"I basically said that he could put us down for whatever they had in mind." Leia took a breath and faced front. Much to her mounting unease, Han had gotten into the habit of accepting every dangerous a.s.signment dreamed up by Galactic Alliance command. It was as if the successes in the Koornacht Cl.u.s.ter, at Bakura, and at Esfandia had merely primed Han's pump, or had been nothing more than warm-up exercises for some grand mission during which he would defeat the Yuuzhan Vong single-handedly-or at least in partnership with Leia. But the war had taken a toll on both of them, beginning with Chewbacca's death and culminating with the tragic events at Myrkr, where their youngest son Anakin had died, their older son Jacen had been captured, and their daughter Jaina had forged her grief into a sword of vengeance that had pushed her to the edge of the dark side and nearly cost her her life. Leia knew in her heart that she and Han were more unified than they had ever been. But the constant missions had been exhausting, and lately there had been too many close calls. At times she wished that she could gather her scattered family and spirit everyone to some far corner of the galaxy, untouched by the war. But even on the remote chance that such a corner existed, Han wouldn't consider absenting himself for a moment, especially now, with HoloNet communications down, and the need for gifted pilots with fast ships. Before that safe corner could ever be found and claimed as their own-before the galaxy could know enduring peace-Leia and Han would need to see the war through to the bitter end. She came back to herself just as Wedge was concluding his remarks.

"We are committed to this operation for an added reason of equal importance-that is, in the hope that a rescue of such magnitude will spoil the impending sacrifice." Wedge's expression turned hard as he scanned the a.s.sembly.

"Any thorns we can drive deeper into Shimrra's side will further destabilize Coruscant, and provide us with the window we need to rebuild our forces and safeguard those worlds the enemy has thus far been unable to vanquish."

SIX.

It was raining insects on Yuuzhan'tar-the former Coruscant, once bright center, now dimmed, defiled by war, transformed by the Yuuzhan Vong into a riotous garden. A seeming mishmash of ferns, conifers, and other flora blunted what only two years earlier had been technological sierra. Verdant growth nudged through mist in valleys that had once been canyons between kilometer-high megastructures.

Newly formed lakes and basins created by the fall of mighty towers and orbital platforms were filled to overflowing with water, initially brought by asteroids, but since delivered with regularity from a purple sky.

To some, Yuuzhan'tar, "Creche of the G.o.ds," was a world returned to its bygone splendor, lost and rediscovered, more alive for having been conquered, its...o...b..t altered-tweaked sunward-three of its moons steered away and returned, and the fourth pulverized to form a braided ring, a bridge of supernatural light, along which the G.o.ds strolled in serene meditation. And yet insects were raining down on Supreme Overlord Shimrra's rainbow-winged worldship Citadel-his holy mount, rising from a yorik coral cradle to tower over what had been the most populous and important precinct of the galactic capital. An unrelenting tattoo of falling bodies that sounded like a thousand drummers pounding out different rhythms.

The stink beetles spattered the dome of the Hall of Confluence and the stately, organiform bridges that linked the hall to other hallowed places. The plague had been born on the other side of Yuuzhan'tar because of a mistake by the World Brain-an overbreeding-and now the creatures were dying because of yet another mistake by the dhuryam. The air around the Citadel reeked, and the ground was slippery with smashed bodies. The atmosphere inside the great hall was somber.

A place of a.s.sembly for the Yuuzhan Vong elite, it was defined by a curving roof supported by pillars sculpted from ancient bone. Broad at the four palpating portals where the high caste entered, the hall attenuated at the opposite end, where Shimrra sat on a pulsing crimson throne, propped by cl.u.s.ters of hau polyps.

Dovin basals provided a sense of gravity, of uphill walking, increasing the nearer one came to Shimrra's spike-backed seat. And yet the atmosphere inside the hall was moody and silent. A kneeling gathering of priests, warriors, shapers, and intendants waited for the Supreme Overlord to speak. The brooding silence was fractured by the sound of insects striking the roof, or being swept from the fronting causeways into the accommodating mouths of a dozen maw luur...

