and looked to him expectantly.

"What we need to do is prep our battle wings," Mara said, taking charge. She turned to Kenth. "And get in touch with Admiral Sovv. We're going to need a place to berth when we get to Coruscant."

 

With circles under his eyes almost as dark as his glassy black Sullustan pupils themselves, General Yeel's vidimage suggested that of a chubby-cheeked Yuuzhan Vong child - a spoiled chubby-cheeked Yuuzhan Vong child. Han banged the heel of his palm on the comm desk - out of vidcam pickup - and pasted a forbearing smile on his face.

"I'm not saying installation security is lax, General Yeel," Han said. He was with Lando in the study of his Eastport apartment, trying to do the New Republic a favor and finding it impossible as usual. "But Viqi Shesh was on NRMOC. She could have slipped an infiltrator onto a shielding crew anytime in the last two years. Why take a chance?"

"Do you have evidence of that, Solo?" Not General Solo, or Retired General, or even Han, but just Solo. "If you have evidence, I will institute a review at once."

"I don't have evidence. That's the point." Han ran a hand over his brow. "Look, what could it hurt to assign a couple of YVHs to every generator station? This is a great deal."

"Yes, free is a great deal," Yeel replied. "What's wrong with them?"

Lando slipped into the vidcam's view. "Nothing is wrong with them, General, I assure you. I'm a loyal citizen of the New Republic doing everything he can to help."

Yeel looked doubtful. "Wasn't it a YVH droid that failed to protect Chief of State Fey'lya when infiltrators attacked him?"

"That was a glitch in the demonstration program," Lando said patiently. "The droids I'm donating to the New Republic will be combat ready - fully combat ready."

"That is what frightens me, Calrissian." Yeel blinked twice, then placed his arms on his table and leaned toward his vidcam. "Chief of State Fey'lya asked me to take your call, and I have. But I am not going to put new technology into my generating stations without a full compatibility evaluation - and Planetary Shielding will not be conducting any evaluations until we know where the fleet at Borleias has gone. I'm sorry, Calrissian -"

An anguished wail echoed down the corridor, so shrill and frenzied that Han did not recognize the voice as human - much less Leia's - until he was already out of his chair and snatching his blaster holster off the table.

"Leia!"

If anything, the wailing grew louder and less human. Han raced down the corridor to Leia's private study, where he found Adarakh and Meewalh flanking the desk and looking uncharacteristically confused and helpless. The furred image of the Bothan general of the Orbital Defense Command was staring out of the vidscreen, looking confused and inanely repeating "Princess Leia? Princess Leia?" Leia herself was lying on the floor, curled into a fetal ball and screaming something incomprehensible.

When Han saw no obvious threat in the room, he knelt at Leia's side and grabbed her arm. "Leia?"

She did not seem to realize he was there. Her eyes were rimmed in red and her tears were pooling on the floor, and the only thing Han could get out of her was a long "- aaaaaaa -"

The Bothan general continued to repeat "Princess Leia? Princess Leia?"

Lando came into the room and, ignoring the comm unit, put a hand on Han's shoulder. "What is it?"

Han shook his head and looked to the Noghri.

"Lady Vader was speaking with General Ba'tra," Meewalh explained. "She was explaining how Lady Risant Calrissian is already on her way with a thousand Hunter Ones, then she suddenly stopped speaking -"

Leia grasped Han's arm and began to sputter, "Aa ... aaa ..."

And Han knew, Anakin was gone.

And Leia had felt him die.

"Princess Leia?" Ba'tra droned. "Princess, are you -"

Finding the DL-44 still in his hand, Han used it to blast the comm unit silent. It felt so good that he turned the weapon on the holopad and blasted that, too - and then the security system vid bank and anything else that crackled and made sparks when a supercharged particle beam burned a hole through it.

"Han!" Lando cried. "Han? What are you doing?"

"He's dead." Han shot a datapad off Leia's desk, then sent Lando diving by swinging the blaster around to target a holographic wall panel. "They killed our boy."

Han pulled the trigger and watched the pinnacles of Terrarium City erupt into a spark storm, then Adarakh was on him, trapping his blaster arm in a control lock and wrenching the weapon away. Han collapsed to his haunches and began to sob, now too weary to be angry, too certain of the look in Leia's eyes to doubt the truth.

Leia did not seem to notice any of this. Still wailing in anguish, she gathered herself up and ran from the room. Han watched her go, realized somewhere in the back of his mind that Ben was crying. Lando squatted at his side. Blaster arm still locked in Adarakh's grasp, Han looked over at his old friend.

"Anakin is gone."

"Han, I'm sorry." Lando squatted at Han's side, then caught Adarakh's eye and nodded toward the door. "First Chewie, and now this. I can't imagine."

"I can't either. Those terrible things I said to him ..." Han said. In the back of the apartment, Ben was crying more ferociously than ever, and Leia was sobbing even more loudly. "I drove him to it. He had to prove -"

"No." Lando leaned in close and locked gazes. "Listen to me, old buddy. Anakin died because he was a Jedi Knight doing what Jedi Knights do - not because of what happened to Chewbacca, not because he was trying to prove anything to you."

"How would you know?" Han snapped. He was lashing out not because Lando had said anything wrong, but because the anger was returning and he need to be angry with someone. "He wasn't your son."

"No, he wasn't." A pained - perhaps even guilty - look came to Lando's eyes. "But I was the one who turned him over to the Yuuzhan Vong. He didn't blame himself for what happened to Chewbacca ... and he knew how much you loved him. Everyone could see that."

The gentleness in Lando's voice robbed Han of his anger, and substituted despair instead. He knew that his friend was only trying to comfort him, to keep him from falling apart like he had after Chewbacca's death - but the words rang hollow. Han knew how he had behaved after Chewie died, how he had taken out his anger on Anakin and let the rest of his family drift apart while he wallowed in his grief. He had nearly lost them, and now it was happening again - and this time, Leia was not going to be there to pull them all together again. This time, Leia would need someone else to be strong.

C-3PO clunked into the room, his electronic voice shrill with alarm. "Someone, please help! Mistress Leia has switched Nana off, and now she's going to crush him!"

Keeping one hand on Han's shoulder, Lando rose. "Crush who, See-Threepio?"

C-3PO threw his golden arms into the air. "Ben! She won't let him go."

"I'll see what I can do." Lando pushed C-3PO at Han and started for the door. "Watch him."

"No, Lando - I'll go." Han grabbed C-3PO's arm and pulled himself to his feet. "It'll need to be me."

Lando lifted his brow. "Are you up to this?"

Han nodded. "I'll have to be."

He led the way to the nursery in the back of the apartment. Leia was standing in front of a transparisteel viewing pane, clutching Ben to her shoulder and staring out at the passing hover traffic, patting him on the back and swaying gently from foot to foot. If she realized that he was crying at all, she did not seem to recognize that it was because of her own keening.

Han went to her side and shooed the Noghri away, then slipped a hand between Leia and the baby.

"Let go, Leia." He gently began to pry Ben free. "You need to let me take him."

Her gaze drifted toward his face, but her eyes seemed to look through him without seeing anything. "Han?"

"That's right." Han caught Lando's eye and passed him Ben, then wrapped Leia in his arms and held her - just held her. "I'm here, Princess. I'll always be here."

 

Chapter 45

They came like snow, at first a few contacts dropping out of hyperspace, then a steady shower cascading down toward the OboRin Comet Cluster, then finally a data blizzard that swept Luke's tactical display white with vector lines and bogey symbols.

"Outlying sensors confirm hostile contacts." Even over the battle net, the signals coordinator - SigCor - sounded jittery. "Stand by for a message from Admiral Sovv."

The admiral's nasal voice came over the battle net, addressing what amounted to half of the New Republic Space Navy in a less-than-inspiring Sullustan monotone. Luke's attention began to wander almost immediately. Still reeling from Anakin's death, he could not help second-guessing himself, reexamining his decision to let his nephew embark on such a dangerous mission. Had he overestimated the strike team's abilities - or underestimated those of the Yuuzhan Vong?

Mara's voice came over a private channel. "Luke, stop beating yourself up. You can't carry a load like that into battle."

"I know, Mara." There were times when Luke truly wished his emotions were not an open book to his wife - this was one of them. "But it's not so easy. I keep thinking I let them go on a suicide mission."

