They are too rare now."

Two warriors moved up, one on either side of the voxyn. They stayed out of reach of its claws, even when rt meant sloshing through black pools of liquid on the floor, but nothing would protect them from its acid if it Decided to unleash some in their direction.

Two hundred paces farther on, the voxyn stopped. It stared upward and to the left.

"Find an access," Denua Ku ordered.

Two warriors ran up the passage, and in moments found stairwells leading upward. The voxyn had to be dragged from its position, closest to the target it felt, to the stairway, but once hauled into that shaft it bounded up the stairs with an energy Viqi had not seen it display before.

Mara crept along the metal girder forty meters above the floor. The light from the lamps, dying glowrods, and torches below barely reached her; with her dark garments and skill at movement, she doubted very much that she would be seen.

The floor below was irregular, partially buckled, the result of one of the quakes that Danni said had plagued Coruscant since the Yuuzhan Vong had begun to shift its orbit. It was covered in black material, gummy and sticky, the sort of material Mara had seen on countless roofs of buildings on other worlds. Its use here meant that this surface was not intended as a work or habitation area - but now it was full of beings, a constant stream of haggard males and females of a variety of species emerging from and descending into stairs at the chamber's four corners. Wearing tatters, not interacting, barely blinking, they carried duracrete blocks and rubbish and portions of bodies, hauling these things out through a side tunnel and returning unencumbered.

Clearly they were excavating something in the chamber or chambers below that black floor, and doing so at the bidding of another. But where, and what, was that being? There was no sign of the Yuuzhan Vong, no sign of Lord Nyax.

From the end of a metal beam that bobbed occasionally under the combination of her weight and the stray breeze that moved through the chamber, Mara could look straight down at the center of the floor. It sagged, suggesting that there was a single large chamber beneath. She pulled out her comlink, "Luke," she whispered.

"I'm here."

She knew that; she could feel him, dozens of meters away, toward one of this chamber's four upper corners, at the hole Elassar had found.

He was with Tahiri, Face, and Kell. Any of them could have been the one to crawl out on this metal beam, but it had been Mara's turn.

"I suspect it would be child's play to join one of the work gangs,"

Mara said. "I don't think they'd react if a wampa in a war helmet and a dancing skirt started working with them."

Face's voice came back: "Give me a minute, I can work up that disguise."

"How about you just keep your current outfit and go see what they're digging up?"

"Spoilsport. Give me about ten minutes to get down there."

"Will do." She stiffened. "Wait a second. Something's changing."

The line of workers stopped in place, every one of the dozens of blank-eyed Coruscant survivors turning toward a far corner of the chamber. Mara strained to see, then gave up and brought out her macrobinoculars.

In that corner, a flap of sheet metal was pulled aside by something on the other side... and Lord Nyax stepped through.

Mara felt a hiss try to escape her. She stilled it, an unnecessary precaution, as at this distance no living creature could have heard her.

But the contrast between the malevolent Force presence she could feel from that man and his cheerful looks atop that monstrously tall body was startling.

She almost dropped the macrobinoculars. "Luke, did you feel that?"

"I did. Maybe you should get back here."

"Maybe I shouldn't." She returned her attention to the man in the distance. "But keep talking to me."

"Will do. What are you seeing?"

"Lord Nyax. He's come through the wall and he's walking toward the work crews. He's alone."

"How's his expression?"

"Happy. Childish-happy." For a moment, she could see into Lord Nyax's thoughts deeper than mere visual evidence should allow her. "He's pleased with their progress. They've got it ready to go."

"Got what ready?"

"What they told him about." Mara shook her head again as if trying to fling the alien thoughts from her skull by centrifugal force. "I can't seem to close myself off, Luke. I can't seem to block it."

"Me, either. Or Tahiri. I'm coming out there."

Mara looked back. In the distance behind her, she saw a dark shape emerge from a ceiling-high hole in the wall and come trotting across intact metal beams, more nimble than any acrobat.

She felt another sensation in the Force, a hunger that seemed decidedly out of character for Lord Nyax. She returned her attention to him.

The thing with Irek Ismaren's face stopped just short of the nearest work crew and was now looking toward the corner of the chamber immediately beneath Luke's entry point. There were shrieks from the stairwell there.

Figures burst up from the stairwell-armed and armored Yuuzhan Vong warriors emerged, moving fast, and the fifth one out of the stairwell was being dragged by a leashed voxyn. That was the hunger, the desperate craving of the voxyn to find and destroy all Force-users.

The voxyn's head turned as its gaze swept the room. Mara saw its attention flash across Luke, across her - she felt its awareness of her like a physical touch-and then come to rest on Lord Nyax. It lunged in his direction, its handler unable to hold it back despite the leash. A second warrior grabbed the leash, added his strength to that of the first, and they managed to drag the voxyn to a halt.

