A Force Wall! Nom Anor thought. Tahiri used her Jedi powers a second time to create an even wider circle of clear s.p.a.ce, then whirled and grabbed Nom Anor by the arm, spinning him around to face her, her eyes already wide with discovery. Sending his amphistaff flying with a Force command, she immobilized him by clutching the yoke of his robeskin.

Then she turned and gesticulated toward her fellow Jedi.

"Mara, I have Nom Anor!"

Over the heads of combatants, through the hail, misted blood, and forest of flailing arms, Nom Anor could see Skywalker gazing directly at him in eager peril. Summoning his strength, Nom Anor slashed upward with his coufee, missing Tahiri by a blade but succeeding in cutting the handful of robe she had gripped.

Momentum propelled him backward through a splashing somersault, and while Tahiri's attention was momentarily diverted, he shoved a wounded Shamed One at her feet. Crawling a sinuous and puddled path between the legs of warriors and heretics, he ultimately reached the northern edge of the Place of Hierarchy. There, where the crowd was thinner, he elbowed his way through a cl.u.s.ter of warriors and broke fast for the stairs and freedom.

Much like Millennium Falcon, Lady Luck had in the past five years undergone an atavistic transition from pleasantly appointed family craft to war vessel. But where Han's Falcon was as armed as it was fast, Lando's fifty-meter-long SoroSuub yacht relied as ever on stealth, speed, and advanced sensor arrays that allowed it to observe and scrutinize vessels at far remove. With three lasers and a reinforced hull, Talon Karrde's Corellian transport was better configured for battle, although hardly a match for a Yuuzhan Vong task force.

Which was why the two ships were flying at the fringe of the battle zone and leaving most of the dirty work to Errant Venture, and to the Hapans. Tenel Ka's flotilla had arrived moments after the Yuuzhan Vong capital ships had begun their move against Zonama Sekot, and had immediately arrayed themselves in a blockade. The new-generation Battle Dragons were twin-saucered ships with turbolasers and ion cannons placed along the rims, made all the more lethal since the New Republic had finally shared its weapons-recharge technology with the Hapan navy.

The enhanced Dragons were also equipped with pulse ma.s.s mine launchers that were nearly as effective as dovin basal singularities when it came to deflecting weapons fire and interdicting ships from jumping to hypers.p.a.ce. In contrast, the shape and sleekness of the Consortium's Nova-cla.s.s cruisers brought to mind Old Republic-era hand blasters. As agile as starfighters and as deadly as warships twice their size, the cruisers were preventing Yuuzhan Vong vessels from penetrating the Dragons' daunting barricade.

Closer to Zonama Sekot, flaming red Errant Venture, along with squadrons of X-wings and Hapan Miy'til fighters were preying on advance coralskippers the task force had dispatched to test the defenses. Trapped between the deep-s.p.a.ce squadrons and the atmospheric craft flown by the Jedi, the coralskippers were being decimated. And now that capital ships were involved, the planet itself had brought out its big guns, firing salvos of stunning ion fire from the summits of mountains twelve kilometers high. Equidistant from the task force and blockade, Lando and Tendra had an overview of the entire battle, but Lady Luck's seeming brazenness had made her the object of unwanted attention, and the Calrissians were being forced to do more running than spying.

Their updates of enemy maneuvers had twice saved Booster Terrik from being taken by surprise, and they were a critical link in relaying intelligence between the Star Destroyer and the Jedi pilots, who, at last word, had finally managed to talk their living ships into returning fire.

The Yuuzhan Vong gave every indication of having been thrown into disorder by their obvious miscalculation. The pilots of the skips were fighting for their lives, and the task force itself was fast coming unglued, with cruiser and destroyer a.n.a.logs maneuvering without rhyme or reason, making themselves easy targets for the precision lasers of the Hapan cruisers and the ranged weapons of the Dragons.

Only total confusion could account for the fact that some of the vessels in the task force were actually turning on one of their own. The victim was the vessel that originally had been flying at the center of the Yuuzhan Vong's elongated diamond formation. It had remained at the center all through the initial coralskipper a.s.sault on Zonama Sekot, but was now being raked with plasma fire by four of the surrounding cruisers.

Lando and Tendra saw the vessel split wide open, and yet instead of exploding, the cleaved vessel released a smaller vessel that was concealed inside. A corvette a.n.a.log, the six-armed craft had a scaled hull and an upraised, curving stern. Not unlike two vessels Errant Venture had destroyed at Caluula. A slayer ship.

"They're supposed to be hypers.p.a.ce-capable," Lando said. "So why did they need to transport this one?"