"You didn't," Mara said. "Does Leia blame you?"

"Leia is in no condition to blame anyone," Luke said. He could feel his sister's anguish beneath his own - a numb, almost physical pain not so different from what he had experienced when he lost his hand to Darth Vader. She was in shock, struggling to accept that a part of herself was gone forever. "But you heard how Han was."

"He was worried about Leia."

"That's what he said," Luke replied.

This time, Mara did not argue. Luke could sense how frightened she was about leaving Ben with Han and Leia while they were both so grief-stricken, but he knew better than to suggest again that she go to Coruscant. She had already told him she would go after the battle, and even Luke Skywalker - especially Luke Skywalker - knew better than to press Mara once she had made up her mind.

A moment later, Mara said, "Luke, it would have been wrong to deny your nephew his chance to save the Jedi, and Han and Leia know it, too. Think back to that meeting in the crater room. They're the ones who told you to let him go."

Knowing Mara would sense his nod even if she could not see it, Luke remained quiet and began to concentrate on his breathing, employing a Jedi relaxation technique to focus his thoughts. The truth was, he had a bad feeling about the coming battle that had nothing to do with Anakin. With what they had planned, Eclipse was going to lose pilots - maybe a lot of them.

Admiral Sovv captured Luke's attention again by thanking him and the Jedi "intelligence apparatus" for alerting the Defense Force to the time and place of the enemy's arrival. This drew a chuckle from Mara and the rest of the Jedi Knights; the "apparatus" had been a growing sense among the more powerful Masters that there was trouble coming from the OboRin Comet Cluster. Given that the Force was blind to the Yuuzhan Vong, the Jedi had been mystified by the feelings and reluctant to act on them - until they learned from Talon Karrde that a huge Yuuzhan Vong assault fleet had departed Borleias about the same time the sensations began. Admiral Sovv, who had been looking for political cover to concentrate his defenses around Coruscant, had seized on the feelings as a "reliable report from Jedi intelligence" and used them as an excuse to recall several outlying fleets. Wedge had told Luke privately that the admiral did not really expect the Yuuzhan Vong to show, but had set up today's ambush for the sake of maintaining appearances.

When contacts finally stopped dropping out of hyperspace on the tactical display, Sovv said, "The moment is upon us, my friends. Please switch to your assigned battle channel now, and may the Force be with you."

Luke opened the channel assigned to Eclipse. "You all know what we're attempting and why. Stay in formation, and follow your squadron leader's orders. The battle will turn on us -"

"And the war on the battle," several voices replied.

"We know, Master Skywalker," Saba Sebatyne said. "You have said this seven times already."

This drew a nervous laugh from both Eclipse wings.

Luke would have liked to do his part to ease the tension with a witty comeback, but found that part of his mind still too fogged by grief. "Sorry. Just wanted to be sure. Control?"

"Stand by for target identification," Corran said. "Hisser, go ahead and stick your nose out. Everyone else hold positions."

Saba's blastboat slipped out of formation and eased alongside the comet - a wide-swinging stray - behind which the Eclipse squadrons were hiding. Luke switched his tactical feed from fleet to Jedi. The display image rotated ninety degrees, so that the main body of the comet cluster now hung along one side and the contacts were streaking horizontally across the screen. The counter at the bottom of the display read in the tens of thousands and still rising.

A small square appeared in the center of Luke's tactical display, outlining a set of five blips near the heart of the invading fleet. Danni Quee's voice came over the comm channel.

"Yammosk located. We'll pinpoint which vessel when the fighting heats up."

"Everyone fast and furious?" Corran asked.

Luke checked his command display to confirm that the status readout for each craft in his squadron read full DSW - drives, shields, and weapons. When he found everything at full capability, he opened his emotions to Tam - the third member of his and Mara's shielding trio - and chinned his microphone.

"Sabers are good."

When the other three squadrons also verified, Corran cleared them for launch. Both wings - seventy-two X-wings and eight supercharged blastboats - dropped out from behind their comet and accelerated to near-light, closing so rapidly that they were past the perimeter pickets before the Yuuzhan Vong could loose a magma missile. Luke took the lead, plotting an interception vector that would carry them into the heart of the main fleet without making their target obvious.

"Well done," Corran commed.

The tactical display shifted scales, now showing Luke's two wings of blue symbols surrounded by a sea of yellow Yuuzhan Vong symbols, each displaying the ship's mass, analog class, and - when the Jolly Man's, computers could match the attributes to a profile in the data bank - occasionally even a name. Intent on pushing through the comet cluster and carrying through on its surprise attack, the enemy fleet maintained its loose formation so that each vessel would have maneuvering room. When Luke looked outside the cockpit, he could see the ships only as black areas blotting out the distant starlight; this far from Coruscant's sun, there was little light to illuminate their dark hulls.

A frigate identified as the Reaver loosed the first Yuuzhan Vong salvo, but only one plasma ball was leading the fast-moving attack wings far enough to strike home. It hit one of the Shockers' X-wings and, overwhelming the shields, reduced the starfighter to a flash of photons and atoms.

"Hold your fire," Luke ordered. He began to jink and swerve, deliberately keeping both combat wings between two vessels at all times so enemy gunners would risk hitting their own ships if they fired and missed. "If we stop to fight, we're lost."

As they streaked deeper into the fleet, the Yuuzhan Vong kept up a steady but ineffectual dribble of fire, all the while maneuvering to clear a firing lane. It was a futile exercise against the nimble X-wings and their blastboat escorts. With the surveillance crews on the Jolly Man watching their backs, Luke always knew when a lane was opening and slid into a new attack vector. The Shockers lost one of their blastboats to a magma missile, but the crew retaliated by mass-firing their torpedoes and bombs before going EV. Almost half the volley penetrated the cruiser's shielding singularities, and a long line of breaches began to vent bodies and atmosphere from the port side.

A skip carrier decelerated and turned to cut them off. As soon as coralskippers began to drop off the vessel and form up, Danni's targeting square shrank and isolated an unnamed heavy cruiser in the heart of the five-ship group she had designated earlier.

"Yammosk confirmed."

Luke studied the tactical display, then touched a finger to a destroyer analog well off their current vector. The name beneath the destroyer was Sunulok.

"Designate secondary, Artoo." A circle appeared around the vessel, and Luke opened a comm channel to Corran. "Control, are we clear for a diversionary launch on that one? We'll bump over and slide away on the other side."

"You're good to go, Farmboy." Corran divided the target into attack sectors by squadron, then commed Luke, "By the way, SigCor says they're reading ion tails at the front of the fleet."

"Ion tails?"

Yuuzhan Vong did not use ion drives.

"Maybe they're bringing the Peace Brigade along," Mara said. "That would explain how we felt them coming."

Luke stretched his awareness of the Force forward. He found nothing for a moment, then felt a whole wall of life at the forward edge of the fleet. "Too many for a crime cartel. I feel two or three million beings there."

"Must be one of their slave armies," Tam said.

Luke was not so sure. The presence lacked the muted, staticlike sense caused by the head growths the Yuuzhan Vong used to control their slaves, but he had no time to contemplate what else he might be feeling. The skip carrier was dropping the last of its coralskippers, and the first squadrons were already coming out to meet them.

"X-wings slow, blastboats break!" Luke ordered.

The seven surviving blastboats turned hard, swinging in behind the destroyer analog's rearmost escort frigates. Luke waited until their vector had straightened, then gave the command for the X-wings to follow. All four squadrons pivoted on their bellies, reverse-firing two engines and overthrusting the opposite pair, and were instantly flashing past the blastboats toward the two escorts.

Flashes of ruby fire blossomed from the frigates' rocky sterns as they belched magma missiles at their attackers. Luke dropped his nose and dived for two seconds to force the Yuuzhan Vong gunners to fully depress their launchers, then snapped into a climb and accelerated past their sterns while they tried to readjust. He checked his tactical display and saw a dozen squadrons of coralskippers swinging after them from the skip carrier, but their pursuit angle was so poor they would never reach the killing zone behind the X-wings.

When Luke raised his eyes again, it was to find space burning around him. He thought for an instant he had been hit, but felt no surge of concern from Mara or Tam. He gave his hand over to the Force and continued to jink and juke in tandem with his shielding companions, and the firestorm quickly resolved itself into exploding plasma balls and streaking magma missiles. A crackle of static announced the destruction of someone in his squadron, and R2-D2 scolded him with long series of whistles.

