"Tell me what you see," Luke said.

"I saw Lord Nyax for the first time about a month after Coruscant fell." Yassat's voice lowered in tone and volume. "This was over toward the old heart of the government district, where things are crazy now. I was on one side of the main chamber of a textile factory, hiding from a Vong hunting party; they were on the other side. I was already scared, but I got a lot more scared and didn't know why. Then the screaming started. Where the warriors were, I could see someone moving. A big man, ghostly white. There was a roar, and flashes of red all around it, but no sound of blasters. I got away. Hours later, I came back, I found the Vong warriors dead. Chopped to pieces, burned in places, some of them eaten on.

"The second time was four days ago or so." From a pocket, he pulled a functional chrono and checked local time. "Four days. I felt that fear again while I was prowling through rooftops well below the skyline. It got worse and worse, and I knew I was being stalked. I knew I was going to end up like those Vong warriors."

"How did you get away?" Mara asked. Yassat shook his head, not meeting her gaze. "I just got away."

"That's not good enough," Tenga said. "No one 'just gets away.' You get away by getting captured and selling us out?"

"No." Yassat's voice became emphatic. He returned "is attention to Mara. "There's a man, calls himself Skiffer. Part of a group not part of the Walkway Collective. They Prey on us. They've killed a couple of our scouts, found and stole one of our grayweave reactors. Grayweave's not enough for them; I'm sure some of them are canni-bals. 1 know where their territory is. I led Lord Nyax through the heart of their territory, and when 1 heard Skiffer give his people a call to action, I made a break for it. I heard them screaming." He met Tenga's eyes. "I didn't sell us out, Tenga. I sold Skiffer out."

Tenga clapped him on the shoulder. "Good work." Another man said, "You were being stalked by Vong, Yassat. There is no Lord Nyax. Just your imagination." Yassat glared, but didn't respond. "Where have you run into Lord Nyax?" Luke asked. Yassat pointed northwest, precisely in the direction where Luke and the other Force-sensitives had felt the twinge.

"That way. Near the old government center. It's thick with Vong compared to here, but full of interesting salvage."

"We need to look at that," Luke said. He addressed Yassat: "Care to come with us? To guide us?"

Tenga shook her head. "Not unless you leave us this one," she indicated Bhindi, "in trade."

But Yassat shook his head. "Prowl around with a big, noisy party when there are Vong hunters about? No. Kill me now, instead. It'd be less painful." Luke shrugged. "We'll be back, then." Yassat offered him a look of sympathy. "No, you won't."

Borleias Jaina stood up, her bedsheet whirling away from her, and lurched to her closet without knowing why. The sun Pyria was just now climbing above the horizon, so she had been in bed for perhaps three hours.

The roaring in her ears resolved itself into an alarm. Yuuzhan Vong were coming. She heard the roar of thrust-ers from whichever squadrons were at the ready-it would be Blackmoon at this hour.

Jag was waiting for her in the hallway-the special, secured hall of the biotics building reserved for the pilots of Twin Suns Squadron. Other doors were sliding open. Piggy saBinring, struggling to fasten the seal of his pilot's suit over his expansive Gamorrean stomach, emerged.

"What's our objective?" Jaina asked. Jag held out a datapad for her to look at, but her eyes wouldn't focus on it. She irritably waved it away.

"It looks like an assault on this location," Jag synop-sized.

"Flying vehicles only, no sign of ground troops. Lusankya's squadrons have some of the enemy forces engaged in orbit. More will be here in moments."

There was an explosion, not far away, as incoming fire hit the shields that protected the biotics facility. All the transparisteel viewports on the west face of the building rattled.

"Correction," Jag said. "They'll be here now."

"Let's move." Jaina led her half-dressed, half-awake squadron to their turbolift.

Corran Horn, pilot and Jedi Knight, flying as Rogue Nine, activated his repulsors and smoothly lifted off the terrocrete of Rogue Squadron's new docking bay, up through a gap where, moments before, the ceiling had been; the building's roof was still cantilevering out of the way. The altitude gave him a better look at the conflict - Yuuzhan Vong coral ships, the equivalent of light cruisers, hovered in the distance both east and west, protected by screens of coralskippers, and launched barrages of plasma at the biotics building and its outbuildings. So far, the base's shields, removed not that long before from faltering New Republic capital ships, were holding up well against the assault. "Come on, Leth."

