Two hundred thousand kilometers from the living world drifted the enemy task force that had delivered the coralskippers, along with the yammosk-carrying cl.u.s.tership that was guiding them. It was still anyone's guess why Warmaster Nas Choka had sent a splinter group to Zonama Sekot, but it stood to reason that the Yuuzhan Vong wouldn't wait long before bringing their capital ships to bear on the planet. Although Errant Venture and Tenel Ka's flotilla of Hapan Battle Dragons and Nova-cla.s.s cruisers were reported to be on the way, it was unlikely that they could prevail against the task force.

Engaged in a ferocious battle near Muscave, Wedge Antilles and Keyan Farlander wouldn't be able to lend support until Kre'fey's First Fleet arrived to relieve them. With so much action in the Coruscant system-from Vandor 3 clear to the Ulabos ice bands-Han had considered staging the Falcon through a series of microjumps. Ultimately, however, he had decided to jump the ship directly to Coruscant. They had reverted to reals.p.a.ce behind Alliance lines, but close enough to their target to be staggered by what they saw. Green and white where it had once been a sheen of artificial light, orbited by the remains of a shattered moon, its polar caps reduced to icebergs...

Coruscant might as well have been an unfamiliar world. A tone sounded from the comm board, and a baritone voice issued from the c.o.c.kpit annunciators.

"Millennium Falcon, this is Right to Rule control. Your best insertion point is presently at Bacta Sector, eight-one-seven. But we'll keep you updated on the situation."

Jaina leaned forward to study the tactical display.

"Copy that, Right to Rule. And thanks for the help."

"Millennium Falcon, Grand Admiral Pellaeon wishes you good fortune."

"Tell him the same from us," Han said into the headset mouthpiece.

Pellaeon's Fourth Fleet, which included a trio of Star Destroyers and an a.s.sortment of Strike - and Carrack-cla.s.s cruisers, was pounding the Yuuzhan Vong battle group. In several sectors the orbital dovin basals had been overwhelmed by the barrage, but Alliance command was using the debilitated zones only as corridors for the infiltration of troop ships and squadrons of escort starfighters.

"Your warmaster appears to be deferring to Jacen Solo's report that bombardment will prompt the World Brain to render the planet unfit for habitation," Harrar said into Han's right ear.

Gazing at the turmoil planetside, Han said, "Looks to me like the World Brain is doing a pretty good job of that without having to be prompted."

The Falcon was closing on the insertion point when two X-wings appeared to either side of it.

"Good to see you, Millennium Falcon," one of the pilots said over the tactical net. "Mind if we ride down with you?"

"Who's escorting who?" Jaina asked.

"Let's call it a party of three," the other pilot said.

"Party," Harrar murmured.

The s.p.a.cecraft that housed the orbital dovin basals might have been fragments of Coruscant's deliberately smashed moon, but the voids they generated were as large as shock-ball stadiums. With the X-wings pressing close, Han sent the Falcon on her starboard side to edge between two gaping shield singularities. The ship wasn't through the strait when a third void yawned.

"Feed that thing something!" Jaina said over the net.

The starfighter pilots responded by paying out pairs of proton torpedoes. Instantly warped off course, the glowing orbs were ingested by the gravitic anomaly. With the dovin basal momentarily distracted, Han called on the sublight drives for a burst of speed and rocketed the Falcon past the maw. Yet another singularity opened in front of the ship, but this time Han made careful use of the braking thrusters to nuzzle the Falcon close enough so that gravity whipped the freighter around the void and threw it deeper into the atmosphere. He did the same with the succeeding quartet of wells, using the gravitic distortions to sling the ship in an elongated double-S from one to the next. The Falcon shook and shuddered, and the engines roared in protest, but the gambit worked to keep the ship from being wrenched off course.

One of the X-wings wasn't as fortunate. Even while the pilot was attempting to confuse the dovin basal with stutterfire and two remaining torpedoes, the creature's singularity reached out and grabbed the starfighter, which disintegrated before it disappeared entirely. The Falcon swooped lower on a sinuous tail of blue energy, but the gauntlet didn't end with the dovin basals. A matalok cruiser racing up the well caught sight of the freighter and spewed a volley of magma missiles from its starboard-side plasma launchers.