"I don't like it either, Artoo," Luke said. "But Admiral Sovv is depending on us."

The maelstrom faded as quickly as it had erupted, and Luke checked his tactical display. He had taken his squadrons exactly where he intended, midway between the two escorts, but this pair had shown no fear of firing in each other's direction. He had lost one of the Sabers' blastboats, while the Dozen and the Shockers had both lost an X-wing. The frigates had paid a steep price for missed attacks, however; both symbols were blinking steadily to show that they were moderately damaged.

"We must be doing something right," Kyp commed. "They really don't want us near that big rock."

Another pair of escorts came into view, their sterns sparkling with missile launches. The Sunulok's tail was now visible between them, a dark disk the size of a thumb tip. Luke went into an evasive dive-and-rise, and missile trails began to streak past above and below. He checked the tactical display and found the dozen squadrons from the skip carrier still on their tail.

"It looks like we'll have to take this ruse all the way," he commed. "We'll separate by squadrons and run hulls past the escorts. Shockers and Dozen left, Sabers and Knights right."

The order was acknowledged by a flurry of comm clicks, then the four squadrons separated into pairs. Luke led the Sabers and Knights on an undulating course toward the escort on the right. Narrowly escaping a trio of plasma balls launched in a desperation spread, he brought his X-wing in above the frigate's weapon banks and skimmed its flank barely two meters off the hull. To his surprise, both escorts continued to attack the squadrons opposite, pouring so much fire into each other that R2-D2 had to reinforce the particle shields because of all the yorik coral geysering up in their path.

"Danni, you're sure the yammosk is on the cruiser?" Kyp commed. "Because the way they're -"

"I'm sure. The yammosk is going crazy." Danni's transmission ended in a crackle of static, then she came back yelling, "Drif!"

Luke did not need to check his command display to know that Saba had lost one of her Jedi pilots. He felt the Barabel die. The Sabers reached the bow of the frigate, and he immediately angled across the nose, both to confuse the enemy weapon crews and to set the squadron up for their diversionary attack run.

Then the comm speaker crackled with a huge pulse of static, and a nova-bright flash illuminated space behind Luke. He checked his tactical display and saw the adjacent escort coming apart just behind the Shockers, engulfing Kyp's Dozen in flame and debris and hurling X-wings in every direction. Three, four, and finally five symbols winked out as starfighters exploded, then the blastboats went, and two more pilots went EV.

"Headhunted" Corran commed. "Headhunter, are you there?"

No answer.

"Any Dozener?"

Again, no answer.

"Just fried circuits," Rigard said optimistically. "We had a good spike ourselves."

"Let's hope so," Luke said. He checked his display and saw that six of the skip squadrons pursuing them were peeling off to go after what remained of the Dozen. "Dozeners, if you can hear this, you're out of action. Run if you can, or shut down and try to hide."

The order was answered by a single scratchy comm click. Luke felt Mara reach out to him, silently urging him to forget the sinking feeling in his stomach and concentrate on the task at hand. Luke turned back to the Sunulok and found the destroyer analog's stern swelling up before him, as big as a sandcrawler and growing fast, a half-dozen weapon stations spitting plasma balls the size of banthas.

"Arm one proton torpedo," Luke ordered. "Fire on my mark, then go over the top and be ready to break."

By the time the last comm click had acknowledged his order, Luke had lost his second blastboat to one of the big plasma balls, and the Sunulok's wing of coralskippers was streaming back beneath the destroyer's belly to engage the X-wings.

"Ready, mark!" Luke ordered.

The blue glow of fifty ion drives filled the darkness and resolved itself into a dazzling wall of receding circles. The shielding crews began to work their dovin basals, capturing perhaps a third of the proton torpedoes and forcing the proximity fuses to detonate a safe distance from the Sunulok. Luke pulled up, angling for the top of the destroyer analog, and watched with satisfaction as the rest of the torpedoes struck home. The entire stern came apart, hurling a wall of flame and yorik coral pebbles in front of the approaching X-wings.

Relying on their shields for protection, they shot through the rubble and streaked along the spine of the wounded ship. Luke continued for perhaps a half kilometer, then broke off sharply and dived toward the heavy cruiser. R2-D2 tweedled helpfully and displayed a message for Luke.

"Thanks, Artoo." Luke armed the rest of his torpedoes and shadow bombs. "Twenty seconds to target. Preparing for the main attack run."

"Copy." Corran was quiet for an instant, then said, "Message relayed. Good hunting."

They were halfway to their target when a wall of New Republic turbolaser fire erupted from the main body of the comet cluster and briefly silhouetted the entire Yuuzhan Vong fleet. It looked like nothing more menacing than a vast field of black lozenge-shaped asteroids, but Luke experienced a terrible disturbance in the Force as several thousand beings from their own galaxy were blasted back to their elemental atoms.

Everything went dark again, and an uneasy silence settled over the Eclipse comm channels. Though only half of the pilots and crew in the combat wings were Force-sensitive, the rest had been around Jedi long enough to have some idea of what their battle mates were experiencing.

An instant later, the vanguard of the Yuuzhan Vong fleet responded to the ambush with a lightning storm of crimson flashes and streaking fireballs. The New Republic turbolasers flashed to life again, the Force quavered with another thousand deaths, and the battle exploded into its full horror.

Luke saw a pair of frigates accelerating to cut them off from the cruiser. He touched his tactical display, designating the rearmost one as a secondary target.

"We'll go through this one," he said. "Hisser, will you take the lead?"

"My honor," the Barabel replied.

The Wild Knights drew into a tight formation and moved forward, a golden aura slowly expanding around Saba's blastboat. The frigates dropped their skips and began to pour more fire into the glowing ball of radiance, which only made it grow faster as Izal Waz used the Force to trap the light. Once the sphere was large enough, Luke lined the other two squadrons up behind it, picking off skips as they tried desperately to fight their way into the golden orb and stop the Wild Knights.

As Danni had described happening at Arkania, the frigate eventually grew so nervous about the approaching sphere that it turned a shielding singularity on it. The glowball abruptly lengthened as it was caught and accelerated by the gravity of the tiny black hole.

"Drop the block!" Saba ordered.

By the time she finished giving the command, the glowball had stretched into an ovoid twice as long as it was thick. Izal Waz let the golden sphere fade away, and the Wild Knights' X-wings fanned out, already firing proton torpedoes. The shielding crews scrambled to redirect their singularities - and never saw the two-ton block of black durasteel that it had just accelerated to several hundred thousand kilometers an hour. The frigate did not explode so much as flash out of existence, and the wings from Eclipse suddenly found themselves diving on their target through a cloud of superheated dust.

A full wing of skips came boiling out of the cruiser to intercept them. The ship itself opened up with all batteries, pouring constant streams of fire from its bow and stern in an attempt to force the attacking X-wings to come at it amidships and meet its coralskippers.

"Time to try out Control's new targeting system," Luke said. "Break into your shielding trios and go down the center."

"And don't stop to dogfight - those skips from the carrier are still on your tail," Corran said. He switched to a private channel, then added, "And, Farmboy, you need to get this right the first time. Listen."

There was a scratchy pause as Corran patched in the civilian emergency channel, then a confused babble filled Luke's cockpit. A moment later, he began to recognize individual voices - and wished he hadn't.

"- on us, please! We're civilians from -"

"- is the Happy Hutt with five thousand refugees -"

"- Meteor Racer out."

"Six hundred transponders just came on, Luke," Corran said. "They confirm what you're hearing."

"Of course they do."

Luke needed no further explanation to know what was happening. He recognized the Happy Hutt as one of the refugee ships missing from the evacuation of Ralltiir, and he felt certain that a records search would turn up the Meteor Racer's name, as well.

The yammosk cruiser's wing of skips began to fire at maximum range, no doubt trying to force their attackers to decelerate and be caught from behind. Instead, the X-wings and blastboats continued forward at maximum firing velocity.

Luke clicked off with Corran and had R2-D2 activate his supplementary targeting system. The reticle quickly locked onto the gravitational pulses coming from the dovin basal in his target's nose. With lasers quadded on full power, he squeezed the trigger. One bolt streaked out a millisecond ahead of the others, following the targeting lock straight toward the skip's nose. The rest diverged according to a carefully calculated ratio of distance and velocity until they were caught by the gravity of the skip's shielding system and bent back inward. The first bolt vanished into the singularity; the other three converged three meters behind it, taking the coralskipper directly in the pilot's compartment.

