FicWad

*Title: Love Ignites the Galaxy, Star by Star (*working title only, though it may become the permanent title by default).

Chapter Seven: Reclaiming Honor and Freedom

Rating: Uhm, probably a borderline R (?), for the overall work, though I suppose that's debatable . . . PG-13ish, maybe, for this part (?)

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the lovely characters from the Star Wars ’verse, more’s the pity! What I do have is an extremely contrary muse that refuses to shut up and leave me alone . . .

Summary: The future is never a fixed thing. Though certain actions taken at particular possible points of divergence can, seemingly, preclude the possibility of specific future pathways ever coming into existence, other unexpected choices can have extremely powerful repercussions with far-reaching effects upon the possible probable pathways that the future might yet take . . . and sometimes the spreading ripples of those effects can be so powerful that even the present and a part of the past can be altered, if enough raw energy is poured into the process of causing those effects. For Tahiri Veila, the possibility of swaying the current balance of power in the galaxy from darkness and despair back to light and hope seems worth any sacrifice necessary . . . even if she will have to give up her own life and the life of her unborn son to accomplish this. Will her sacrifice be enough to change the shape of the future, though, or will evil yet find a way to triumph, in this the worst and most wide-spread of all galactic wars?

Story/Author's Notes: For general notes on this story and proposed series, please see the entry on this NaNo project, at http://polgarawolf.livejournal.com/140023.html

Specific Chapter/Part-Related Notes: N/A.

Specific Chapter/Part-Related Warnings: N/A.



Star Wars
The Rebirth of the New Jedi Order
Love Ignites the Galaxy, Star by Star


Chapter Seven: Reclaiming Honor and Freedom

27:06:01-27:06:02 After the Battle of Yavin (~1,028 After Ruusan Reformations or ~25,029 After Republic’s Founding)

You have to know the provenance of information to evaluate it. In other words, who wants you to know it? Who doesn’t? And why? If you come by sensitive information too easily, it might’ve been planted. If much sought after information conforms too closely with personal expectations – either your worst fears or most desperate hopes – the source may’ve been compromised. And if information seems unclear enough that it could be easily interpreted in more than one fashion, it may be that the interpreter is compromised – in no fit state to be attempting to evaluate raw data.

– Iella Wessiri Antilles, former agent for CorSec and Rebel spy, and an agent for the New Republic Intelligence Service, circa 25 ABY



“This is not the end,” Leia promise, managing somehow to sound both serene and fervent. “Two years ago, the Yuuzhan Vong entered our galaxy. They came not as friends and equals, though we would gladly have welcomed them as such, but as thieves and conquerors. They saw a galaxy at peace and mistook the strength of our convictions for frailty of arms, the wisdom of compromise for the timidity of cowards. They attacked without provocation or mercy, slaying billions of our citizens, enslaving entire worlds, and sacrificing millions of beings to appease the bloodlust of their imaginary gods. They believed we would be easily defeated, because they believed we would yield without a fight. They were wrong, though. We have fought at Dubrillion, Ithor, the Black Bantha, Borleias, and Corellia – we have fought them every leg of the way from the Outer Rim into the Core. We have lost untold numbers of loved ones, my husband’s dear friend Chewbacca and perhaps even our youngest son, Anakin, among them, and now we are battling in the skies over Coruscant itself. We are still fighting. Soon, the enemy will be on our rooftops, in our homes, roaming the dark underlayers of our city. To those able to evacuate and to those trapped behind, I say the same thing I would tell my children, were I able to reach them behind enemy lines:/ keep fighting./ This is not the end. Twice already, Jedi-led forces have decimated Yuuzhan Vong fleets, and we enter each battle with new weapons and better tactics. We have prevailed against ruthless enemies before, against Palpatine, against Thrawn, against the Ssi-ruuk. This is a war we know how to win. Keep fighting until you can fight no longer, then exhaust the enemy chasing you, and turn and fight some more. Keep fighting. I promise you, we will prevail.”

***

The /Lady Luck/’s flight deck falls as silent as a Noghri with a vibroblade. Lando pretends to adjust the shield power until he knows his eyes will remain dry, then hears an odd half growl from the copilot’s seat. He looks over to find General Ba’tra drying his cheek fur.

“That woman could talk a Hutt onto a diet.” The Bothan spends the next few seconds looking out the forward viewport, where the /Byrt/’s finger-sized profile is rapidly swelling to arm-sized. A smaller lozenge, black and scabrous, is tentacled to its belly, and Viqi Shesh’s sleek KDY staryacht hovers nearby. Finally, Ba’tra grunts, “General Calrissian, none of those vessels looks like the /Errant Venture/.”