"Diverting power to the deflectors," Jaina said, without being asked.

Han yawed hard to port, and began weaving through the storm of ejecta. The X-wing that had ridden in on the Falcon's tail hung close, but couldn't keep pace with the larger ship. Han tried to swerve back on course to shield the starfighter, but even the Falcon was capable of only so much twisting and veering. Molten rock splashed against the Falcon's screens, but the main body of the salvo flooded over the mandibles and caught the hapless X-wing head-on. Han bit back a curse and leaned into the control yoke, dropping the Falcon like a stone, straight for the ascending matalok. Intent on squaring off with the cruiser, he had the concussion missile launchers armed when the proximity alarms began to blare.

"Four skips to starboard!" Jaina said. "Intercept course!"

Han performed a lightning-fast pushover.

"Give your mom and your uncle a heads-up!"

Displaying their customary contempt for evasive tactics, the skips broke ranks and came at the Falcon from separate vectors, firing at extreme range. Han heard the top and belly quad lasers begin to chuff and chunder, and banked slightly to starboard to place two of the hostiles in the Money Lane. Outwitting the shield singularities generated by the dovin basals, the powerful guns began to make immediate strikes chopping away at the skips' yorik coral hulls. A final burn from Leia in the dorsal turret sent one of the craft colliding into the other.

"Nice work!" Han said. "Now see if you can get rid of the other two!"

Again the reciprocating guns began to clack, loosing bright green salvos of devastating energy at the Falcon's pursuers. Voids formed instantly at the blunt noses of the wedge-shaped skips, and most of the quad bursts were swallowed, but some of Luke's bolts got through, and hunks of yorik coral flew off into s.p.a.ce. Abruptly the lead skip peeled away and tried to attach itself to the Falcon in what would have been the kill zone of an ordinary ship. Han merely applied power, rolled, and dived for the surface. Plasma projectiles streamed from the frustrated skip, but all it received for the effort were answering barrages of laserfire.

Struck repeatedly, the coralskipper wobbled as pieces of its wide stern were blown away. Crippled, the skip went into a helpless wiggle, then commenced a long fall toward the planet, trailing a plume of smoke and yorik coral dust. The surviving skip held position through the Falcon's corks.c.r.e.w.i.n.g dive and continued firing. As plasma ranged closer, Han boosted power to the rear shields and narrowed the ship's profile by pulling a snap-roll that lifted the Falcon onto her starboard side.

Luke and Leia triggered out-of-phase bursts, which began to wear down the dovin basal and penetrate the small voids it was managing to produce. Sustaining convergent strikes to the bow, the skip reared up and split apart. The Falcon flashed out of her evasive maneuvers, then banked broadly and darted for clear s.p.a.ce. Raising the bow, Han leveled out and arced for the horizon.

"Let Luke know I'm deactivating the artificial gravity," he told Jaina. "If he knows what's good for him he'll climb out of that belly turret."

Shortly, the Falcon was wending through forested spires that rose east of the sacred precinct. Below were villip paddies, interconnected orange-tinted lakes, and yorik coral quarries-some containing skips in their formative stages. Flames mushroomed and stabbed from the deep canyons, and microstorms carried burning vegetation toward distant patches of woodland.

"We've been spotted," Jaina said. "Coralskippers approaching from the south."

Han punched the throttle, whipping the freighter up and over a burning mound, then dropped down over the expansive plain from which Imperial/New Republic City had grown. He had to keep reminding himself that he wasn't flying over hills but over buried structures; that what appeared to be an escarpment had been a kilometers-long block of residential buildings; that the geometric craters dotting the landscape were the foundations of the great edifices themselves, now filled with cobalt-blue water or lush forest.

"Better switch us over to the tactical frequency," he said.

No sooner had Jaina reset the dials on the comm board than a tone sounded.

"Homing beacon," she told Han.

A map of the Yuuzhan Vong-formed governmental district resolved on the terrain-following sensor screen. Jaina tapped her forefinger against a pulsing bezel.