"Almost as good as the Force," Luke said.

He found a pair of skips coming out of the field of detonations that had been the cruiser wing a moment before and set his targeting reticle on the one on the left.

"Already spoken for," Mara said. She and Tam fired simultaneously; a moment later, both skips vanished. "Sorry, Farmboy."

"You're forgiven," Luke said.

With its entire detachment of skips eliminated in the flash of an eye, the cruiser began to concentrate its fire in the approach lane. Knowing that even one of its big plasma balls would take out an entire shielding trio, Luke ordered his wings to fan out. As quick as the pilots were to obey, one trio of Sabers evaporated into the flame, and the Shockers lost their last blastboat.

But now the cruiser was laid out before them, a kilometer-long lozenge of dark yorik coral striped with bands of knobby weapons banks. With Mara to one side and Tam to the other, Luke juked and jinked for a three count, firing his quadded lasers into roiling clouds of flame while he gave the rest of his pilots time to reach firing position.

Finally, they were ready. "Fire everything you have - we won't be coming back."

Luke fired the two proton torpedoes from his open bank, fired three more from the other bank, then dropped the shadow bombs stored in the XJS's third set of launchers and used the Force to send them on their way. He saw the first two torpedoes vanish into a shielding singularity, then a plasma ball erupted from a weapon nodule ahead, coming so quickly at this distance that he barely had time to slide out of the way and kiss wings with Mara.

"Close, Farmboy."

Luke eased away, then winced inwardly as she dipped her own X-wing and sent a magma missile ricocheting off her shields.

"You're one to talk," Luke commed.

Then the attacks dwindled away, and finally they could see the flames and debris erupting from the breaches their shadow bombs and torpedoes had torn into the hull. In some places, secondary explosions could be seen rolling down sections of exposed deck, and there were clouds of bodies and materiel billowing out into the vacuum. Luke decelerated as much as he dared with the skips coming behind them and locked down the trigger of his laser cannon, burning round after round into the interior of the cruiser.

"Danni, what's the yammosk status?"

"Quieting, but still alive."

Luke checked the tactical display and found the skips from the carrier still thirty seconds behind them.

"What part of the vessel?" Luke asked.

"Negative, Farmboy," Corran said. "We talked about this - you had your shot, now get out of there."

"Danni, what part?" Luke demanded.

Mara's apprehension level spiked. "Farmboy, one dead hero -"

"There are a lot of dead heroes out there today - too many to leave this undone." Luke checked his tactical display; twenty seconds. "Where? Now!"

"Try lower deck, midships," Danni said. "I can't be sure."

"I'll take one more shot." Luke angled toward the middle of the ship and continued to decelerate. "Everyone else, go."

"Not on your life," Mara said.

She and Tam decelerated along with him. With the rest of the wing flying cover, they began to work their way along the cruiser's hull, pushing through the body clouds and sticking their noses into likely looking holes.

"Farmboy, you have fifteen seconds before those skips are all over you," Corran said. "And there's something else."

He patched the Fleet Command channel through.

"- you to cease fire!" Sovv's nasal voice was shouting. "The New Republic navy does not butcher its own people!"

"We are not butchering them," Garm Bel Iblis countered. "The Yuuzhan Vong are. We are trying to fire around them."

"And failing miserably, General," Traest Kre'fey countered.

"What about Coruscant?" Garm argued. "What about the Jedi? Do you know how many pilots they lost to give us this chance?"

Corran deactivated the channel. "Luke, the Yuuzhan Vong are already pushing through the comet cluster. Rather than fire through the refugee screen, Traest is falling back and trying to maneuver. Garm will have to join him soon or be cut off, and Wedge is two minutes behind schedule because the battle is moving toward Coruscant."

According to Sovv's original plan, Wedge would be the hammer falling on Garm and Traest's anvil, sweeping in from behind the Yuuzhan Vong to drive them into the ambush.

"Wedge can still surprise them - if the yammosk is dead," Luke said. He could sense that Mara felt betrayed by Sovv's decision not to fire on the refugees, but Luke was not so sure. Would a New Republic willing to attack through a fleet of its own people be worth saving? "This isn't over yet."

"Five seconds, Farmboy."

Luke stuck his X-wing's nose into a breach just below the dormant weapons bank and burned through two more decks, puncturing a sealed bulkhead and sucking a long stream of startled Yuuzhan Vong out into the vacuum.

"You found it!" Danni exclaimed.

He was joined by Mara and Tam. Combined, their fire was enough to blast through the other side of the vessel, and Luke glimpsed a many-tentacled creature flying out the breach amid a cloud of frozen vapor.

"That's -"

Danni's confirmation dissolved into static as a skip's plasma ball dissipated against the blastboat's shields. The attack was answered instantly by a storm of laser cannon fire, but staying to fight was the last thing on Luke's mind. He pulled his X-wing out of the breach and dropped the nose.

"Break off!"

Luke led the way under the cruiser and up on the other side, forcing the oncoming skips to decelerate or risk having the X-wings pop up on their tails. Without the yammosk to coordinate them, the coralskippers reacted in disarray. Some streaked over the cruiser at full speed and some under, while others stopped cautiously on the other side.

Luke sighed in silent relief, then commed, "Let's go find Wedge. We've got to refuel, rearm -"

"And return," Saba said. She sounded more eager than determined. "There are still plenty of Yuuzhan Vong for everyone."

 

Chapter 46

They had eaten worse things - the sour fimgus growing on the walls of Nolaa Tarkona's ryll mines came to mind - so Jacen knew it was not his sister's delicate sensibilities that kept her from choking down the tasteless pulp Alema had commandeered from their terrified Yuuzhan Vong host. Nor was it the urgency of their situation. The strike team was hiding in a one-room lodging cell on the outskirts of a domicile warren deep inside the worldship, trying to stay out of sight until Tesar reported back with news of the queen's location. They had seen no sign of Nom Anor or his troops since the battle in the grashal, when they had escaped by bringing the passage ceiling down behind them and fleeing into the heart of the worldship.

Jacen scooped a bowlful of pulp from a shell-like serving basin and pressed it into Jaina's hands. "I don't feel like eating either, but you need to keep up your strength."

Jaina hurled the gruel against the bioluminescent wall. Their Yuuzhan Vong captive, a lowly worker who was almost attractive in her utter lack of mutilations or tattoos, cringed in the corner as though the bowl had been thrown at her. The lichen began to glow more brightly as it absorbed nutrients, and no one spoke.

Jacen could feel the guilt and anger tearing his sister apart, though her emotions were so intermingled with his own that he could barely distinguish them. They shared a void that would never again be whole, an emptiness that he sensed pulling at Jaina like a vacuum breach. He laid a hand on her knee, hoping his touch might serve as her anchor.

"We can't give up. We still need to destroy the queen."

Jaina looked up, a faint spark of presence finally showing in her vacant eyes. "You left him to the Yuuzhan Vong."

"We had to," Jacen said, accepting the rebuke. As much as he himself was hurting, he would rather Jaina lay the blame boiling up inside her on his shoulders than her own. "They were all over him. You saw that."

Jaina pushed his hand from her leg. "He put you in charge, and you left him behind."

Jacen said nothing. Though he knew his sister's own feelings of guilt were driving her to accuse him, he did not trust himself to keep an even voice.

"Jacen does not deserve your blame." Tenel Ka was sitting on the other side of the small room, her legs crossed beneath her and her posture as erect as ever. "Everyone heard the command, and we all know why he gave it. To disregard such an order would have been to dishonor Anakin's memory and dismiss his sacrifice."

"Stay out of this, Tenel Ka," Jaina said. "You can't possibly know anything about it. You have the emotional depth of a ronto."

The speed with which Tenel Ka unfolded her legs and stepped around the low table proved how mistaken Jaina was. Jacen thought for a moment the Dathomiri would slap his sister, but Tenel Ka only continued to glare until Jaina finally grew uncomfortable and looked away.

When she did, Tenel Ka said, "We are all hurting, Jaina. Your brother, too."

It was difficult to tell from Tenel Ka's tone whether she meant the words to be conciliatory or cutting, but they caused Jaina to stand. Jacen reached for Jaina's hand, but he needn't have worried. Zekk was already stepping between the pair, positioning himself to intercept any blow that might be thrown.