“They’re not,” Lando replies, offering no other explanation. As far as he’s concerned, his reactivation ended with the fall of the Orbital Defense Headquarters, and Ba’tra and his soldiers are nothing more than evacuees hitching a ride with him, now. He opens a ship-to-ship channel to his wife. “Has – ”

“Where are you?” /Tendra immediately demands. /“I’ve been worried sick!”

“Everything’s fine. I was, uh, delayed at the ODH.” As Lando speaks, he’s sending her coordinates on a separate data band. “When Booster arrives, ask him to swing by this location. I’m doing a favor for some mutual friends, and it would be good to have a Star Destroyer standing by.”

“What /kind of favor?”/

“It’s important.” Though the channel is of course encrypted, Lando hesitates to say more for fear of Peace Brigade slicers. “Just tell Booster. I’ll see you soon.”

“You’d better.”

“Bet on it.”

Not wishing to alarm Tendra, Lando signs off without telling her that he loves her. Ba’tra studies him consideringly out of the corner of his eye.

“Didn’t figure you for a hero, Calrissian.”

“Me? Not at all.” Lando flashes his salesman’s smile. “But I couldn’t pass on a chance to demonstrate my droids to a captive audience.”

Ba’tra snorts, then half smiles and glances over at the primary display. Even this high in orbit, space is crowded with vehicles. For the most part, the Yuuzhan Vong are too busy with Coruscant’s still-formidable defenses to molest civilian ships, but a dozen skips patrol the area around the /Byrt/, chasing off any vessel that comes near.

Ba’tra taps a claw on the display. “Wouldn’t hurt to bring some escort. We could call the Jedi wing off that yammosk.”

“And draw attention to ourselves?” Lando cocks his brow mischievously, then activates the /Luck/’s intercom. “Tighten your crash webbing back there. One-One-A, is your company ready to go?”

“Affirmative, General.”

“I’m not a general. The reactivation was temporary.”

“A general is always a general, General.”

Lando rolls his eyes and opens a panel on the arm of his pilot’s seat. He presses a safety-locked button, and a valve in the starboard engine pod begins spraying nonsealed Tibanna gas into the ion drives. The Luck sprouts a kilometer-long tail of what looks like white flame, but is actually a harmless fulgurous discharge caused by the ionization of Tibanna gas. Lando puts the yacht into a corkscrew spin and sets an oblique course for the /Byrt/, maintaining enough angle to clear the starferry by a safe margin. The skips scatter, but hold their fire. A hit might change the “damaged” yacht’s course and send it careening into the vessels they’re guarding, after all, so far as they know.

“Compliments, General.” Ba’tra squeezes his eyes shut against the nauseating star spin outside. “Haven’t seen a Bothan runaway gambit this tight in years.”

Lando continues on a vector that’ll miss by half a kilometer. The skips wheel around behind him, but stay well back from the Tibanna tail. The Byrt rapidly swells to the size of a building, so Lando noses down towards it and decelerates hard, and then there’s nothing but durasteel hull in the forward viewport, and the two ships kiss particle shields hard enough to push the starferry into the Yuuzhan Vong tether ship. Lando skillfully swings his stern around and tractors the Luck alongside the /Byrt/.

The first two coralskippers arrive soon enough, belching plasma balls into the Luck/’s energy shields. Lando shuts down the sublight fuel feed and closes the efflux nacelles. Tibanna gas billows out through the cooling vents, becoming trapped under the shields and engulfing the /Luck in fused-photon “flames.” The next two skips are appropriately spooked by the display and pull up without firing, so Lando lowers the shields on the /Byrt/’s side of the yacht.

“One-One-A, go!”

***

By the time General Calrissian’s attack authorization comes, YVH 1-1A is already magnoclamped to the /Byrt/, affixing a bead of elastic detonite to the hull. Still troubled by his failure at the Coruscant proving trial, he’s dedicated a processing band to weapon-circuitry tests. All systems check full power and ammunition, but then, so they had on Coruscant. YVH 1-1A’s self-preservation routines keep accessing the memory of his blaster bolts dancing off the armored Yuuzhan Vong, keep reporting an undetected flaw in his power-selection module. His logic center knows the assertion to be groundless, but if it’s only a ghost loop, then why does it persist even after he’s degaussed his circuits?