"Pick, pick, pick." Leth Liav's X-wing rose up beside Corran's.

Leth, a Sullustan female, had been a fighter pilot before being shot down and captured by the Yuuzhan Vong. Placed in an environment bubble and launched through space toward Borleias's atmosphere in a show of Yuuzhan Vong cruelty, she and several of her fellows had been saved by some fancy flying on the part of Twin Suns Squadron. Corran doubted that, in better times, she would ever have qualified for the famed Rogue Squadron, but here, with attrition high and options few, she'd been welcomed.

"Leader to squad, less chatter, please." Colonel Dark-lighter sounded as businesslike as ever. "Indicate readiness. Leader is ready.

Two?"

"Two ready."

"Three?"

As the roll call continued, the third member of Corran's shield trio, Dakorse Teep, rose into position. "Rogue Seven, all green."

Corran grimaced. In Teep's case, green didn't just refer to the condition of his engines. Teep was a teenager who should have been palling around on the playground with Corran's son Valin, only a few years Teep's junior. Corran heard Leth announce "Eight, four lit and ready," then he said, "Nine, optimum."

He was the last one to call in readiness. Rogue Squadron was reduced to nine members now, three shield trios. Other squadrons were in worse condition, some of them reduced in numbers so fast that they had to be decommissioned or temporarily merged with other depleted units until reinforcements could swell them out into discrete squads again.

"We're on the cruiser to the east," Gavin announced. "Senior members have proton torps; everyone else, you'll have to make do with lasers. Sorry. Break by shield trios... now." He suited action to words, and the three members of One Flight lofted, rising above the protection of the facility's vertical shields, staying only a few dozen meters beneath the horizontal shield overhead.

Corran waited a beat while Two Flight followed, then he led Leth and Teep up. To her credit, Leth kept tucked in professionally close, but Teep lagged, offering his shield-mates no protection from his shields, receiving no protection from theirs.

"Close it up, Seven," Corran said. "Sorry, Nine. Coming."

As Corran and Leth cleared the building's shields and dropped toward the jungle on the far side, a plasma barrage from the cruiser analog they were supposed to destroy arced toward them. If it had been slightly better aimed, it might have slid in between the top of the vertical shields and bottom of the horizontal. As it was, it angled in toward Teep, directly over Corran's head. "Seven," he shouted, "break to port-"

Corran chose port over starboard only because it took half the time to say, giving Teep one more fraction of a second to comprehend and react. Teep did veer to port, as much on repulsorlifts as thrusters, and the main ball of plasma flashed harmlessly past him.

Then it hit the building's vertical shields and exploded. The concussion hammered Teep, Corran, and Leth. His cockpit swathed in flame, Corran watched his artificial horizon gauge spin. Relying on instinct more than his gauges, he leveled off and hit his thrusters. A moment later, the fire peeled away from his cockpit and he could see again.

Teep and Leth were both rolling as they fell, out of control, toward the jungle below.

Leth came out of her roll, leveling off not far above the treetops, and Corran heard her over the comm board, her voice raised in a wordless shout of both fear and exultation.

Teep didn't come out of his roll. He punched through the treetops, and a moment later a fireball roiled up through the hole he'd made.

Corran swore. This war was gobbling up children like a starved wampa. "C'mon, Eight. Form up."

In his transport, far below the Lusankya conflict and as far above the war waging around the biotics building, Harrar stared into the viewing lens mounted in the transport's belly. "Is this operation yours, or Czulkang Lah's?" he asked.

Charat Kraal knelt beside him at the edge of the lens. "It is the great master's. But it is merely a probe, a way to test strength and evaluate the enemy's strengths, to deny him the opportunity to rest. I have attached my mission to this operation."

"When do your units enter the battle?"

"Soon. When the enemy is stretched thinnest."

Twin Suns Squadron roared westward, toward the Yuu-zhan Vong cruiser analog there. Tt and its protective squadrons were already being harassed by Blackmoon Squadron and a pair of TIE squadrons off Lusankya.

"Piggy, analysis," Jaina called, The mechanical voice of her Gamorrean pilot boomed from the comm unit; Jaina winced and slid the volume control lower.

"They're not concentrating on the biotics building this time,"

Piggy said. "Probably to avoid a disaster like the last assault. They've learned their lesson from orbital bombardment. And yet they're not systematically taking General Antilles's defensive structure to pieces.