"What's this going to help?" Zekk addressed himself more to Tenel Ka than to Jaina. "Calm down."

Both women opened their hands, but continued to stand and stare, each waiting for the other to apologize. The room remained uncomfortable and silent. The other Jedi stared into their gruel.

They were spared the necessity of a long wait by a low growl over their comlinks. Jacen snatched up his own comlink.

"Tesar?" he asked. As the strike team's stealthiest member and only natural night hunter, the Barabel had been the obvious choice to send slinking through the murky lanes of the domicile warren. "Did you find her?"

He was answered not by the Barabel's voice, but by another low growl. It took him a moment to recognize the sound as a Shyriiwook word, as Wookiee voices did not carry well over comlinks.

"Lowie?" Jaina gasped, grabbing her own comlink. "Is that you?"

Lowbacca confirmed his identity with a groan, then began a long apology for allowing the Tachyon Flier to be stolen.

"Lowie, forget it - they fooled us, too," Jacen said. "Where are you now?"

The answer Lowbacca rumbled was considerably more than a location.

"Why would they do that?" Jacen asked.

Lowbacca grunted a guess.

"Keep watching," Jaina said. "And whatever you do, stay with him. I'll be there as soon as I can."

She snapped her comlink off, and Jacen barely caught her arm before she reached the door.

"What are you doing?"

"Going after Anakin's body - what do you think?" It was Tahiri who said this, speaking for the first time since they had fled the grashal. "They're not taking him anywhere."

She rose and went to Jaina's side, as did Alema and, a moment later, Zekk. Jacen ignored them all and continued to hold his sister's arm.

"What about Anakin's last words?" he asked. "He told us to destroy the queen."

"Then destroy her." Jaina tore her arm free of his hand and slapped the tickle pad. "But I'm going back."

Not even checking to see if she would be seen, Jaina jerked her lightsaber off her belt and led the others out into the dark.

 

Chapter 47

Save that Leia was smelling Ben's sweet breath instead of her own nervous sweat and the couch was not sluing around beneath her, war looked much the same on a wall-sized holovid as it did from the cockpit of the Millennium Falcon. Plasma balls still rolled over their targets in blossoms of white fire, turbolasers still laced the air with dazzling lances of color, wounded vessels still bled dark clouds of flash-frozen crew. The inset image of a grim-voiced Duros war correspondent described how the massive Yuuzhan Vong fleet was steadily pressing forward behind the screen of refugee ships despite a fierce running assault on its rear by Wedge Antilles's Fleet Group Three. The invaders had already crossed the orbit of Nabatu, the tenth planet of the Coruscant system, and were expected to reach the Ulabos ice bands by the end of the standard day.

The newsvid changed scenes, now showing the starliner Swift Dreams as it strayed into a barrage of turbolaser fire. Leia knew she should have felt something, should have been angered or frightened or something by the huge Yuuzhan Vong fleet sweeping down on Coruscant, but she was not. All she cared about was holding Ben in her arms, keeping his warmth pressed to her body. As the Swift Dreams began to vent a cloud of tumbling refugees, a Bith correspondent appeared in the inset and reported that Garm Bel Iblis's Fleet Group Two continued to attack through the refugee screen, ignoring friendly-fire accidents such as the one shown and repeated orders from Admiral Sovv to stop. Several reliable sources claimed that Sovv had actually relieved Bel Iblis of command, an order that the general and his entire force also ignored. There were unsubstantiated reports of whole attack groups leaving Traest Kre'fey's Fleet Group One to join Bel Iblis in his effort to stop the Yuuzhan Vong at any price.

A pair of military analysts came on the newsvid and began to argue about whether Garm Bel Iblis's actions were the only way to delay the enemy until reinforcements arrived, or the first sign of the disintegration of the New Republic military.

"What a mess," Han said.

Leia did not reply. It was the first either of them had spoken since turning on the vidscreen, and she had actually forgotten he was sitting beside her. He had been following her around since it happened, as though he were afraid it might be necessary to snatch Ben out of her arms again. His constant presence was starting to annoy her, though she could not bear even the small emotional turmoil that she would cause by telling him so.

The analysts were replaced by an image of Luke and Mara climbing out of their starfighters. As they joined a long line of exhausted Jedi stumbling across a Star Destroyer's docking bay, a behorned Devaronian reporter appeared in the foreground and described how the Jedi-led attack wing continued their daring penetration missions, destroying more than fifteen capital ships in the heart of the Yuuzhan Vong fleet. While Eclipse's losses were classified for intelligence reasons, casualties in both personnel and equipment were rumored to be high. No one had seen the famous Kyp Durron or any of his Dozen since the battle began.

Han used a voice command to change to the senate feed. Good old Han, worried about Leia being upset by news of the danger her brother was facing. She would have liked to be upset. She would have liked to feel something - anything - other than the hollow ache that consumed her now. Why had Han needed to change the feed? She just wanted him to go away and leave her alone.

The holovid split into two images, one showing the packed chamber, the other a hologram of Admiral Sovv standing before the high councilor's console. The Sullustan was demanding that NRMOC confirm his dismissal of General Bel Iblis and a long list of officers who had deserted to serve under his command. Borsk Fey'lya appeared in an inset, his fur tangled and his eyes sunken with stress.

"You have another way to hold the enemy at bay, Admiral Sovv?" Fey'lya asked.

The Sullustan's hologram continued to stare directly ahead. "Bel Iblis's mutiny is undermining the command integrity of the whole military."

"So the answer would be no," Fey'lya said. "In that case, I suggest that instead of interfering with General Bel Iblis's efforts, you follow his lead. You will not stop the Yuuzhan Vong by nipping at their heels."

This caused enough of a tumult in the senate chamber that Ben opened his eyes and began to cry. The TDL nanny droid was instantly at Leia's side, reaching for the infant with her four synth-skin arms. Leia shielded Ben with her body and shooed the droid away. Nobody was taking this child from her.

Apparently speaking to Fey'lya via direct feed and unaware of the uproar in the chamber, Admiral Sovv did not wait for the audio to equalize, and his response was lost in the general tumult.

"I am also aware of how many lives we stand to lose here if you let the enemy drive that refugee fleet into our planetary shields," Fey'lya said. "Admiral Sovv, as the chairman of NRMOC, I am not only instructing you to fire through the hostage screen, I am you to. If necessary, you are to fire on those ships directly."

Again, Admiral Sovv did not wait for the audio to equalize, and his reply was lost to the general uproar.

Fey'lya's response was not. "Then you are relieved of command, Admiral Sovv. I am sure General Bel Iblis understands the necessity of my order."

This time, the audio could not be adjusted to filter out the din in the chamber. Hundreds of senators stood and began to shout their disdain of the Bothan; a smaller number rose to applaud his courage and decisiveness. Then, one by one, holograms of Sovv's Sullustan proteges began to appear on the speaking floor beside the admiral. There were the Generals Muun and Yeel, Admiral Rabb, Commander Godt, and a dozen others, all powerful figures in the New Republic military who owed their rise to Admiral Sovv. Fey'lya did not seem all that surprised to see them appearing before him, but his beard fur bristled when General Rieekan, Commodore Brand, and even his fellow Bothan Traest Kre'fey added their holograms to those standing with Admiral Sovv.

"We don't need to watch this," Han declared, still trying to shield her from anything upsetting. "How about one of Garik Loran's old holodramas? Those always used to make you laugh."

Leia shook her head. "This is fine."

The disintegration of the New Republic military ought to keep her mind off the empty hurt inside. She signaled the droid for a collapsipack of formula and settled back to feed Ben. Now, if she could get Han to go away and leave her alone, she just might make it through the day.

Fey'lya rose and tried for a while to quiet the chamber. When this resulted only in a louder outburst of shouts, he gave up and returned to his seat, then disappeared behind his instrument console and began to work the controls. Apparently, he noticed that his face was still on the vidfeed, because he scowled and flipped something, and the inset disappeared.

The Solos' comm unit began to beep for attention. Han frowned and started to rise.

"Han!" Surprised by the alarm in her own voice, Leia caught him by the arm. "Where are you going?"

Han gestured vaguely in the direction of the study. "To answer the comm."

Leia shook her head and pulled Han back to the couch. "Don't leave me."

Han's face melted. "Never. I'm not going anywhere."