1.2 seconds after General Calrissian has issued the “go” order, two subordinate units have secured the/ Lady Luck/’s cofferdam around him. YVH 1-1A quickly withdraws to the air lock and activates the detonite. A door-sized section of hull pops free and clangs off 1-1A’s chest armor as the pressures equalize. Scanning ahead with both optical and acoustic sensors, 1-1A rushes through the breach into a small power-relay control station. Three crew members lay on the floor, holding their ears, groaning from the pressure shift. YVH 1-1A ignores them and crosses the cabin, then stops when his see-through sensors detect a squad of Yuuzhan Vong in the main corridor outside.

Ambush? 1-24A asks.

Affirmative.

YVH 1-1A projects red dots onto the wall to show the location of each individual. He’s about to outline an attack strategy when 1-24A clunks through the hatch and starts firing. The results leave no doubt that his weapon systems are fully functional.

Corridor secure, 1-24A reports.

Maximum efficiency, 1-1A compliments.

Circuits chilling at his own hesitation, 1-1A assigns firing teams to sever the enemy tether, to secure the /Byrt/’s drive units, and to begin a Yuuzhan Vong search-and-destroy sweep. The most important task he reserves for himself. Leaving two squads to secure the breach until General Calrissian arrives with the biotics, 1-1A sets his auditory sensors to their most sensitive and steps through the hatch.

Though only 4.5 seconds have passed, the corridor walls are pocked with spent thud bugs, the floor strewn with Yuuzhan Vong bodies. Droid squads are advancing in both directions, their blaster arms filling the passage with flashes of color. As his processing unit begins to interpret auditory data, 1-1A realizes he has underestimated the difficulty of his own mission. Within current sensor range alone, he detects fifty-two vocalizing infants. Loudly vocalizing infants. Starting with the nearest, 1-1A steps over a still-smoking Yuuzhan Vong corpse and follows the wailing through a short maze of corridors to the first-class berthings. An enemy search party is pulling refugees out of their sleeping cabins, shoving them to the floor. The leader is dangling a crying infant by one leg, shaking it at a sobbing human female, and demanding, “Tell me! Is this the Jeedai baby?”

YVH 1-1A raises his blaster arm, and the whir of his servomotors causes the Yuuzhan Vong to whirl around. Some push their captives back into the cabins, others drag them out to use as shields. YVH 1-1A springs forward, firing. There’s no question of faulty selection modules or dampened power outputs. He drops five foes in five shots. When the leader attempts to dash the baby against the wall, he even feels confident enough to shoot the warrior’s hand off at the wrist. The astonished mother catches the falling child in her arms, then turns towards 1-1A babbling incomprehensible words of gratitude.

“Remain calm,” 1-1A replies. “Seek shelter immediately.”

***

Viqi Shesh looks rather like something resurrected by a Krath death witch. Her cheeks are hollow, her pupils dilated, her skin as gray as a Noghri’s, and her gait suggests the influence of some powerful painkiller. But she nonetheless holds her head high and seems most determined to impress the Yuuzhan Vong following her down the corridor. Fearful that the glow of his photoreceptors will betray his presence, C-3PO steps carefully to one side of the evacuation bay hatch and continues to peer through the viewport at an oblique angle.

“And then the nasty Senator Shesh came looking for Ben Skywalker,” he says quietly. In a futile attempt to calm the distressed infant, he is using his agile TranLang III vocabulator to replicate Mara’s husky, breathy voice. The imitation is flawless, but there is, unfortunately, nothing he can do about the coldness of his metallic flesh – or about what the child can sense through the Force. “So brave Ben grew very quiet.”

Ben simply whimpers loudly in response.

Out in the corridor, Viqi Shesh cocks her head to one side.

“I told Mistress Leia I was the wrong droid for this,” C-3PO whines in Mara’s voice. He opens the emergency medpac he took from the escape pod and removes the safetranq. “Please be quiet, Master Ben. I am quite certain your mother wouldn’t want me administering sedatives.”

Viqi Shesh speaks to her escorts, and they begin to open hatches and search escape bays. C-3PO has already primed their own pod for launch, but he’s not at all eager to take another escape pod ride. Besides, they’ll only find themselves back on Coruscant, which doesn’t exactly strike him as a very wise place to try to escape to, at this precise moment, all things considered.

The methodical searchers are three hatches away when a hulking YVH war droid appears behind them.