"You are asking yourselves, Where have we erred?" Shimrra said at last. "Does the fault lie with our cleansings, our sacrifices, our conquests? Are we being tested by the G.o.ds, or have we been abandoned? Is Shimrra still our conduit, or has he become our liability? You are preoccupied with fears concerning balance and derangement. You wonder if all of us haven't become Shamed Ones in the eyes of the G.o.ds-spurned, disdained, ostracized because of our pride and our inability to prevail."

Shimrra paused to look around the hall, then asked: "Do you think that your distrust in me, your whispered doubts, benefits our n.o.ble cause? If I can hear you, what must the G.o.ds be thinking when they look into each and every one of you? I will tell you what the G.o.ds are saying to one another: They have lost faith in the one we set upon the polyp throne. And in doubting the Supreme Overlord, our yoke to them, they doubt us.

"And so the G.o.ds visit plagues and defeats on their children-not to castigate me, but to demonstrate where you have failed-where you have failed them."

Shimrra's black-and-gray ceremonial robes were the flayed and preserved flesh of the first Supreme Overlord. His ma.s.sive head was scarified with design; his features rearranged to suggest a G.o.dly aspect: eyes widened, mouth decurved, forehead elongated, earlobes stretched, chin narrowed to a point, like the Hall of Confluence itself. And blazing from his eye sockets, mqaaq't implants, which changed color according to Shimrra's mood. The fingers of his huge right hand grasped a fanged amphistaff that was the Scepter of Power.

Below the yorik coral throne sat his shamed familiar, Onimi, part pet, part speaker of truths few dared to voice. It had reached Shimrra's ear, through a network of eavesdropping biots and actual spies, that some of his opponents and derogators were gossiping that he had fallen out of favor with the G.o.ds-a speculation more ironic than dangerous, since Shimrra had long ago abandoned real belief in any power other than that which he wielded as Supreme Overlord.

Even so, there were undeniable reasons to fear that he had fallen out of favor. The slow progress of the conquest; a plague of itching that had commenced with his arrival on Yuuzhan'tar; the still-unabated heretical movement; the disastrous defeat at Ebaq 9; the treachery of the priestess Ngaaluh; the attempt on Shimrra's life...

Many believed that all these reversals had been engineered by the G.o.ds as a warning to Shimrra that he had become grandiose and proud. He who had proclaimed the galaxy a chosen realm for the long-wandering, homeless Yuuzhan Vong. As an appeas.e.m.e.nt to the concerned members of the elite, Shimrra had agreed to allow his proclamations and utterances to be a.n.a.lyzed by a quartet of seers-one from each caste, one for each primary G.o.d. Black midnight hags, who sat close to the throne and spoke in contradictions.

Not that they dared challenge Shimrra, in any case, except with hand wringing, prayers, and other gestures meant to implore the G.o.ds to look kindly on Yuuzhan'tar.

"You disgust me," he told them. "You think I'm spouting sacrilege.

You recoil and grovel because you know that I speak the truth, and that truth rattles you to the core of your being. You'd do well to chop off more of yourselves in penance and devotion. Give all of yourselves and it won't be enough." He looked down at Onimi. "You think I speak in riddles, like this one."

Onimi's deformities owed not to birth but to rejection by the G.o.ds.

Once a shaper, he was now little more than a misshapen jester-one eye drooping below its mate, one yellow fang protruding from a twisted mouth, one portion of his skull distended, as if the shaper's vaa-tumor had failed to seat itself properly. Long and slender, his arms and legs twitched continuously, yanked about by the G.o.ds, as they might do to a puppet. Shimrra made a sound of angry impatience.

"Come forward, Von Shul of Domain Shul and Melaan Nar of Domain Nar."

The two consuls-midlevel intendants-advanced a few meters on their knees.

"I have pondered your grievances with each other," Shimrra said when the throne's dovin basal had forced the faces of the consuls to the floor, "and I now decree that you put them aside. I decree further that you redirect the energy that fuels your wrath into serving our common cause. Each of you claims that your troubles with each other began here, on Yuuzhan'tar, as have so many other petty rivalries between this domain and that one. But this is merely camouflage. I know that your dispute had its roots during our long migration through intergalactic s.p.a.ce, and that that dispute has resurfaced here. But you are not entirely to blame.