"That's our rally point."

What should have come into view was Mount Umate, highest peak of the Manarai Mountains. But what came into view instead was a ma.s.sive crater encompa.s.sing all of what had once been Monument Plaza. Perched on the protruding permacrete shoulders of the ruined arena were flocks of winged creatures similar to the seabirdlike fliers Han and Leia had seen at Selvaris. At the base of the ancient uplift, not far from where the Kallarak Amphitheater should have been, was another immense crater, whose thickly forested floor was in flames.

On the steep slopes, herds of six-legged beasts and packs of panicked lizard hounds were trying desperately to scrabble to safety. The smoke was denser at the outskirts of the sacred precinct. Eastport, where the Solos had lived and Han had kept the Falcon docked, was a memory.

Dirigiblelike, flame-spewing monstrosities wobbled and bobbed through the ruins of Skydome Botanical Gardens, Column Commons, and Calocour Heights.

Wherever Han looked he saw evidence of the incredible damage wrought by ranged weapons and crashed Golan Defense Platforms, skyhooks, and Orbital Solar Energy Transfer Satellites. Buildings that had stood for a thousand years had either been reduced to rubble or become trellises for profuse alien vegetation. Fires raged on the surface and smoke billowed into the sky. Through gaps in the clouds, Han could discern crowds of Yuuzhan Vong civilians running every which way in pandemonium. Pursued anew by coralskippers, the Falcon raced across the devastated cityscape, then down into blazing chasms and corridors thick with roiling smoke. The landscape was jagged with ferrocrete debris; the remains of superstructures jutted up at odd angles, like experimental sculpture.

"This place isn't worth saving," Jaina said in a stricken voice.

"Shimrra obviously feels the same,"

Harrar said, equally disheartened. Homing in on the beacon, Han veered the Falcon slightly north and began a slow descent through the smoke. He realized that they were going to be setting down at the western terminus of the Glitannai Esplanade-but princ.i.p.ally because the map display established as much. Formerly a stretch of fashionable shops and restaurants spread across the s.p.a.cious rooftops of Judicial Plaza, the Glitannai was now a deep canyon, spanned in a few places by organiform bridges and channeling a flow of whitewater toward the Citadel. Aware of the Falcon's approach, Alliance soldiers began to appear on a s.p.a.cious sheltered balcony that jutted out over the former promenade and had been secured by commandos for use as a landing zone.

Engaging the repulsorlifts, Han steered the ship onto the ledge and let her settle down on her landing gear. Just to be on the safe side, he lowered the repeating blaster from its hidden compartment in the forward hull, and activated the interrupter template that would prevent the weapon from damaging the landing ramp or hardstand. Last to file from the c.o.c.kpit, Han found Leia, Luke, Mara, Tahiri, and Kenth waiting in the ring corridor, already sheathed in biosuits.

While Jacen and Jaina were slipping into their suits, he palmed the bulkhead switch that extended the entry ramp.

"Cakhmaim, Meewalh," he shouted toward the forward compartment.

"You and the droids remain aboard. We're not going to be here long."

Heads ducked, the Jedi landing party scrambled down the ramp. A scorching, debris-laden wind was howling across the balcony, tearing at the enviro-suits worn by the soldiers who approached the ship.

"Welcome home," Judder Page said, shouting to be heard as two Awings streaked low overhead.

"To, as we like to call it, 'Necropolis.'"

Like his comrades, Page was wearing a jet pack and helmet, and carrying a blaster rifle. Along the lip of the balcony stood a dozen YVH droids. Han wasn't surprised to spy a couple of Wraiths among the commando platoon, but Pash Cracken was the last person he had expected to see. Jaina was even more stunned to see Jag Fel, who was waiting with a few others for a shuttle that would convey them to Westport, where there were starfighters that needed pilots. Jaina hurried to Jag while Page began to brief Luke, Kenth, Mara, and Jacen on the situation planetside.

"The Shamed Ones are up in arms, but word has it that Shimrra has issued an extermination order. He's blaming them for every reversal the Yuuzhan Vong have faced, and is determined to see every last one of them die, along with Coruscant itself."