“Thank the maker!” C-3PO quietly exclaims in Mara’s lowest whisper.

He thinks it’s a 1-1 series, but that hardly matters. The whole YVH line is top quality, and the mere fact that there’s one aboard is a positive sign. C-3PO immediately sends a burst transmission identifying himself and his charge and requesting aid. He receives a terse reply informing him that rescuing him and Ben is the mission. Then the droid looses a flurry of minicannon fire, taking out four of Shesh’s escorts in half as many seconds.

Ben promptly erupts into a fit of wailing. Given the roar in the corridor, C-3PO thinks that three centimeters of durasteel wall might prevent the baby from being heard. But he’s disabused of that notion when he peers through the viewport and finds Viqi Shesh crouching behind a bulkhead opposite him, staring through the viewport directly at him.

“/Ben/! Now look what you’ve done!”

***

It’s just the sort of tactical problem suited to a deceptive Bothan mind: one narrow doorway defended by a dozen well-armed foes in possession of an undetermined number of hostages. Ba’tra would normally have sent a team through an air duct, or tried to lure the enemy out by feigning withdrawal. This time, though, he turns to a YVH war droid and points at the door. “One-Thirty-two, secure the bridge.”

“Yes, General.”

YVH 1-32A wades forward into a bug swarm so thick Ba’tra loses sight of him. The droid counters the attack with a lightning storm of blasterfire. Three seconds later, he stands in the doorway, both blaster arms smoking, laminanium armor pitted to the circuit casing.

“Bridge secure, General.”

Ba’tra smiles, showing sharp teeth. “Well done.” Ba’tra raises his comlink and speaks to a subordinate waiting in Lando’s yacht. “You may send the/ Lady Luck/ on her way, Captain – and give it some speed. I’m sure General Calrissian would appreciate the vessel still being intact when he activates his recall unit.”

The General clicks off without awaiting an acknowledgment, then follows a dozen soldiers onto the bridge. Though there are no signs that the /Byrt/’s crew put up a fight, two members have, nonetheless, been tortured to death, the rest bloodied to various degrees. Ba’tra looks around until he finds a Rodian with a captain’s epaulet hanging off one shoulder.

“This ship is being commandeered.” Ba’tra hands him a piece of flimsiplast with a set of coordinates. “Take us here.”

“You’re not commandeering us, General, you’re rescuing us.” The Rodian studies the flimsiplast, then looks out the viewport as the uncrewed /Lady Luck /streaks past with an entire squadron of coralskippers in pursuit. The funnels atop his head twist outwards in confusion, then he adds, “But I don’t understand. This is barely beyond the battle. We won’t be safe there.”

Ba’tra smiles again, sharply, predatorily. “We will when the /Venture /arrives.”

***

Lando is perhaps halfway down the service ladder when a shock wave slams the Byrt so hard that there’s no longer any need to finish the descent. He loses his grip and simply finds himself squatting on the starferry’s lowest deck, listening to the roar of a pitched battle around the corner.

“Thermal detonator ignition, General,” 1-1A reports, already standing on the deck. “Tether ship destroyed.”

A bit sourly, he retorts, “Thanks for the warning.”

Lando stands warily, then hears a familiar drone and drops back to his haunches as a stray razor bug streaks around the corner. The thing dives at his throat, but 1-1A zings a low-power bolt past his ear and zaps it out of the air. Lando manages a weak smile, trying not to show his fright, but knowing the war droid has already detected his increased heart rate and the slight rise in skin temperature. He draws his blaster and peers around the corner.

Viqi Shesh and two dozen Yuuzhan Vong are withdrawing into Escape Bay 14, leaving the floor behind them strewn with tiny black seedpods. Though Lando has never seen this particular weapon, he feels certain that the husks contain some unpleasant surprise.

“Analysis?” he asks.

“Unknown caltrop device,” 1-1A replies. “High potential for biotoxin attack.”

“Thanks for nothing.”

The Byrt lurches slightly as the sublight drives kick in, and Lando knows they’re on their way to the /Venture/. He removes his breath mask from his combat belt.

“You’re sure it’s the right baby this time?” Lando asks. “We’re not going after some Squib trapped in a locker?”

“The sound signature was identical,” 1-1A defensively notes. “And the confidence level here is high. YVH One-Twenty-five received a burst transmission from a 3PO protocol droid claiming to have the correct child.”

“That’s them, then.” Lando carefully covers his face with the breath mask. “Send in a droid, One-One-A.”