Lord Nyax smiled as the warriors, twenty of them now, spread out in a semicircle. They approached him, amphistaffs ready, some of them handling thudbugs or razorbugs. They moved through the crowd of workers, contemptuously shoving those beings aside, hurling them off their feet.

The beam Mara was on bobbed more deeply as Luke arrived. He stretched out behind her and pulled out his own macrobinoculars.

Mara felt a sudden surge of hatred-not for Luke, not for Lord Nyax, hut for the Yuuzhan Vong. She knew it to be a sentiment from outside her, and that kept it from being quite as compelling as it could have been.

And in that same instant, the workers screamed in rage of their own and swarmed the Yuuzhan Vong warriors.

The warriors swung and stabbed. Mara saw workers Pierced through heart and gut and brain. When those attacks were not instantly mortal, they continued running and leaping at the Yuuzhan Vong, crashing into them bearing them to the floor by weight of numbers.

The voxyn handlers went down. The voxyn leaped free and charged Lord Nyax, its growl of rage rumbling through the chamber.

A lightsaber, a red one, ignited in Lord Nyax's hand. Then Mara took another look. This wasn't a normal lightsaber; the energy blade emerged from the back of his metallic glove. It pivoted as he flexed his right hand. Another emerged from his left glove.

The voxyn, canny and old, charged to within three meters of Lord Nyax and then arched its back. It made a noise like a bedchamber's worth of carpet being suddenly ripped in two, and a gout of dark, smoking liquid sprayed from its mouth.

A portion of flooring between the voxyn and Lord Nyax tore free, lifting into the fluid's path. The voxyn's acid splashed across it, almost instantly burning through it, but its momentum was arrested. It and the flooring fell, the sound of the chemical reaction of the acid audible even at this distance.

Fallen Yuuzhan Vong warriors were rising now, having torn themselves free of the masses of people bearing upon them. Mara saw limbs being severed from torsos by expert amphistaff blows, saw trails of blood, some of it jets of arterial blood gouting high into the air, from the frenzied but ineffective workers as they were cut down.

More red lightsaber blades sprang forth from Lord Nyax's body. Mara saw blades emerge downward from his elbows, upward from his knees.

"We have to help," Luke said.

Mara turned. Luke was wrapping the cord of his beltgrapnel, long abandoned but definitely a useful tool for the exploration of Coruscant's lower reaches, around the metal beam.

"Help who?"

"Help the Vong. Yeah, I know, I know, it's something you've never heard anyone say before." Luke rolled off the beam and fell, his descent arrested by his hand on the cord; more cord deployed from his belt as he descended. "I'm not worried about the fate of the Yuuzhan Vong," he told her. "But we desperately need any resources we can use against Lord Nyax."

Mara hissed in vexation. She tucked her macrobinocu-lars away, grabbed Luke's cord, and swung out over open space, then slid down after her husband.

In the corner of her eye, she saw the voxyn charge Lord Nyax. He dodged under the beast's leap and flexed an arm. His elbow-blade sheared through the voxyn's gut, slicing the beast cleanly in two. It landed in pieces behind him.

Then, as Mara swung around on the rope during her descent, she saw the woman.

The woman was dark-haired, attractive, standing at the top of the staircase by which the Yuuzhan Vong had arrived. Unlike the workers, she was alert, watching the fight with an expression of detached interest.

She was Viqi Shesh.

Mara felt coldness sweep over her. The woman who had helped betray Coruscant to the Yuuzhan Vong, the woman who had stolen Mara's son, Ben, was here, palling around with her Yuuzhan Vong masters while the world crumbled around them.

She opened herself to Luke through the Force, some-thing she preferred not to do while cold thoughts of murder were strong in her, and let him see Viqi through her eyes. " Viqi first," she said.

"Lord Nyax first," he answered. At ten meters above the floor, he detached the cord spool from his belt and let go with his hand, dropping the remaining distance. He landed in a tuck and roll and came up in a full-speed run straight at Lord Nyax.

Mara spared one last look at Viqi, a glance that, had it become a physical manifestation of her anger, would have sliced through the woman as cleanly as an amphi-staff point, and dropped. She came up in a roll and followed her husband.

Ahead, the first pair of Yuuzhan Vong warriors had reached Lord Nyax.

Viqi watched the huge pale man slaughter Yuuzhan Vong warriors.

The first two warriors stopped a dozen steps from the thing and hurled thudbugs. The pale man twitched and the lightsaber blades from one forearm and one knee rose, incinerating the living weapons.

Two more warriors raced up and, under cover of more thrown thudbugs, charged, whipping their amphistaffs around, one lashing out with the tail and the other with fangs.