"It looks off," Tendra said.

One eyebrow raised, Lando glanced at her.

"Off course?"

She shook her head.

"Off color. It looks ill."

Lando's blood ran cold. He commanded the scanners to provide him with a close-up and a.n.a.lyze the vessel's signature. Then he commed Errant Venture.

"Booster, we're sending you signature data on a vessel in the task force," Lando began.

"We're busy, Lando," Booster snapped.

"You're not too busy for this. Run a comparison with what you've got stored in the Venture's memory, and tell me if we get a hit."

"Hold tight," Booster said.

When after a long moment he spoke again, his voice was riddled with apprehension.

"The signature you sent matches the ship that evaded us at Caluula."

"The ship carrying Alpha Red," Lando said. "And now closing on Zonama Sekot".

THIRTY-EIGHT.

Jag thought of himself first and foremost as a starfighter pilot, not a dirt flier. He had accepted the a.s.signment to lead Twins Suns onto Coruscant, but without the enthusiasm he might have demonstrated for a s.p.a.ce mission. Like many who had earned their wings in zero-g, atmosphere was anathema. Maneuvers weren't so much performed as wrested from a craft-no matter how aerodynamic the design or how responsive the repulsorlift engine. The carbon-scored green X-wing he had been given at Westport felt sluggish and unwieldy, especially compared to a clawcraft.

But Jag's complaints were only that. There was a mission to execute, and he was not about to shirk his commitment to seeing it through. Streaking east from the now-Alliance-occupied landing field, he wove the snubfighter through a hail of ascending plasma fire and descending wreckage. Dominating the forward view was the rounded summit of Shimrra's fortress, rising from the thick blanket of cloud cover and smoke that smothered most of the sacred precinct.

Only two years earlier the elegant summits of dozens of s.p.a.cesc.r.a.pers would have been visible above the clouds, but now there was only the craggy mountaintop. Somewhere below, Jaina was moving toward the same target, with her brother and uncle, and a small team of commandos and droids. Take care of yourself, she had said to him on the flooded balcony where the Millennium Falcon had set the Jedi down. And Jag meant to do just that.

When he had urged Jaina to do the same, she had replied, The Force will take care of me.

He hadn't debated the matter. He wanted it to be true with all his heart. Ahead of him, twenty starfighters were circling the Citadel, loosing laser bolts, proton torpedoes, and concussion missiles at the summit. A sense of hopelessness began to erode Jag's resolve. Even without the insatiable voids that were engulfing nearly every starfighter volley, the Citadel appeared to be impregnable. It was like attempting to blow apart a mountain.

There were no coralskippers to contend with, but outpourings of plasma from deep pits in the Citadel walls were effortlessly overwhelming the shields of the starfighters. The X-wing's droid sent flight information to the c.o.c.kpit displays. Jag dialed the comm to the tactical net.

"This is worse than punching past the orbital dovin basals," a pilot was saying.

"Keep a hand on your grab-safety toggle, or those voids'll take you down," another said. "They're swallowing every bolt I'm feeding them."

"Just watch out they don't take a fancy to you."

"Yeah, they've developed a real taste for starfighters."

"Especially yellow ones with black stripes."

"Copy that, Rogue Leader."

"All ships form up on me for a portwise sweep. Set your weapons for stutterfire and follow up with whatever torps and missiles you've got left. Remember: it may look like a mountain but it's actually a ship.

Which means it can be cracked open."

"Following you in, Rogue One."

Jag saw that two of the fighters off his starboard wingtip were clawcraft, and he opened a channel to the closest one.

"Twin Suns Four, I've got your port side."

"Jag!" the pilot returned. "I thought you were dead!"

"Saved by a tree, of all things, Shawnkyr."

"Are you about ready to go home now?"

"As soon as we finish this-you have my word."

She laughed shortly.

"This part of the galaxy has made a romantic of you, Fel."

"Still watching my back, is that it?"

"Who will if I won't?" Shawnkyr said. "Oh, I forgot. And just where is the Sword?"

"Below-moving west."

"Then we'd better take care not to bring this mountain down on her head."

"After he did so well with the mon duul," Jaina found time to say between swings of her lightsaber. Pinned down in a grove of fingerleaf trees one hundred meters from the westernmost of the walkways that accessed the Citadel, she and Luke were fending off streams of attack bugs that were hurtling down from lookout aeries in the holy mountain.

Closer to Shimrra's haunt, Jacen was trying without success to pacify the beasts that were rapidly devouring the walkway itself. A trio of YVH droids had tried less subtle means of persuasion, only to have been ripped apart and ingested.