Lando has barely finished before 1-25A rushes forward, deftly dancing through husks. He makes it two steps before the pods start to roll towards him. Another two steps, and his foot comes down on one. Nothing happens, though.

Then he moves his foot, and a heart-shaped kernel shoots into the air behind him. The droid goes motionless, then drains down into the nugget.

“Singularity mines.” Lando pulls his breath mask down. “Nasty.”

“Analysis predicts obstacle impassable,” 1-1A reports. “All techniques for bypassing or clearing minefields will fail.”

Lando shakes his head in disappointment. “Remind me to speak with the brain department about your ingenuity routines.” He takes out his comlink and opens a channel up to the bridge. “Calrissian here. Request two-second suspension of artificial gravity and inertial compensation.”

“Copy.”

Lando grabs a bulkhead and has the droids magnoclamp themselves to the floor. A moment later, his stomach flutters, and the singularity mines float into the air. They drift towards the stern and fill the corridor with eerie grating sounds as they brush the walls and rip two-meter holes in the durasteel. When gravity is restored, the remaining husks drop to the floor and destroy a five-meter section of service corridor.

Lando releases the bulkhead and sprints towards Escape Bay 14. He’s intending to lead the charge himself, but the droids are already there, pouring blasterfire through the hatchway.

“Careful!” Lando orders, voice sharp. “Watch the baby – and Threepio!”

He peers around the corner. The last Yuuzhan Vong are squeezing into the crowded escape pod, flinging thud bugs at the bay hatch. Viqi Shesh is nowhere to be seen, and the muffled wailing of a terrified infant can just be heard from inside the pod.

“/Go/!” Lando screams. “Don’t let it launch!”

YVH 1-1A is already charging. The bug swarm trails off, and then C-3PO’s golden form comes tumbling out.

“Don’t shoot!” C-3PO all but shrieks. He picks himself up and raises his hands. “I’m one of you!”

The war droids continue to pour fire past C-3PO as they rush across the launch bay. The pod hatch starts to close. YVH 1-1A springs forward, reaching for the gap, but arrives just a millisecond too late to prevent it from sealing.

C-3PO palms the automatic launch button.

“See-Threepio!”

Lando rushes for the control panel and hits the cancel pad. There’s a soft clunk . . . and then the rockets pound the blast shielding with efflux.

“What a relief!” C-3PO starts making his way across the bay. “I thought they would take me along.”

Lando follows close behind, urgently demanding, “See-Threepio, who was that crying in the escape pod?”

“Oh, that was me, General Calrissian,” C-3PO answers in an infant’s voice. He stops next to an emergency breath-mask locker and carefully withdraws a medpac pouch containing a soundly sleeping infant. “Ben won’t be crying for several more hours, I am quite certain.”

***

With both valves of the distant air lock drawn open, a bright crescent of blue sun can be seen blazing out from behind Myrkr’s rising green disk, illuminating the passageway in gloomy streaks of sapphire.

“I know that there iz an atmosphere outside that lock,” Tesar rasps quietly, “but it still feels wrong to have the air lock open like this.”

They are making their way up towards that open air lock in a fungus-lined rift, moving carefully to avoid drawing any unwanted attention to their party. As they travel, the fissure and fungus both dwindles away. Given that the ground here is chalky and heavy with dust, the Jedi activate their holoshrouds and march through the air lock disguised as Yuuzhan Vong in order to avoid drawing attention from anyone who might be above and able to see the open air lock. They find themselves standing on the inside rim of what looks like an enormous impact crater, save that the slope is surprisingly featureless and the crest unnaturally even. There’s no covering overhead, but the atmosphere is as thick and warm as inside the worldship. In the bottom of the basin lies something that resembles a giant honeycomb, save that each cell is a meter across and holds a single dovin basal.

Ganner doesn’t bother to try to sense the emotions of the dovin basals, not when he can clearly see, by their labored pulsing and flaking hides, that the things are in distress. There are even large tracts where the cells contain nothing but shriveled husks. Whether this stems from old age, exhaustion, or disease he does not know, but it certainly does suggest another reason why the Yuuzhan Vong are deserting the dilapidated worldship.

An eight-fingered Shaper and his escorts are already on the floor of the basin, moving along the edge of the basal-comb towards Nom Anor’s frigate, which lies about a fifth of the way around the circle and is being swarmed over and repaired by an industrious group of five Yuuzhan Vong. The Executor himself and perhaps fifty other Yuuzhan Vong are half a kilometer out on the structure itself, crawling along the narrow walls between the cells and being careful to avoid the dovin basals themselves. From the group’s different dress – many of them wearing armor only over their torsos – it’s apparent that the Executor has stripped the ship’s crew to supplement his own company.