The pale man stepped in close to the second warrior. The first warrior's fang attack missed by a meter. The pale man's left forearm blade lashed out at the second warrior, who blocked the attack by catching the blade in an amphistaff coil. Then the pale man's left elbow blade raked across the warrior's throat, separating it from his body.

Meanwhile, the pale man's right-arm, right-elbow, right-knee blades rose, darted, swayed, and wherever they went, incandescences flared-sign of thudbugs being vaporized.

The pale man flipped the dead warrior's amphistaff toward the first warrior. The warrior contemptuously swept it out of the way, overcorrected as his own staff came back to block a lightsaber thrust-and could not block the other lightsaber blade as it simultaneously thrust into his helmet's eye socket. He fell, smoke pouring from the mask as he died.

More warriors arrived-two still threw thudbugs, four more skidded to a stop beside them and waited for a bare second to calculate their strategy.

A piece of ceiling steel whirled down like a spinning sawblade from above. It flashed across the warriors' position at knee height, and just for a fraction of a second Viqi thought that it had missed. Then those six warriors collapsed, legs severed at the knees, blood gouting from the stumps and limbs.

Seconds had passed. Eight Yuuzhan Vong warriors and their voxyn were dead. Seventeen more remained.

These warriors approached more cautiously. Directed by Denua Ku, they circled around the smiling, confident pale man who towered over them.

The whirling steel panel came around for another Pass, but this time, a chunk of machinery, an air-cooling unit a meter on a side, fired off from the floor as though it were a guided missile and hurtled into the sheet's path. The sheet wrapped around it with a ferocious, almost shriek of metal bending, and both fell to the floor.

The pale man looked off to Viqi's left. She followed its gaze.

There, advancing on the pale man, lightsabers lit were Luke Skywalker and Mara Jade.

Viqi's eyes grew wide. What were they doing here?

The Yuuzhan Vong, too, seemed caught off-guard. Denua Ku had no more love of the Jeedai than any warrior, but he was smart; Viqi saw him wave his warriors back, waiting for the intentions of the Jedi to be revealed.

It was time to go. No matter who the victor was, Viqi would either end up dead or pressed once more into the service of the Yuuzhan Vong.

She spun to sprint to the stairwell.

She tripped over an outstretched leg. It was clad in vonduun crab armor.

She looked up, confused. All the Yuuzhan Vong warriors had been ahead of her. Where had this one come from? He was the tallest she'd seen, and wore unusual black-and-silver armor. So did the shorter warrior next to him, the one with the distinctive branding marks on his face.

That one said, "What do we have here, Explosion Boy?" His voice was cultured, his Basic perfect.

The tall one said, "Dunno." He, too, spoke Basic. He reached down, seized one of Viqi's ankles, and straightened. He held her upside-down at arm's length. "Runt of the litter, I'd say."

Disoriented, Viqi could only watch as a lithe female Jedi, lightsaber blazing, ran past the three of them, paying these Yuuzhan Vong warriors no attention.

A clang over her head startled her. She looked up - down, at the floor-and saw her locator lying there.

She reached for it, but the tall warrior swung her to one side.

"Grab that, would you, Poster Boy?"

"Got it." The one addressed as Poster Boy seized the device and straightened. "Ah, a military-spec vehicle locator. Uulshos makes these.

Hey, it's live."

Viqi finally found her voice. "That's mine."

"Not anymore, Senator."

Luke and Mara approached Lord Nyax and his Yuuzhan Vong attackers.

They kept their guards up, their senses-both physical and Force-alert.

Luke searched the face in front of him. He looked for some trace of humanity. He saw only smiling mockery, and he could feel the thing through the Force, its appreciation at having slaughtered warriors, its appreciation at the thought of slaughtering Luke and Mara.

There was no recognition in its emotion, no acknowledgement of kinship of any sort.

"I don't know if you can understand me," Luke said. "But whatever you're doing, whatever your plans are, I have to stop you."

Lord Nyax's smile grew broader. It seemed to recognize Luke's intent, even if it could not grasp his words.

Then it answered-not in words, but in images. Luke saw the power of its will, expressed through the Force, rolling over the remaining people of Coruscant like water roaring down a canyon through a burst dam. He saw them sweeping across Coruscant, killing and eating everything in their way-the Yuuzhan Vong, the disobedient, the Force-blind. He saw the workers here boarding the machine beneath their feet, crashing it through kilometers of buildings until they came to some place, a source for more power to fuel this glorious, deliriously happy destructive impulse.

In that instant, Luke joined in the plan. He longed to slaughter the outsiders, those who did not understand or join. He longed to taste their flesh, He turned to Mara, beckoning her to join. She was facing the Yuuzhan Vong warriors, preventing them from surprising Luke with an attack, but her gaze was yanked to Luke. Her eyes widened, and he could feel her leaning toward him, leaning toward acceptance of this crucial duty.

But the sight of her brought memories. Luke saw worlds of beauty.