Hum shrugged. "I've one of those faces that used to appear familiar to everyone." Han caressed his jaw. "Ever been to Dellalt?"

"Don't think so."

Han nodded uncertainly, then tipped his head in parting and walked away. Leia waited until she, Han, and C-3PO were out of earshot of the group to ask, "Did he mean 'familiar' before the Rebellion, or before all the scars?" Han glanced over his shoulder, and shook his head in ignorance. But any response was drowned out by the sudden blare of klaxons.

Instantly, the station was thrown into managed chaos. Everyone knew precisely where to report and what to do-except Han, Leia, and C-3PO, who weren't sure whether they should go to the nearest battle station or simply stay out of everyone's way. Appearing out of nowhere, Garray put a quick end to their confusion.

"Enemy reinforcements have arrived. Another entire battle group."

Leia was astonished.

"They must be desperate to have Caluula to spare so many ships."

Garray agreed.

"Our shields should hold."

The commander's adjutant came running to report that the station's long-range scanners had zeroed in on something unusual. Garray led everyone to the nearest display screen, on which the adjutant called up a holocam view of what looked to be a colossal s.p.a.ce slug, with a wedge-shaped head, a dorsal pouch, and a mouth that had to be eighty meters wide. Garray narrowed his eyes to slits.

"What in the galaxy am I looking at?"

Leia loosed a troubled exhalation.

"That, Commander, is what the Yuuzhan Vong call an yncha. The one they deployed at Duro practically ate an orbital city."

Garray stared at her, scarcely able to speak. The klaxons began to trumpet a more dire alert.

"Commander," an ensign said, "enemy vessels on the attack."

Han looked at Leia.

"Guess we will be hanging around, after all."

"Studious person that you are-or at least claim to be-you no doubt took to heart the Supreme Overlord's admonition that nothing untoward should interfere with the coming sacrifice," High Prefect Drathul hectored Nom Anor. "Given especially the diminished number of victims."

Former prefect of the worldship Harla, Drathul had a wide and broad-browed face, sufficiently scarified to demonstrate his allegiance to the G.o.ds, but not so much that the scars marred what Drathul considered handsome features. He had kept Nom Anor waiting for half a local day, while the sun climbed high into the sky, making the rainbow bridge shine like a jeweled necklace. His windowed and drizzle-topped quarters in the prefectory overlooked the Place of Hierarchy, south of the Citadel, in a district once known as Calocour Heights.

Nom Anor still remembered the heights from one of the first of his reconnaissance missions, when the market area had teemed with pushy survey takers and blazed with flashing musical advertiscreens. Free product samples delivered from worlds throughout the galaxy had been on continual display, floating on repulsor carts and wafting wonderful aromas into the air.

"I took the Supreme Overlord's admonition to heart," Nom Anor said from the exquisitely woven vurruk floor mat to which he had been shown by Drathul's attendants.

The high prefect himself spoke from a pillowed recess in his dais.

"Then you'll be interested to know it has reached my attention that a coalition of Shamed Ones is intent on disturbing the ceremony." Drathul fixed Nom Anor with a gimlet stare.

"I think you are not entirely untutored in the tactics of the heretics, Prefect."

"I profess to know something of them."

Drathul was clearly entertained by the response.

"You give yourself too little credit. Such self-effacement is not becoming to one who has managed to escalate himself from mere executor to prefect of Yuuzhan'tar in so short a time. Who, on at least two occasions now, has enjoyed private audience with the Supreme Overlord; who, I would risk saying, even has Shimrra's ear."

Nom Anor feigned a short laugh.

"Hardly his ear, High Prefect."

Drathul scrutinized him some more.

"However did this come about?" he asked, as if to himself.

"Was it not Nom Anor who sent the priestess Elan to her death, who created the b.u.mbling Peace Brigade, who helped engineer the disastrous a.s.sault on Fondor, who allowed the traitor Vergere to escape, who has disguised himself as a human, a Duros, a Givin, and who knows how many other species, who is rumored to have refused a duel with a Jeedai and to have murdered his own operatives with an infidel's weapon, who all but lured Warmaster Tsavong Lah to dishonor at Ebaq Nine?" He paused briefly.

"Look how his plaeryin bol stares at me-so eager to spit venom."

"You misunderstand, High Prefect." Nom Anor touched the artificial orb that subst.i.tuted for an eye. "Just a particle of sand, lodged in the corner. In fact, you have succeeded brilliantly in disparaging me. But you neglect to add that there has been a bright side to all those events.

Or else-" He grinned faintly. "-how is it I have come to wear the green robes of high office?"

Drathul was infuriated.

"The sole reason I tolerate your presence and your escalation is that you are known to have been in the company of my predecessor, Yoog Skell, when he died. I know in my heart that you had something to do with his death, and were it not for his death, I would probably not be sitting here, delighting in rebuking you."

Nom Anor inclined his head.

"I exist but to serve, High Prefect."

"Precisely. Which is why I command you to root out this coalition of Shamed Ones, and either talk some sense into them or have them killed.

I would prefer the former, since I suspect that additional killings at this point will only incite them further. But know that I plan to hold you personally responsible for any interference at the sacrifice, just as Shimrra will me. Do you trust that I speak from the heart, or do I need to bolster my words with threats of what will befall you should you fail me?"

"I will do my best, High Prefect."

"Your tricks bear watching, Nom Anor. This has always been so."

"I trick no one but myself, High Prefect, by imagining myself more than I am."