The comm unit continued to beep. The vidscreen split into three images, one showing the uproar in the senate galleries, another the holograms of Sovv and his supporters, and the third the top of Borsk Fey'lya's head as he stared at his instrument console.

C-3PO stepped into the door. "Excuse me, Master Han, but the comm unit is requesting attention."

"We know, Goldenrod," Han said. "We lost a son, not our hearing."

C-3PO's photoreceptors dimmed noticeably. "Oh, of course."

He clumped out of the room. The turmoil in the senate chamber finally began to fade, though there was still too much noise for the sound droid to pick up Admiral Sovv's voice when his hologram spoke to Fey'lya again.

The chief of state looked up long enough to signal the commanders to wait, then returned his attention to his instruments and spoke briefly.

A moment later, C-3PO walked into the room with a portable comm screen. He glanced at the vidscreen and tipped his head in robotic bewilderment, then turned to the couch.

"I'm sorry to interrupt, but Chief of State Fey'lya is asking to speak with Mistress Leia."

"Me?" Leia's mind would normally have leapt immediately to speculations as to why Fey'lya would be calling her at such a time, but all she could think of now was that she hadn't slept or bathed or even brushed her hair since it happened. "No. Absolutely not."

C-3PO glanced at the vidscreen again, then said, "He said to tell you it was matter of galactic security."

Leia looked to Han, and she did not even need to say anything. He simply took the comm screen from C-3PO and put it on the couch between them, with the built-in holocam facing him.

"This is Han, Chief Fey'lya. Leia can't talk right now."

On the wall screen, Leia watched Fey'lya's hand run through his head fur. "Yes, I've heard that something might have happened to Anakin. If that's so, I'd like to express not only my own sympathy, but that of the entire New Republic."

"We appreciate that." Han glanced at the wall screen and rolled his eyes, then looked back into the comm unit's holocam. "Now, I'm sure you'll understand if I sign off."

Fey'lya's hand darted out toward his instrument panel. "Wait - there was one other thing, General Solo."

"General?" Han looked over the comm screen at Leia and cocked an eyebrow. "Don't tell me you're reactivating my commission? You can't be that desperate for line officers."

It finally occurred to Leia that her husband was playing with the New Republic's chief of state not for his own amusement, but in an attempt to cheer her up. The effort touched her, even if it failed to come close to drawing a smile.

"Not yet, General Solo." Fey'lya's ears twitched, a rare sign of being flustered. "Actually, I was hoping to prevail on Leia to say a few words of support for my government to some of her old friends in the military."

Han glanced over the comm screen.

Fey'lya seemed to realize Leia was listening in, because he quickly added, "I'm sure Leia realizes how supportive I have been of the Jedi recently, and the military has several sizable droid orders pending approval with Tendrando Arms."

Leia sighed and stared at the floor. Was this what Anakin had given his life for? The thought was so depressing that she started to sob again.

"Sorry, Chief Fey'lya," Han said, reaching for the comm screen power switch. "This time, you're on your own."

 

To Cilghal's sensitive nostrils, the foamy fungus eating away the scorched metal of the surviving X-wings smelled almost as foul as the soiled flight suits of the eight exhausted pilots themselves. There was an acidic edge to it, and the metallic mustiness of corrosion - a common-enough smell on oceanic worlds like her own Mon Calamari, but certainly a rarity coming from the rustproof alloys used in starfighters.

Cilghal used a plastifibe agitator to scrape some of the yellow growth into a sample bag, and the musty smell grew stronger. Though she had already scanned for the typical Yuuzhan Vong attack toxins, she found herself wondering if she should have taken the time to return to her laboratory for her breath mask.

Behind her, Kyp Durron sneezed, then asked, "What do you think?" After several dozen terrifying hours zipped tight in his EV suit because of a vacuum leak in his cracked canopy, he was by far the worst-smelling of the survivors. "A new kind of weapon?"

"Not a very effective one, if it is," Cilghal said. "If this is all it grew in the time you needed to limp back to Eclipse, it will not destroy many fighters before the tech crews steam it off."

She continued to scrape and finally reached bare hull. As her nose had led her to suspect, the metal was pitted with corrosion. The fungus was metabolizing the X-wing itself - but why? The Yuuzhan Vong would not have gone to the trouble of creating a self-heating, vacuum-hardened fungus unless there was a purpose to it.

Kyp sneezed, and Cilghal turned to face him.

"How long have you been doing that?" she asked. "Were you sneezing in your EV suit?"

Kyp shook his head and wiped his nose on the cuff of his flight suit. "It started when I unzipped."

"Spores." Motioning Kyp to follow along, Cilghal took her sample bag and started toward the hangar hatch. "They wanted it to produce spores."

Cilghal was just about to palm the control pad when the blaring roar of an assault alarm reverberated through the cavern. It continued for fifteen ear-piercing seconds, then was replaced by the watch officer's voice.

"Attention all crews: This is no drill. We have an incoming yorik coral vessel."

"Sith blood! It has to be that frigate again." Kyp had already explained to the watch officer that their return had taken so long because of a frigate that kept turning up behind them. "I could have sworn we had lost him."

Before Cilghal could stop him, Kyp turned and ran oft" to join the bustle as the ship crews prepared Eclipse's motley assortment of backup starfighters for launch. With the Errant Venture in a protective orbit around the base and well crewed by refugees from Reecee, there was no question of a single frigate destroying the Jedi stronghold.

Unfortunately, Cilghal knew, there was no longer any chance of keeping the secret of its location. As a vessel traveled through hyperspace, its hull built up a tachyon charge that was not released until it entered realspace again. If she was right about the fungus growing on the eight X-wings - and apparently she was, given the approaching Yuuzhan Vong frigate - the spores were freeing the tachyons in hyperspace, creating a long thread of faster-than-light particles leading straight to Eclipse.

So absorbed in this theory was Cilghal that when she returned to her laboratory, she immediately set to work stripping a tachyon gun from a spare S-thread spinner. The Mon Calamari was not very good with human mechanical equipment - she preferred to rely on Jaina or Danni for such jobs - so the task absorbed all of her concentration for the next quarter hour, until the base alarm blared again and the dismayed watch officer announced that the frigate had sacrificed itself to slip three skips past Eclipse's outer defenses.

The whole base shook as the two big turbolasers opened up on the small vessels. At first, Cilghal took the erratic ticking she heard to be subsurface vibration from the weapons, but then she noticed a complicated repeating pattern, and it was coming from the gravitic pulse coder standing in front of the captured yammosk's cell.

Cilghal rushed over to the observation window and found the creature's tentacles splayed straight out in the pool, its body membranes pulsing in consonance with the ticking of the pulse coder.

"So you do talk!"

Cilghal turned to the pulse coder and found it scratching a complicated series of peak and trough readings onto a flimsiplast drum. They did not yet have enough data to convert the marks into a meaningful message, but it seemed likely that the scratches would translate into identity codes, vectoring instructions, and target priorities. Cilghal activated their own makeshift gravitic wave modulator, adjusted the amplitude to match that being recorded, and began to generate the gravitic equivalent of white noise.

The yammosk stopped pulsing for an instant, then whirled around in its tank and launched itself into the viewport with a resonant thud. Cilghal stumbled back, and the creature held itself against the transparisteel, its tentacles lashing along the edges in search of a seam.

Cilghal turned off her modulator. When the yammosk dropped back into the water and began to pulse again, she knew they had succeeded.

The watch officer's voice came over the internal comm system again. "Suicide run! Close all airtight hatches, secure environment suits, and prepare for impact in ten, nine ..."

Cilghal glanced at the pulse coder's flimsiplast drum and suddenly knew what was recorded there. Though she could not have translated the message directly, she felt certain it said something like, "Here I am. Destroy me - destroy me at any cost."

There was no time to disconnect all of the power and data feeds and save the pulse coder. Cilghal ripped the flimsiplast off the scratch drum and flew out of the doomed laboratory, almost forgetting to slap the emergency hatch seal as she left.