"Absent wars to wage, what did we do but turn upon ourselves, sacrifice one another, compete for the favor of my predecessor Quoreal, or snipe behind one another's backs? The G.o.ds were forgotten. You lost patience, you worried, you thought then that the G.o.ds had abandoned us-because our long-sought home was nowhere to be found. And that is precisely what you are doing now. Prefect Da'Gara and the Praetorite domains-what did their blasphemous actions earn them but ice graves on what little remains of Helska Four, a world so far removed from Yuuzhan'tar it might as well be in the galaxy we left behind? None less than Warmaster Czulkang Lah refused to believe me when I avowed that the promised realm was within reach, and what did that earn him but death in battle, like his son, who burned so strongly with hatred for the Jeedai that he allowed himself to be drawn into an engagement he couldn't win."

Shimrra paid no attention to the bitter grumblings from some of the warriors, all of whom wore ceremonial vonduun crab armor. Instead his piercing gaze fell on Warmaster Nas Choka, n.o.ble in appearance despite his modest stature, with fine black hair combed straight back from his face, and a wispy beard. Choka had been escalated in the wake of Tsavong Lah's death, but was not yet universally revered, despite his numerous victories in Hutt s.p.a.ce.

"Learn from the mistakes of your precursors, Warmaster, and all will go well for you. Fail me as Domain Lah did and I will personally make an example of you that future warmasters will be forced to consider before they accept escalation."

Nas Choka inclined his head in a crisp bow and struck the points of his shoulders with the opposite fists. Now Shimrra glared at the fretting warriors.

"Many of you would like to hold Prefect Nom Anor responsible for what happened at Ebaq Nine, because of the disinformation to which he fell victim. I myself accepted that for a time. But the real failure was Tsavong Lah's, for allowing himself to be gulled by the enemy. Tsavong Lah thought he died an honorable death, but I say that he shamed us all."

Eyes downcast, many a warrior squirmed in place. Shimrra's gaze found High Priest Jakan-adorned in red-and High Prefect Drathul, sheathed in green.

"There are others whom I might chastise and remind of their obligation. But I will reserve that for another occasion."

A dovin basal cushion floated Shimrra out of his throne to the ring of flower petals that encircled it, where he dismounted the cushion.

Ankle-deep in the flowers, he raised his long-toothed scepter of rank.

"All can be made right by the coming sacrifice. But we must take care against interference."

"The heretics, August Lord," a priest said.

Shimrra waved his empty hand in dismissal.

"The heretics are nothing more than a pestilence-a plague of stink bugs we can eradicate at any time. I speak of interference from the unconverted who move silently among us-those who survived the planetary bombardment and worldshaping, the slaves who escaped the maimed seedship that delivered the World Brain to Yuuzhan'tar, the resistance fighters who profane our holy ground, and the Jeedai."

As if on cue, Onimi scrambled to his feet and followed Shimrra along the flowered ring, reciting: "The Shamed are naught but nuisance flies, At least as seen through Shimrra's eyes; The Jeedai are the ones he mourns, Edged and sharp as senalak thorns."

When Shimrra swung about, Onimi bowed in mock gallantry.

"Great Sky Lord, if the Jeedai Force is nothing more than enhanced ability, why have our shapers not created worthy opponents from the warrior caste?"

Shimrra frowned and aimed a finger at his familiar.

"You spoil my surprise, Onimi. But so be it." He turned to face the white-robed, tentacle-handed shapers. "Let us not keep our company in suspense. Display your handiwork."

One of the spotlessly adorned shapers rose and hastened from the hall. Moments later, entering through both the priest and warrior portals, marched a group of ten males. Shorter even than Nas Choka, they carried restless amphistaffs and whetted coufees. Steng's Talons sprouted from their robust bodies, which were smeared black with dried blood. The ten were unlike the special breed of warriors known as hunters, who were privileged to sport the photosensitive mimetic cloak of Nuun, but something new and disconcerting, and the female seers were the first to voice their dismay.

"What desecration is this?"

"Armed as warriors, yet clothed as attendants to the G.o.ds!"

"What shaper is responsible?" Onimi gamboled over to them and adopted a haughty posture.

"To prove the Force a farce indeed, Shimrra's will the shapers heed; Birthing troops of mingled caste Great Nas Choka they will outlast!"