"At least Shimrra can't speak through these two," Luke said.

"I'd say that's exactly what Shimrra's doing," Jaina hollered back.

Gargantuan symbiots, Sgauru and Tu-Scart were partners in the walkway devastation. Considering that the former was female and the latter male, it was something of a marriage. At Gateway settlement on Duro, the couple had demonstrated their talent for demolishing buildings, and they were doing an equally skilled job of dismantling and consuming the yorik coral concourse. Hard-sh.e.l.led, segmented Sgauru was doing most of the grunt work. Beady black eyes dotted her white head, and her mouth writhed with dozens of feeder-tendrils. Her powerful rear pincers gripped around the upper coils of her snakelike mate, she was using her stubby front legs and enormous head to smash the span to pieces.

Loose chunks didn't fly far before being pulverized by sleek black Tu-Scart's elongated body. Absent their usual team of handlers, the creatures had emerged from a ma.s.sive hollow beneath the concourse, through which the esplanade river cascaded thunderously into the square at the base of the Citadel. Lashed by rain and howling winds, the monolithic fortress loomed above the Jedi, rising up into the battle-torn sky like the rough-hewn blade of a coufee.

Though winged, mottled with patches of dark green moss, and bedecked with vines whose seeds had taken root in the worldship's nooks and crannies, the Citadel was simply too sheer to scale, even with the aid of the Force. Starfighters were still circling the rounded summit, but not one had managed to come within a thousand meters of Shimrra's lair without being destroyed. The remains of those that had tried littered the uneven, inundated terrain for kilometers around.

Far below the concourse, at the base of the Citadel, a dark maw accessed the lower depths of the mountain. But that opening was heavily guarded by reptoid slave soldiers. Rocketing down the terraced wall of the urban canyon, Page's Commandos and YVH droids were taking up firing positions above the Chazrach, but the enemy was well entrenched and answering Alliance blaster bolts with spouts of firejelly and highly flammable sparkbee honey. If the Jedi were to infiltrate the Citadel, Jacen had to persuade Sgauru and Tu-Scart to halt their destruction of the western concourse while a narrow stretch still remained intact.

He risked a few cautious steps toward the beasts, then stopped when temblors began to rock the fragile span at regular intervals.

"Now what?" Jaina yelled to Luke. "Is Zonama Sekot making another fly-by?"

The temblors grew louder and more forceful. Jacen managed to keep his balance on the swaying concourse, but the steady jolts proved too much for the unbroken expanse. Fissured, the yorik coral span gave way, plummeting in fragments into the whitewater torrent. At the same time, two armored quadrupeds appeared from around the curved base of the Citadel, lumbering in concert and settling into fortifying positions behind the slave soldiers. Planting their splayed claws in the raging river, they lowered their triangular heads. Plasma streamed from the thick horns that branched from their bony foreheads, spattering against the walls of the canyon and forcing the commandos and YVH droids to retreat to the rim. With the cavernous entrance at the base of the Citadel effectively sealed, Jacen saw Sgauru and Tu-Scart as the only hope.

The beasts had to be coaxed into breaching the wall of the Citadel.

Jacen sensed that his best chance of accomplishing this would require him to abandon the Force and give himself over fully to his Vongsense-something he had been unable to do since arriving on Coruscant. He felt like a switch being thrown between two poles; Force at one pole, Vongsense at the other. He understood further that the only way to compel Sgauru and Tu-Scart into action was by communicating with them through the World Brain. It was while aboard the seedship that had delivered Jacen and the dhuryam to Coruscant that they had first reached an understanding.

By destroying the brain's would-be rivals, Jacen had essentially determined which of several dhuryams was to have the honor of transforming Coruscant into "Yuuzhan'tar." More important, he had installed a World Brain whose very disposition was informed by the rapport it shared with him. All that the planet had become since then-beautiful and monstrous, delicate and coa.r.s.e, symbiotic, and parasitic-owed something to Jacen. And yet when he reached out with his Vongsense he again found himself in compet.i.tion for the brain's attention.

Some of that was due to the brain's preoccupation with Coruscant.

Over and above that, there was the energy the brain was pouring into executing Shimrra's requests. Aboard the seedship and afterward Jacen had found the dhuryam to be an intelligent creature, but specifically engineered to be intractable. Now the dhuryam was twisted by conflict and anger. Shimrra had succeeded in cajoling it into believing that the fires and drenching rains, the demolition and destruction were necessary to repair the damage done to Yuuzhan'tar by Zonama Sekot's close pa.s.sage.