 

Chapter 48

The Sabers dropped out of the Mon Mothma's forward fighter bay and saw Coruscant's thumb-sized disk twinkling at them through a gap in the Yuuzhan Vong fleet, the planet's trillion-light aura a genial reminder of what they were fighting to protect. Ben was down there beneath one of those lights, sleeping soundly in his aunt's apartment and dreaming of his mother's return. That much, Mara could feel through the Force. What she could not feel was when his dream would be answered. Despite the steady flow of New Republic reinforcements - even Admiral Ackbar was rumored to be on his way with a Mon Calamari fleet - the Yuuzhan Vong continued to press their advance. Their route insystem could be traced by the swath of derelict vessels littering space, but they still had half their fleet, and now they were within sight of Coruscant.

It was as close to her child as Mara intended to let them come.

A sheet of blue energy lit space overhead as the Mon Mothma's turbolaser banks opened fire again. A moment later, a Yuuzhan Vong frigate vanished from the tactical display, and the cockpit sensor alarms started to scream as a flight of skips headed their way.

Wedge Antilles's voice came over the comm. "All squadrons, stand by for close defense. This time, we're going to make them stop and pay attention."

Mara was engulfed by the reassuring warmth of her husband's Force touch. "He's going to be all right," Luke said. "We're not going to let anything happen to him."

 

Blue eyes widening as the safe band narrowed, the Bail Organa's young comm officer asked, "Shall I ask Planetary Defense to deactivate a mine sector for us, General?"

Garm Bel Iblis twirled his mustache and, ignoring the tactical display on the bridge's wall screen, stared out the viewport at the plasma storm blossoming against the Star Destroyer's forward shields. Between flashes, it was just possible to see a swarm of blocky silhouettes moving forward behind the assault, rapidly swelling into the shapes of New Republic starliners and mass transports. Never one to substitute technology for his own judgment, he knew instinctively that the refugee screen would be on him in less than a minute - just as he knew that Planetary Defense would need to deactivate two sectors of mines - not one - if Fleet Group Two was going to withdraw in order.

"General?" the young woman asked. "I have an open channel to Planetary Defense."

"Very good, Anga." Garm's eyes shot briefly to the tactical display, where he saw that with all the defections from Fleet Group One, his force was actually larger than at the beginning of the battle. "You may tell Planetary Defense to keep all sectors of the mine shell active. We won't be retreating."

Anga's face went as pale as her hair. "Excuse me, General?"

"Give me an open channel to all fleet groups," Garm ordered. "I'll need to say a few words."

 

Located in a repulsor-equipped satellite hovering on a station in front of the Yuuzhan Vong invasion route, Orbital Defense Headquarters was as large as a Mon Calamari floating city, and the control hub at its heart was the size of a full shock-ball court. Despite being packed to overflowing with weapons directors and traffic coordinators, the nerve center was also, at the moment Lando followed his escort through the hatch, as still as space.

Noting that every pair of eyes in the place was fixed on the ceiling, Lando lifted his chin and found himself staring through a large transparisteel dome at a vast abyss of spiraling magma trails and blossoming fireballs. Some of the explosions appeared close enough to lick the shields. Lando's instinct was to drop for cover and crawl back to the Lady Luck as quickly as his hands and knees would carry him, but it was a matter of pride with him never to be the first to panic. Despite what his eyes were telling him, the station remained stable and, in a room packed with electronics, there was not a single crackle of pulse static.

In a deliberately calm voice, he asked, "Optical ceiling?"

"That's right," his escort, a winsome petty officer who would have made even Tendra frown with jealousy, said. "Sometimes it helps to point the station and see what's going on."

"Uh-huh," Lando said.

Now that he was sorting out the scene, he could see the blue circles of several thousand ion drives receding into the firestorm. Garm Bel Iblis had turned on the invaders like a cornered wampa, and Fleet Group Two was accelerating through the refugee screen to meet the enemy head-on. New Republic corvettes and frigates were vanishing by the dozens; cruisers and Star Destroyers were belching fire and falling away one after another.

Lando took his comlink off his belt and opened a channel to Tendra. "Have you finished with the weapons platforms yet?"

"I'm making the last delivery now," she answered. "There's still an open shield section on the far side of the planet, so I thought I'd drop the extras at the Imperial Palace."

"You'd better hold off on that," Lando said. "I think they'll be closing that hole shortly. I'll meet you at our rendezvous."

"When?" Tendra sounded worried.

"Soon," Lando replied. "Very soon."

The petty officer leaned through the hatch and summoned the two YVH war droids Lando was delivering, then led the way across the control hub. By the time they had twined their way through the maze of aisles and checkpoints to the lift tube on the other side, Fleet Group Two had penetrated the refugee screen and was webbing the darkness beyond with turbolaser fire. The hostage ships themselves were accelerating forward, their dark shapes backlit by blue halos of ion glow.

The petty officer pressed her palm to a security pad to authorize access, then led Lando and his droids onto the command deck. Though General Ba'tra was already surrounded by aides and junior command officers - all speaking to him at once - the Bothan motioned the newcomers over immediately. Muzzle curled into a faint snarl, he looked the war droids over and grunted approval.

Gratified to finally find someone who appreciated the craftsmanship of the droids, Lando smiled warmly and extended his hand. "General Ba'tra, how nice to meet -"

"Cache it, Calrissian," Ba'tra snarled. "We're in the middle of a battle."

Lando let his hand drop with his spirits, but kept the smile. "Yes, sir, that's why I'm donating these war droids to your security detail."

"Donating?"

"Free of charge," Lando confirmed.

Ba'tra looked doubtful. "And what do you get in return?"

"Nothing, yet," Lando said. "These are good droids, and I'm just trying to preserve the market long enough for people to realize that."

"Preserve the market?" The Bothan smiled wryly, then plinked a claw off YVH 1-302A's armor. "Quantum?"

"Better," Lando said, deliberately duplicating the general's brusque manner. Echoing the customer's tone was one of his most effective sales techniques. "Laminanium. Developed it ourselves."

"Ah."

Sensing the Bothan's approval, Lando said, "I have twenty more aboard the Lady Luck, if you have a use for them."

"They're not spoken for?"

Lando shook his head. "This is my last stop."

A flare of orange light strobed through the control hub's observation dome as a pair of space mines fired their rockets and accelerated toward a Ralltiiri refugee vessel. The converted freighter's shields absorbed the detonation of the first mine, but the second slammed into the bow, igniting a wave of secondary explosions that vaporized the ship stem to stern.

"Answers that question," Ba'tra commented, watching the vessel explode. "Definitely Vong guards aboard."

A flickering sheet of orange filled the control hub as a dozen more mine rockets ignited.

The faces of the general's assistants fell, and a Bith female asked, "Shall I have sector two-twenty-three deactivate, General?"

Before answering, Ba'tra turned to consult a tactical display hanging on the command deck wall. Wedge's Fleet Group Three was sweeping down from behind, but even a quick glance at the situation revealed that Garm's force could not hold the Yuuzhan Vong in place. While the remnants of Fleet Group Two had already carved out a sizable hollow at the front of the column, enemy vessels were sweeping past on all sides, chasing the refugee ships toward the mine shell.

The orange light in the control hub died away suddenly and was not replaced by the flash of detonating mines. Ba'tra's head snapped back long enough to take in the sight of a dozen refugee vessels streaking through the mine shell unimpeded.

The Bothan whirled on the Bith who had suggested deactivating the sector. "I did not authorize that!"

What little color there was faded from the Bith's face. "Neither did I."

Ba'tra snatched his comlink from a pocket and stepped to the transparisteel wall that overlooked the control hub's main floor.

"Activate sector two-twenty-three!"

The Bothan was staring at a lone Mon Calamari seated forty meters away in the heart of the giant floor. She merely folded her hands in her lap and looked out the ceiling. The mine controllers flanking her did likewise.

"I see." Ba'tra snapped his comlink off and turned to Lando. "Are your droids as adept at dealing with traitors as they are infiltrators?"

Lando glanced at the controllers and swallowed, not certain that he wanted to answer truthfully.

"Do you know how quickly the enemy will reach us once they have cleared the mine shell?" Ba'tra asked. "And I should mention that you will not be leaving this station until I have an answer."

"You designate targets and issue an override command," Lando said.

"Which is?"

Lando did not answer, for his thoughts were suddenly full of thrust calculations and pitfalls.

"Calrissian?"

"General, do you have any way to keep your mines from targeting your orbital defense platforms?"

Ba'tra scowled, but looked to an Arcona assistant.

"We could give them the deactivation codes," the aide suggested. "With a tight-beam transmission, they could kill the warhead and let the mine bounce off their shields."