"How fortified is the sacred precinct?" Luke asked, as the wind whipped his hair about his face.

"Several thousand ground troops, some reptoid slave soldiers,"

Cracken said, "but not much in the way of air support." He nodded to the flashing sky. "Most of the skips have gone upside."

"The better for us," Luke said.

Leia stepped into the howling wind to embrace her brother and Mara, then hugged Jacen as if she wasn't going to let him go. She did the same with Jaina after Jaina had said h.e.l.lo and good-bye to Jag.

"Luke," Leia started to say.

"They're in my keeping, Leia," he said of Jaina and Jacen. "But all of us are in the custody of the Force."

Han embraced his children and Mara, and clamped his hands on the tops of Luke's shoulders.

"We've been in worse straits than this, right?"

Luke grinned.

"More times than I can count."

Han nodded soberly.

"Then maybe we should make this one count as the last one."

"I'll abide by that if you will."

"You just watch me." Han put his arm around Leia and began to lead her back to the Falcon after the Jedi, Page's Commandos, and the YVH droids had moved out. At the ramp Leia blew out her breath and looked up at him.

"For our next trick..."

"We set a course for the World Brain."

"And when we get there?"

Han compressed his lips.

"I'm hoping Harrar'll think of something."

The living ship forged from the seed-partners to which Kyp had bonded soared soundlessly and effortlessly through Zonama Sekot's tormented sky. In pairs and trios, coralskippers pierced the planet's envelope to attack the vessels the planet itself had fashioned to frustrate them, but so far none had made it through to the surface. The few that had succeeded in getting past the Jedi pilots had been repelled by Zonama itself, with powerful updrafts or unseen gravity generators that had hurled the skips to the edge of s.p.a.ce-repulsed in a way that reminded Kyp of magnets, when their like poles were brought into contact.

Kyp and one coralskipper pilot in particular had been testing and toying with each other for far too long, but each time Kyp had drawn a bead on the skip the Sekotan ship's weapons had failed, or perhaps refused to fire. The same was true with the skip, whose controlling yammosk, falsely perceiving that the pilot was firing on another of its brood, would whisk the coralskipper through a turn to sabotage its shots.

As acutely as Kyp could feel the gravitic tugs from the yammosk, he could also feel draws and joggles from Sekot. Zonama's consciousness was manipulating the Jedi ships into flying with the same unsettling sense of conformity displayed by the flights of coralskippers. Yuuzhan Vong and Jedi ships alike were part of a zigzagging aerial dance that was being ch.o.r.eographed from afar.

Against almost any of the enemies that had ma.s.sed to test the durability of the New Republic during the past twenty years, a dozen Sekotan ships, a Skipray blastboat, and a couple of X-wings wouldn't have been adequate to protect an entire world. But the Yuuzhan Vong were not an ordinary enemy, and Zonama Sekot was hardly an ordinary world. True to the behavior they had demonstrated from the start, the Yuuzhan Vong had their own rules of engagement, centering on challenge, honor, and persistence to the last. In the same way that their priests placed themselves at the service of a pantheon of cruel G.o.ds, the pilots of their war vessels surrendered individual action to obey the commands of the tentacled creature that coordinated them in battle.

Their sense of honor was as distorted by their slavish devotion to sacrifice as local s.p.a.ce was warped by the dovin basals that propelled and shielded their weapons. Over and above what the Alliance had accomplished, it was the Yuuzhan Vong's unswerving subordination to the will of the G.o.ds and the importance of captives that had cost them hundreds of vessels and countless lives at Ebaq 9, Obroa-skai, and other arenas. As extraordinary as they were as a species-and as warriors-it was foolhardy courage and inflexibility that could end in costing them Zonama Sekot, as well.