But in doing so, the brain understood that it was destroying much of what it created, in addition to reneging on its pledge to compel Shimrra and the Yuuzhan Vong to accept compromise. Neither accustomed to being disobedient nor inclined to tolerate disorder, the brain was at war with itself for having brought harm to the world in its trust. As on the seedship, it understood that its domain was suddenly falling to ruin and becoming a wasteland. The brain was struggling with the idea that it might do better by simply ignoring Shimrra. Calling on his Vongsense, Jacen promised the dhuryam that he would help put an end to its inner conflict.

He told it that he would force Shimrra to release his hold. In return he could feel it reaching out to him as one might a friend in time of need. A wave of grat.i.tude, a plea for salvation washed through him...

Abruptly Sgauru and Tu-Scart turned toward him, clearly under the influence of the brain. Jacen grasped that the moment had come for him to demonstrate his faith in the agreement he and the brain had forged.

Ignoring Luke and Jaina's loud-voiced misgivings, he advanced on the coupled symbiots. Almost immediately his waist was encircled by two twisting appendages. Then Sgauru picked him up off the demolished concourse and swung him out over the canyon.

Not toward the Citadel, though, but as if to drop him directly into the midst of the slave soldiers and their artillery beasts.

From the Falcon's c.o.c.kpit comlink came the sound of blasterfire and cries for help. C-3PO recognized the voice of Captain Solo.

"Threepio, lower the landing ramp! Threepio! Threepio!"

The protocol droid stopped his worried pacing long enough to raise his hands in distress to R2-D2, whose extensible computer interface arm was inserted into an access port in the ring corridor, near the head of the ramp.

"Artoo, do something before it's too late!"

Stiffly, C-3PO hurried into the c.o.c.kpit. All he could see through the viewport panes was an impenetrable tangle of heavily thorned branches. He made a clumsy about-face and shambled back to the ring corridor, where he began to pound his hand against the landing ramp switch.

"Oh, it's no use! The thorn hedge has the Millennium Falcon in a death lock! Captain Solo and the Princess will die, and we'll be imprisoned like museum exhibits!"

R2-D2 toodled an encouraging phrase, and C-3PO ceased his pounding to stare at him.

"You can do what? Reroute power from the deflector shield to send a charge through the hull?" C-3PO's hands flew up once again. "Well, why didn't you say so earlier?"

The little blue-and-white astromech chirped and chittered in protest.

"Nonsense," C-3PO rejoined. "You're simply trying to frighten me.

You're never content until you've succeeded in working me into a frenzy."

R2-D2 issued a series of solemn beeps. C-3PO adopted an akimbo stance.

"Don't you start that again. 'Everything terminates; face it bravely.. .' I'll have you know I've been facing my termination bravely since the beginning of this war. Indeed, long before I had the misfortune of meeting the likes of you. Now, do as you suggested and send a charge through the hull!"

Shuffling back to the juncture of the ring and outrigger corridors, C- 3PO placed himself where he could peer through the forward viewport, as well as keep a photoreceptor on his counterpart. A moment later, R2-D2's interface arm began to rotate-first in one direction, then the other-and an electrical crackling could be heard dancing across the Falcon's skin. The olfactory sensor at the top of C-3PO's chest monitored smells of ozone and singed wood.

"It's working, Artoo!" he shouted. "The thorn hedge is retracting!

Thank the maker, we're free!" R2-D2 squawked a question. "Yes, of course you should lower the landing ramp!" C-3PO said as he hurried for it. "The sooner we leave this ship, the better!"

Skidding through a left-hand turn, he stepped onto the canted ramp just as its foot was striking the paving stones of the plaza.

"Freedom, Artoo-agghh!" Without knowing precisely why, R2-D2 squealed in alarm. He might have squealed even louder had he realized that a tattooed and battle-scarred Yuuzhan Vong warrior was rushing up the ramp. Too panicked to move, and certainly without thinking, C-3PO said, "You're not allowed aboard!"

The warrior only growled in contempt and continued his charge. He was halfway to the top when a blaster discharged behind him and a crimson-tinged blasterbolt burned its way through the front of his neck, sending him facefirst to the ramp, not a meter from where C-3PO was standing. At the foot of the ramp stood Captain Solo, his aged weapon in hand. C-3PO saw his master staring wide-eyed at something off to his left, at which he began firing, even as Harrar, Princess Leia, Cakhmaim, and Meewalh were hastening up the ramp, all but crawling when they reached the body of the dead Yuuzhan Vong.

"Threepio, get ready to close the ramp!" Captain Solo yelled.

He fired off several blasterbolts, then ducked a hurled amphistaff and threw himself onto the ramp.