They should be concentrating their efforts on removing Lusankya from the battlefield, so they can then move against the facility with minimal opposition. They are not."

Jaina didn't have to ask what that meant. The Yuu-zhan Vong didn't intend to overrun the facility this time. They had some other goal, such as staging another attempt to capture Jaina. To the Yuuzhan Vong, twins were sacred, and Jaina, as the twin of Jacen, held special fascination for them. "Keep your eyes open for particular attention on us," Jaina said. "Yes, Great One."

"Twin Suns, don't fire torps unless you have a clear shot you know the voids can't stop," she added. "We've all got a full load, but other squads don't. So don't waste a shot unless you're just anxious to cause hard feelings. Tilath, are you ready with your payload?"

"Yes, Great One." Tilath Keer, flying Twin Suns Eleven, sounded distinctly unhappy. On the underside of her X-wing was attached something that looked like a missile, the newest experimental weapon in the Twin Suns' arsenal, hut it was longer than the X-wing's cockpit and heavy enough to turn her starfighter into something as maneuverable as a flying boulder.

"Don't worry, Tilath. No one has to do the dishes every time."

Jaina hit her thrusters and accelerated toward the enemy. "Let's do this thing."

Charat Kraal and Harrar watched as the battle developed. The Yuuzhan Vong capital ships were being used as mobile artillery, keeping up a steady bombardment on the biotics building and the buildings around it to test, and potentially overwhelm, the infidels' protective energy shields. Their coralskipper squadrons were charged with protection of the capital ships and elimination of enemy starfighters. It was a simple enough situation, and Harrar grasped the details readily as Charat Kraal explained them.

"Where are the Starlancer vehicles kept-the pipe-fighters?" Harrar asked. He referred to the craft that had, not long before, set up a complicated energy matrix in space in the Pyria system, then fired a laser attack-one that had been somehow accelerated through hyperspace and had actually struck the Yuuzhan Vong worldship in orbit around Coruscant.

Charat Kraal indicated a square, flat building near the biotics building. "That is where their elites keep their vehicles. Jaina Solo's squadron is housed there. It is not a target of today's exercise, since most of the vehicles housed there are now coming against our forces."

"And where are they growing their lambent crystal?" The recent spying efforts, involving a controlled human male, had indicated that the Starlancer project required the implementation of a gigantic crystal, one grown from Yuuzhan Vong techniques and material, to increase the long-distance laser enough for it to do real harm to distant targets.

Charat Kraal pointed to the biotics building. "There, Our agent was unable to search every portion of that structure, but eliminated many.

Before he was lost, he communicated to us that he thought the deepest levels of the building, which are among those shut off from the common soldier, were the most likely location for the crystal-growing..." He had a hard time saying the next word, so hateful was it in this context. "...

machines. Our next agent will find it and arrange for its destruction, if our bombardments do not destroy this facility first."

"Excellent. Now, let us discuss the capture of Jaina Solo."

Jaina let off her trigger as the coralskipper in front of her detonated. Its pieces rained down on the jungle below. A quick check of her sensor board revealed that her wing-mates, Jagged Pel and Kyp Durron, were not far away and were inbound toward her.

Ahead was the Yuuzhan Vong cruiser, hundreds of meters of yorik coral and organic weaponry. "Let's give its big guns something to think about," Jaina said. She switched her lasers over to quad fire and began pouring coherent iight blasts at the points where the cruiser's giant plasma cannons sprouted from its hull. "What's your status, Tifath?"

"Lined up on final approach. I'm fifteen seconds from optimum firing range. Fourteen."

"Fire when ready, don't wait for my command."

"Ten."

Jag and Kyp joined their laserfire with Jaina's. The voids protecting the cruiser analog had no difficulty moving into position and swallowing the destructive energy from their weapons.

"One. Firing."

The missile dropped from the belly of Tilath's X-wing. It fell a dozen meters; then its rear ignited, driving it forward at missile speeds.

Jaina clicked her comm board over to operational frequency.

"Execute 'Low Bounce.' Repeat, 'Low Bounce.' "

In the vicinity of the target cruiser analog, New Republic starfighters began gaining altitude. They didn't flee; they just rose until they were above the cruiser analog's altitude. They continued fighting on their way up, continued fighting at their new altitude.

At the same instant, Jaina, Kyp, and Piggy armed am fired proton torpedoes, one each.