That was a.s.suming that the Jedi would eventually grow comfortable with piloting the Sekotan ships, Kyp mused. Merely settling into the pulsing red-and-green c.o.c.kpits had required resolve. The canopy was similar to the mica-like transparency of a coralskipper, but, like everything in the c.o.c.kpit, it was warm to the touch. Comparable to a combination yoke, accelerator, and weapons trigger, the main control had actually reached up and wrapped around his right hand, molding to it the way some of the controls of Centerpoint Station were rumored to have molded to Anakin Solo's hand. The console was an organiform surround of control levers that resembled ligaments, switches that had the resiliency of blisters or calluses, and tracking displays as fluid as those on a Mon Calamari cruiser.

Odors that were by turn cloying and sharp pervaded the c.o.c.kpit, as if encouraging the pilot to make use of olfactory cues, as well as audiovisual and tactile ones. More important, the ship engaged a pilot's mind in a kind of telepathic dialogue. There was no astromech droid to report on the status of the systems; no cognition hood interface, as on the stolen Yuuzhan Vong vessel that had come to be called Trickster.

But the Sekotan ship incorporated some of the qualities of each by speaking telepathically to the pilot. The ship didn't have a voice-it wasn't telepathy on the order of that honed by the Jedi-but Kyp could sense what the vessel was feeling and thinking, the way he had been able to sense the feelings of the crazy little seed-partners that had clung to him. All this came standard with the ship-as well as with the ships Zonama Sekot had furnished for the lucky few Old Republic-era pilots who had been wealthy enough to afford them, and who had formed the requisite attachment to seed-partners.

But as Han Solo was forever saying about the Millennium Falcon, some special modifications had been made to the Jedi ships. Like coralskippers, the ships were capable of hurling plasma, but unlike coralskippers they lacked shields, relying instead on astonishing nimbleness. Absent ion drives, heat exchangers, exhaust ports, or anything resembling conventional engine components, the ships were faster than A-wings and more maneuverable than TIE fighters.

Kyp was beginning to think of them as the Sekotan equivalent of lightsabers. The pilot didn't have to be a Jedi-flying the ships didn't require a special connection to the Force-but a ship's ability to perform appeared to be directly related to the degree to which a pilot could surrender him - or herself, become egoless and empty. Saba, Lowbacca, and Tam Azur-Jamin-whose call signs were Hisser, Streak, and Quiet, respectively-were demonstrating this to be the case.

Kyp was in awe of the maneuvers they were executing, to the point that he sometimes lost focus on the battle itself. Despite his talents, his mastery of the Force, he had yet to be able to take his ship through similar moves. Or was it that the ship was having trouble taking him through similar moves? Kyp's comlink toned. Over the past few years-since Myrkr-the Jedi had become adept at communicating with one another through Force-melds, but between attending to the Sekotan ships and flying in the atmosphere of the living world, these melds were proving difficult to sustain.

"Kyp, you getting the hang of these things?" Corran Horn asked.

The intership comlink transmission was being relayed through Jade Shadow, which was in stationary orbit at the edge of the battle zone, unpiloted, but slave circuit and all countermeasures enabled.

"I've been wondering if the ship is having trouble getting the hang of me."

"You and me both. I did a lot better with the Sekotan ship Tahiri and I piloted from Coruscant. I mean, I know I'm targeting correctly, but a lot of my shots are going wide-even when there aren't voids standing between me and the target."

"Something about Sekot's need for us not to be killers."

"I've got a theory about that," Corran said, "but I'll save it for another time."

"Then why are we up here-just for show?"

"Maybe it's the same between Sekot and us as it is between the ships and us. Sekot's still trying to get a feel for us. Once that happens, we'll be able to target more accurately."

"So I should think of this as some kind of insane simulation," Kyp said.

"With one difference. It's the ships that are learning."

Kyp thought about this statement after he signed off with Corran.

Perhaps it wasn't only the ships that were learning. Why had seed-partners bonded to some Jedi and not others? Why him and not Jaina? Was there anything to the fact that Kyp had destroyed a world, Saba had seen one destroyed, and both Alema and Corran held themselves responsible for the destruction of theirs? Would Ganner Rhysode have bonded with seed-partners?

Wurth Skidder? Kyp's own apprentice, Miko Reglia? Would Anakin have bonded? What did Sekot understand about all of them that they didn't understand about themselves?