Nom Anor had had his consuls arrange for a saddled bissop to carry him back to the s.p.a.cious residence that came with his new status. But for all that he had received, he had earned the envy, anger, and distrust of many, as was frequently the case with those escalated because of actions that needed to remain secret and undisclosed. Others in Shimrra's close company suffered similar indignities, in part because Shimrra was fickle and full of contradictions, as if jerked this way and that by his emotions or what pa.s.sed for revelations from the G.o.ds. Even mighty Nas Choka was not immune to petty jealousies, which is why he had tripled his complement of bodyguards-something Nom Anor had considered doing, but ultimately rejected.

There was small advantage in announcing one's apprehensions to one's adversaries. But how to keep those apprehensions concealed from the heretics... He had mistakenly believed that the abrupt disappearance of Yu'shaa, the Prophet, would have weakened the movement. Instead, Nom Anor had only provided his gullible audience with a martyr, more so because many believed that Yu'shaa had been put to death on orders of Shimrra.

Tucked away in his residence was the original ooglith cloaker Nom Anor had worn when exhorting his followers to rise up against the system that had doomed them to become outsiders; a system that perpetuated a belief in G.o.ds who would deliberately shun their creations.

It would be a different matter if every Shamed One was guilty of overreaching or pride, but in fact no one could explain-the shapers least of all-why implants were rejected. As a result, however, countless individuals were left wondering for the rest of their miserable lives where they had erred, when they had displayed pride or if they were paying for the transgressions of other creche or domain members. The elite pretended sympathy, when in fact they fairly luxuriated in witnessing their compet.i.tors fall from grace.

How grievous what befell Consul Shal Tor at the last escalation-but how happy I am that it wasn't me. Only a short time ago-before his life-turning decision on Zonama Sekot-Nom Anor, sufficiently inflamed by the inequity, had wished to see his entire culture tumbled down; to see Shimrra shaken from his polyp throne by the debased members of Yuuzhan Vong society. And he had very nearly succeeded. What might have come from that was unclear.

If the war were lost, what would it mean for Nom Anor, since-save for the Jedi-the inhabitants of the galaxy the Yuuzhan Vong had invaded were not above barbarity? Flight, imprisonment, execution... he couldn't take the chance.

Now the very movement born of rumors escaped from distant Yavin, and given order and embellishment by Nom Anor himself, threatened to deprive him of all that he had achieved by opting to foil Zonama Sekot, and thereby reinstate himself in Shimrra's good graces. The thought weighed on him as his living transport lumbered past the Place of Sacrifice, where priests and savants, adepts and initiates were busy preparing for the coming ceremony; past the sh.e.l.l-like shops of workers; and past solitary Shamed Ones, in their threadbare garments, begging for alms.

Before Nas Choka had been escalated, he had had occasion to reproach Nom Anor for pride, and counsel him look to Yun-Shuno, G.o.d of the Shamed Ones, for pardon.

All these years later, here he was-their prophet.

THIRTEEN.

The ychna led the attack on Caluula Station. Towed into place by a special breed of dovin basal grown on faraway Tynna, the monster slug fastened itself to Caluula's deflector shields like a leech, fattening as it absorbed every joule of ionized energy the generator could summon, then taking the suddenly vulnerable central module in its enormous mouth and crushing it like an eggsh.e.l.l. No sooner had the module depressurized than into the rend dropped hundreds of Yuuzhan Vong warriors, disgorged from landing craft and outfitted with armor and the star-shaped breathing creatures known as gnulliths. Squadrons of battered starfighters streaked from the station's launching bays to engage swift flights of strafing coralskippers.

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

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

"Don't lose your head," she told him. "Lend a hand."

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

"Threepio, you're forgetting that you've been as courageous as Artoo ever was."

C-3PO came to a halt.

"Have I? Well now that you mention it there was that incident on-"

"Incoming!" a soldier yelled from down the line. Fifty meters away something was burning an enormous hole in the lowered blast shield.

Clouds of noxious vapor streamed from the ragged edges of a widening circle.

Han checked the charge of his DL-44 and drew a bead on the center of the circle.

"Hold your fire," he said. "Wait till they show themselves..."

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

"Now!" Han shouted.

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

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

Blasters fired nonstop, and the thrumming blade of Leia's lightsaber batted away a hail of thud bugs. But the line couldn't be held.

Outnumbered, the defenders were forced to fall back.

The Yuuzhan Vong pressed the attack, stopping only to drag away and bind those they had stunned. The warriors exulted at the taking of each captive, even though six of their number might have died to gain one victim. Withdrawing deeper into the station, Leia was glancing over her shoulder as she approached a corridor intersection when Han suddenly threw his left arm around her waist and twirled her off to one side. From the scarlet glow of the intersecting corridor dropped an amphistaff thick as a war club, slicing the air where she would have been and hitting the deck with a hollow thud! The warrior attached to the amphistaff howled and sprang forward, falling victim to a precisely placed bolt from Han's sidearm.

"You do care, after all," Leia said around a short-lived grin.

Still in his one-armed embrace, she went up on her toes to kiss him on the cheek. Han smiled and let her go.

"What's a star without his leading lady?"

"Combat always did bring out the romantic in you."

She started off after him, then stopped and turned to see C-3PO dithering at the intersection.

"This way, Threepio-hurry!"

He glanced at her, then gestured to the side corridor.

"But, Princess-"

"Come on!"

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

"Anyone ever tell you you're as hard on technology as the Yuuzhan Vong?"

The thick blast shield vibrated and slammed to the deck. Han grinned smugly.

"Only when technology puts up an argument. And speaking of which, where'd Threepio go?"

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

"What're you standing around for?" Han said. "You want to end up as a skewered droid?"

"No, Captain Solo, but the blast door-"

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

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

"Yuuzhan Vong," Han said, pointing toward the blast shield.

"Dead end," the soldier said, pointing in the opposite direction.

Han stared at the blast shield, then whipped around.

"Dead end?"

C-3PO raised his hands to his head.

"That's what I've been trying to tell you!"