"Good," Lando said. "Then I suggest you deactivate all sectors."

"What?"

"Let them through," Lando clarified. "The refugees, the Yuuzhan Vong, everyone."

Ba'tra's eyes narrowed in thought, and Lando could see that the general was already thinking along the same lines. This particular Bothan, at least, deserved his post.

After a moment, Ba'tra asked, "You know what will happen when those ships hit the planetary shields?"

Lando shrugged. "Your mines might stop the first hundred ships -"

"Not even that many," the Bith said.

"So you might as well put your assets to their best use."

Ba'tra glanced up at the stream of hostage vessels pouring through the deactivated sector toward the surface of Coruscant. The first transports were already vanishing behind the rim of the observation dome, long needles of ion efflux trailing them as they accelerated into the planetary shield.

"You know this won't save the hostages?" Ba'tra asked.

"But at least the New Republic won't be the ones killing them," Lando said. "And it just might save Coruscant."

A bowl of golden light rose from the planet as the first refugee ship disintegrated against the shield.

Ba'tra winced, then nodded. "Very well, Calrissian. Do it."

Lando's jaw fell. "Me?"

"Your idea, your assignment," the Bothan said. "I'll have someone fetch you some stars, General. You've just been reactivated."

 

By the time Fleet Group Three connected with Fleet Group Two, local space was too littered with battle debris to enter at anything approaching combat speed. Through the flotsam cloud, Mara could see half a dozen Star Destroyers and perhaps twenty or thirty smaller vessels using their turbolasers to clear an exit path, but even they were barely crawling. At least half were venting bodies and atmosphere, and a dozen were moving only under the power of a nearby vessel's tractor beam. Clearly, Garm Bel Iblis and his followers were out of the battle.

The Yuuzhan Vong rearguard was pouring around the devastation on all sides, trading fusillades with Fleet Group One as they streamed past into the deactivated mine shell. Traest Kre'fey had apparently chosen not to engage until he joined up with Wedge's group. The few thousand vessels remaining to him were all standing off, content to attack from a distance while the invaders poured into orbit and swarmed Coruscant's defense platforms. Though they were badly outnumbered, Mara found it difficult to believe the admiral would be so cowardly. Despite his Bothan heritage, he had always struck her as an honorable soldier and loyal citizen.

The scene at the edges of Coruscant's atmosphere made Mara's heart race for Ben's safety. A thousand-kilometer circle of shield glowed gold beneath the constant bombardment of hostage ships. Every new impact launched a kilometers-high pillar of fire and sent shock circles rippling across the surface. Occasionally, a refugee vessel broke away at the last second as the crew finally overpowered their captors. Every attempt ended badly, with the craft crashing into the shield anyway, or being blasted out of space by a waiting frigate, or disintegrating under the stress of trying to escape. For the most part, the Yuuzhan Vong suicide squads were forcing the pilots to hit the same area, and the largest detonations were already causing forks of disruption static to dance across the shield.

Danni Quee's voice came over the channel. "We've got another yammosk."

Mara dropped her gaze to the tactical display, where a targeting box had appeared around a heavy cruiser already deep inside the mine shell. A dozen weary sighs sounded from the comm speaker. This would be Eclipse's fourth yammosk kill. They had taken out the second one with Saba's glowball tactic, but the third kill had cost so many pilots that Luke had reorganized Eclipse's forces into a single wing of two fifteen-pilot squadrons. When Danni had detected no more gravitic pulses, they had all dared hope they had killed the last one, but it now seemed apparent the invaders had been holding it in reserve.

Luke opened a channel to the Mon Mothma. "We'll need that support, Command." During their last rearming break, Wedge had offered the support of both Rogue Squadron and the Wraiths - who were being tapped for combat duty despite their status as an intelligence unit - for the next yammosk attack. "This is a tough one."

"Negative, Farmboy," Wedge responded. "You are not authorized for attack."

Mara felt Luke bristle and knew how tired he was. Luke never let himself get so angry she could feel it.

"This is not time to be looking out for old buddies, Command. You can see how desperate things are. If we don't take out that -"

"I said no" Wedge interrupted. "I can't order you to hold back, but trust me. There are some things I can't say over a combat channel."

Mara felt Luke perform the Jedi equivalent of counting ten. They still had no reason to believe the Yuuzhan Vong could eavesdrop on their communications - much less break military codes - but the same could not be said for the refugee ships. If any of those pilots happened to be smugglers in the Han Solo or Talon Karrde mold, they would have the finest comm-scanning equipment in the galaxy.

"Copy," Luke said. "Let us know when we have authorization."

"Count on it."

"Wedge?" Mara was as surprised as anyone to hear herself saying Wedge's name over the comm - and even she wasn't sure why she had done it until she asked, "Can you patch me through to Coruscant civil communications?"

There was a slight pause, then Wedge said, "Sure, we can do that. Who do you want to talk to?"

"My brother-in-law," she said.

The curiosity she felt from Luke lasted only as long as it took the next refugee ship to strike Coruscant's shields. This time, the disruption static shrank back on itself and burned through the shields. Two more vessels crashed beside the hole, enlarging it by a factor of ten, then a third pilot guided his lumbering starliner through the breach to safety. The comm channels crackled with an odd sort of half cheer as Fleet Group Three gave voice to the jubilation of finally seeing a refugee ship survive. The accolades ceased when a pair of Yuuzhan Vong frigates darted through the hole after it.

Han Solo's voice came over the comm speaker. "Mara? What happened?" The channel was full of static. "Is Luke -"

"He's fine," Mara interrupted. "Listen to me. The shields are going. Can you get Ben offplanet?"

"Threepio is already packing," Han said. "We'll be in the air as soon as we can reach the Falcon."

"Thank you." There was an awkward pause during which Mara found herself caught between saying again how sorry she was and apologizing for thinking Anakin's mission had been a good idea, then she asked, "How's Leia?"

"Hanging on," Han answered. Mara flashed on an image of Leia clutching Ben to her breast, then Han said, "We'll see ya."

He switched off, leaving Mara and Luke alone with the war. She felt Luke reaching out to her through the Force, trying to fill her with a sense of reassurance she could tell he did not quite feel himself.

I'm fine, Luke, she thought.

But Mara could feel Luke's irritation mounting, as well. Even Master Earnest was growing impatient with this strange game of follow-and-wait. More than a dozen Yuuzhan Vong vessels slipped through the overload breach into Coruscant's atmosphere before planetary shielding finally brought a replacement generator on-line.

Fleet Group Three was almost at the mine shell when Wedge gave the order to cease pursuit. Though there had not been an enemy vessel close enough for X-wings to fire at in twenty minutes, Luke ordered the Sabers and Wild Knights to take up static combat stations two hundred kilometers ahead of the Star Destroyer. Puzzled by Wedge's hesitation, both squadrons settled in to watch the deadly light storm being hurled back and forth by the big capital ships.

The puzzle was solved less than a minute later, when the entire mine shell sprouted rocket candles. The capital ships ceased firing. An astonished silence fell over the comm channels as the mines locked onto enemy vessels and curved after them. The Yuuzhan Vong maneuvered wildly, but they were trapped against Coruscant with nowhere to go. No sooner would they escape one mine than they ran afoul of another. Some vessels skimmed the planetary shields and were instantly torn into rubble. A few collided with each other, and still others grew so distracted they fell prey to missiles and turbolaser fire from the orbital defense platforms.

Eventually, the Yuuzhan Vong realized they were better off to stop and weather the storm, relying on their weapons and shielding singularities to destroy the approaching mines. Many failed and were blasted into rubble. A thousand more suffered hull breaches and began to vent internal systems. Almost all took at least one hit, but an astonishing number showed little sign of damage. They returned to their missions, attacking the orbital defense platforms and herding refugee ships to destruction.

Then, almost as one, the crippled Yuuzhan Vong vessels dropped out of orbit, hurling themselves into the planetary shields. Disruption static shot across the atmosphere. Whole grids shimmered and winked out. Planet-bound generator stations exploded with flashes brilliant enough to be seen from space. Skips began to drop off the surviving Yuuzhan Vong vessels and dive toward the surface.

On Mara's tactical display, the cruiser carrying the fourth yammosk was blinking slowly to show damage. But it was still intact, drifting toward the sunny side of the planet.

"Okay, Farmboy," Wedge commed. "Now you are authorized to attack."