One of the seers made a futile grab for Onimi while the others continued to shout dire warnings.

"No shaper other than myself is responsible," Shimrra said, silencing them. "By my injunction do these warriors come to be. Our Jeedai. Charged with guarding the life of your Supreme Overlord, as well as with rooting out our enemies and exterminating them. At their disposal they will have coralskippers of unique design, with advanced weaponry and the ability to travel through darks.p.a.ce una.s.sisted." Shimrra paused, then added: "They shall be called slayers, in honor of Yun-Yammka-lest he feel uncomfortable about mingling with priests."

"They have the look of Shamed Ones!" Shimrra whirled on the warrior who said it.

"Shamed, you say? By my mandate were they created, Supreme Commander Chaan-by divine edict! If the G.o.ds had disapproved, would these warriors not bear the markings of pariahs?"

Supreme Commander Chaan stood his ground.

"Shamed Ones shaped to resemble those who have been embraced by the G.o.ds, Great Lord. Concealing the deformities that would signal their unworthiness. Is it too much to ask that we be shown proof of their status? "

Shimrra grinned diabolically.

"Cursed you are by your own request, Commander. Step forward with ten of your warriors and do your best against these."

"Fearsome Shimrra-"

"Doubt flew from your mouth like a tsik vai, Commander! If too quickly, then retract your words, or do as I say and stand against these!" Chaan snapped his fists to his shoulders and summoned ten warriors to their feet; coufees, shields, tridents, and amphistaffs woke to the challenge. At the same time, the warrior-priests spread out, but only two stepped forward.

"Two against eleven," Chaan said in sudden consternation. "This is vulgar. Dishonor either way!"

Shimrra returned to his throne and sat.

"Then we will be pleased to see you humble them, if only to demonstrate that our shapers have failed in their task. Carve them, Commander, as a dish fit for the G.o.ds!" Chaan saluted crisply. At his curt nod, the ten warriors attacked, two groups of four moving to outflank their opponents, and the remaining two rushing forward immediately to engage and distract. The reactions of the warrior-priests were almost too fast to follow. They turned slightly to the side, almost back to back, wielding weapons in both hands, meeting the frontal attack and the flanking attacks simultaneously. The amphistaffs of the attackers struck seemingly unarmored flesh without finding purchase. Coufees cut and sliced, and yet almost no blood flowed; what little did, congealed instantly.

The melee weapons of the defenders were no less enhanced than were the small, muscular warrior-priests who wielded them. The specially bred amphistaffs snapped the heads off their lesser cousins, and stabbed with enough force to paralyze, even through armor. The slayers-Shimrra's Jeedai-leapt to great heights, twisting in midflight and landing behind their attackers, then rushed in, arms windmilling in a blur, gouts of black blood flying in all directions.

One by one and sliced to pieces, Chaan's warriors dropped to the floor. Silence gripped the hall as the elite of all castes watched with a mix of awe and dread. Shimrra was already powerful enough without this royal guard. Now he was no match for any domain that might think to thwart him. The fight was over almost as quickly as it began, with the ten warriors-and Chaan-felled and bleeding, and the two warrior-priests unmoved by what they had done, their slender amphistaffs badged with blood.

The shaper who had escorted the group into the hall stepped forward to appraise the warriors and address Shimrra.

"Our taller warriors kept rejecting the implants. The faster metabolic rate of our shorter warriors is better suited to the rapid cellular activity of the implant biots."

Onimi scampered over to one of the dead warriors and prodded him.

"Most impressive; Done with flair. But against a Jeedai, How will they fare?"

Shimrra nodded to Master Shaper Qelah Kwaad.

"Show him."

Few members of the elite were as fearsome to gaze upon as Qelah Kwaad, but the object she held in her eight-fingered cephalopod hand made her writhing-snakes headdress and bulging cranium seem positively ordinary.

"The weapon of the Jeedai!" one of the warriors shouted.

"More sacrilege!" another said.

"Hold your tongues or forfeit them," Shimrra snapped. "This is the energy blade taken from the Jeedai who killed you in great numbers in the Well of the World Brain. The one whom so many of you hold in reverence-Ganner. Think of the blade not as an abomination, then, but a holy relic of that warrior's might."

"Master Shaper Kwaad has desecrated herself," a seer said.