Half a kilometer short of the cruiser analog, Tilath's missile did what it was supposed to.

It did not shatter and fly in all directions; it was too sturdily built for that. Most of the missile was an extremely durable metal tube, open at one end. The rear closed portion was packed with a plasma-based explosive charge. The forward two-thirds, sealed only by the fragile nose of the missile, was packed with metal ball bearings the size of human heads.

The plasma charge detonated, superheating the ball bearings and firing them toward the target.

They shot out, a spreading display of superheated projectiles.

Not one of the ball bearings would do significant harm to the target when they hit; the best-placed shots that actually hit the yorik coral hull would punch through and lodge within, while the rest would bounce harmlessly away.

No, the danger they represented was not from hitting. Each ball, heated by the plasma charge, was now identical, in specific gravity and temperature, to the proton torpedoes catching up to them from behind.

The cruiser analog's dovin basals sensed the incoming horde of missiles. They did not panic; fear was not part of their nature. But they knew they could not project their voids into the path of even a fraction of the incoming missiles. Instead, each prioritized, projecting its voids over the most vulnerable portions of the vessel's flank, protecting the command crew compartment, weapons emplacements, and itself.

Charat Kraal and Harrar watched as the Twin Suns launched four missiles-one, the largest, ahead of the others. The largest one detonated short of its target, showering the matalok with red-hot debris, but the others flashed straight in to hit, one-two-three, against the mat-alok's side. The infidel weapons flashed impossibly bright, creating clouds of explosive force and debris that had once been the side and internal organs of the matalok.

The vessel heeled over, mortally wounded, and began to turn away from the engagement. Plasma poured from its injury. It gained altitude for a moment, then settled into a straight-line course. And now its dovin basals concentrated their void protection only over the main weapons emplacements.

Charat Kraal knew what that meant. The matalok would not make it back to space, so its commander was ordering the weapons to build up tremendous charges of plasma energy, charges that would destroy the vessel from within.

Charat Kraal sagged as energy and pride left him for a moment. He slammed his fist into the floor next to the viewing lens. "How did she do it? "he asked. "How did she persuade the dovin basals to let their missiles through?"

"I do not know."

Charat Kraal met the priest's gaze. "It is not my place to ask this. You may choose to order me to my death for asking. But I must know.

You are a priest of Yun-Harla - surely the truth is in your mind. Is Jaina Solo an avatar of the goddess? Is she the goddess?"

"Of course not. She is an infidel who mocks our goddess. " But Harrar knew that he was no longer able to pro-ject confidence when he said such words. He no longer knew whether he was telling the truth.

Charat Kraal, no new satisfaction or peace on his features, turned to a villip that lay on the floor next to him. He spoke into the Yuuzhan Vong warrior features it revealed. "Are you in position?"

"No, Commander. It is early yet."

"Begin your run anyway. We cannot wait for the best moment."

"Understood, Commander."

Corran Horn saw the flight of three coralskippers peel off from the main north-side engagement and loop around toward the west side of the biotics building. "C'mon, Eight. Let's deal with these strays." He banked, a tight maneuver to put him in the path of the trio. Leth followed suit, her maneuver not quite as tight as the more experienced pilot's.

They were able to get in position well before the coral-skippers lined up for an approach. The skips turned again quite a distance out, beyond the kill zone and over the jungle. Now they were aimed in straight at the biotics building. They dropped nearly to the deck and accelerated to something like their full speed, not maneuvering even as Corran and Leth opened fire.

"It's a suicide run," Leth said.

"I think you're right." Corran looked around. If these three skips were able to hit the shields defending the biotics building, if they were able to crash through them and bring those shields down, there would be a moment when the building was undefended against enemy attacks.

But no other Yuuzhan Vong ships stood ready to make use of this momentary advantage. It didn't make sense.

Corran drifted to starboard, spraying fire against the skip on that side and in the center. Leth drifted to port and followed suit. Their combined fire was too much for the center skip; some of Corran's laserfire got past its voids, and nearly all of Leth's did. Thar coralskipper nose-dived, smashing into the ground at the outer ranee of the kill zone. It did not explode; skips, not loaded with fuel, did not always detonate. It just came to pieces, scattering chunks of itself.

That gave each pilot one enemy to concentrate on. Corran kept the pressure on, spraying the oncoming skip with laserfire as if it were water from a hose, and saw his attacks chewing away at the forward portions of the craft.