"If you take issue with her familiarity with the stillborn technology, " Shimrra replied calmly, "then denounce as well the contrivances Master Kwaad and her shapers created to foil the enemy's shadow bombs, their decoy dovin basals, and their yammosk jammers.

Condemn, too, the mabugat kan that have ingested the enemy's deep-s.p.a.ce communications arrays, and have enabled us to subjugate more worlds in a klekket than had been conquered in the time since my arrival in the Outer Rim." He gestured to the lightsaber. "For this energy blade is powered by one of our own lambent focusing crystals. Hence it has already been sanctified."

The remark was enough to quiet everyone in the hall. Shimrra nodded again.

"Carry on, Master Shaper."

Moving directly to one of the slayers, Qelah Kwaad ignited the lightsaber, raised it to her opposite shoulder, and, with a slashing motion, drew the violet blade diagonally across the slayer's chest. The smell of burned flesh wafted through the hall. Shimrra turned slightly to face the commanders.

"Only a furrow where any one of you would lie in two pieces on the floor."

"They are more vonduun crab than Yuuzhan Vong," High Priest Jakan muttered.

Shimrra seethed.

"Vonduun crab, dovin basal, yammosk, warrior... Need I remind you, of all people, that we are all grown from the same seed?"

Nom Anor-slightly taller than the average human, disfigured by ceremony and by his own hand, fitted with a false eye that could spit poison-waited uneasily at the entry to Shimrra's private chambers in the rounded crown of the sacred mountain. Three sullen slayers stood stiffly to one side of the membranous curtain, and a pair of priests to the other, purifying Nom Anor with clouds of fragrant vapor puffed from the dorsal scent gland of a well-fed but skittish thama.s.sh. He hadn't been summoned to private audience with the Supreme Overlord since his return from Zonama Sekot, and he wasn't sure what to expect. The membrane shimmered and parted to reveal Onimi, gesticulating to Nom Anor.

"Enter, Prefect," Shimrra's pet said, affecting a supercilious tone. Nom Anor edged past him into the s.p.a.cious circular chamber. Shimrra sat in the center of the room, atop a circular dais, in a high-backed seat that lacked the pomp of his public throne. A blood moat encircled the seat, and off to one side a yorik coral staircase with a finely wrought railing spiraled into the summit. A hardened module of the worldship, Shimrra's inner sanctum, like the Well of the World Brain, could be detached from the Citadel if necessary and launched into deep s.p.a.ce.

"Did you not wonder when we three would meet again?" Onimi asked softly as Nom Anor pa.s.sed.

Nom Anor ignored the question and approached the throne, genuflecting at the edge of the foul-smelling moat. From an inner pocket of his green robe, he removed the lightsaber that had stirred so much strife in the Hall of Confluence earlier on.

"Dread Lord, your desire was that this be delivered to you."

Nom Anor kept his gaze lowered while Shimrra took the weapon from his hand; he looked up with alarm when he heard the distinctive snap-hiss of the lightsaber's energy blade. The mere sound of the weapon evoked jarring memories of an incident in the Well of the World Brain a year earlier, when Jacen Solo and Vergere had held a similar blade to his neck before they had made their escape from Yuuzhan'tar.

Nom Anor had spent countless moments since wondering how his life might have gone had the two Jedi agreed to take him with them. As a source of invaluable intelligence, he might not have been executed by the so-called Galactic Alliance. Perhaps after weeks of debriefing he would have been allowed to don an ooglith masquer and relocate in secrecy to some remote world in the Outer Rim, where he would have been able to live out his days in contentment.

No larger than a votive candle in the grip of Shimrra's right hand, the lightsaber thrummed as it cleaved the air.

"Answer me honestly, Prefect, do you believe in the G.o.ds?" Shimrra brought the violet blade close to Nom Anor's neck. "Bear in mind: honestly. "

High Prefect Drathul's predecessor, Yoog Skell, who had died by Nom Anor's hand, had once warned Nom Anor never to lie to Shimrra. Now he swallowed and found his voice.

"August Lord, I... remain open to belief."

"If there was some benefit to believing, you mean."

"I follow the example set by the priests, Lord."

Shimrra's eyes bored into Nom Anor's single orb.