Vergere is among the Shaper’s escorts, her feathered face set in an expression of confusion and increasing frustration.

Nom Anor and his followers, on the other hand, are making their way towards the center of the basal-comb, where a huge sweep of cells contain either shriveled husks or nothing at all. In the heart of this dead area rests Jaina’s stolen shuttle, cracked and overturned but still in one piece. The sporadic stream of blaster bolts and magma missiles arcing out of the wreckage suggests that the Jedi have not only survived the crash but are determined to fight their way out of it, if necessary.

Even as Ganner watches, the longblaster roars and splits open a warrior in front of Nom Anor. The Executor shudders, but lowers his head and determinedly continues forward.

“It’s a good thing they want to capture the twins alive, for their damned sacrifice to Yun-Yammka. The shuttle is helpless. The frigate wasn’t hit that badly. It could easily take that shuttle, if they were willing to use it to attack,” Eryl notes, shaking her head slightly.

“I still think they should’ve just gone for the frigate in the first place, instead of mucking about with a shuttle like this. It’s not like there’s more than a pilot, a copilot, a communications subaltern, and a master keeper on the /Ksstarr/,” Zekk grumbles irritably.

“This is better. Giving them a target like that makes the Yuuzhan Vong think they might be winning, which makes them careless and forgetful about how hard it’s been to track any of us down. Plus, it keeps them busy, so they aren’t poking around someplace where they could find the bombs Tahiri planted, which means we’ll eventually still be able to do what we came here to do, without having to actually fight our way through the voxyn,” Ganner grunts back. “Come on, people. Let’s go take the frigate and collect the others and get out of here, so we can blow this damned place up and finish our mission.”

***

The drop fleets hit like an Nkllonian meteor storm, slanting across the sky in fiery armadas a hundred kilometers across, crackling and hissing like S-thread static and trailing anvil-shaped towers of night-black smoke. Standing in the open cannon turret atop Fey’lya’s office, Leia allows herself two whole seconds to be awed by the spectacle of it all and to let the thunder reverberate through her body. There’s something primal and beautiful in the power of the drop, something that stirs in her a passion of purpose that she’d thought lost with her youth, making her feel, at least for the moment, as she used to, back in the days when the New Republic was mostly still an unrealized ideal, and that ideal was unquestionably worth fighting – and even, if necessary, dying – for.

Han ambles over to her side and hands her a comlinked artillery helmet. “The end of the world,” he wryly notes. “Who’d’ve thought we’d live to see it?”

“There’ll be other worlds, Han.” She puts the helmet on and buckles the chin strap securely. “There was after Alderaan.”

The smile Han gives her is as crooked, as usual, but it’s also more wistful than cocky. “Then let’s hope this one lasts until they finish charging our containment fluid.”

Shafts of color rise from distant rooftops to stab at the descending drop fleets, and vessels almost invisible to the naked eye show damage in the form of white starbursts and flickering disks of orange. The turbolaser fire is answered by a torrent of plasma balls. Towers melt down into liquid pillars of durasteel slag. In some cases, building shields endure the first strike, only to fall to the second, or the third. Dark swarms of coralskippers and airskiffs boil down ahead of the drop fleets, taking advantage of the steady barrage to locate and attack the turbolasers. These attack craft are met by a far smaller number of New Republic atmospheric fighters, and a steady drizzle of smaller craft starts to rain down on Coruscant.

General Rieekan’s steady voice comes over the helmet comlink. “Light artillery, take your stations. Hold fire.”

Han slips into the gunner’s seat on one side of the laser cannon, and Leia takes the spotter’s station on the other. She’s actually going to have the more difficult of the two jobs, finding and prioritizing threats on the weapon’s display. All Han will have to do is shoot them down. Leia activates the sensor feed and starts to plot trajectories, assigning precedence based on which drop ships will be approaching nearest to their position.

Over the next ten seconds, the number of turbolasers firing decreases steadily, but they still manage to punch so many holes in the drop fleets that Leia has to update her targeting priorities twice. By the time the ships themselves begin swelling from fingertip-sized circles of friction flame into glossy black wedge-wings, the turbolasers have opened holes the size of lakes in the great armadas.

“Open fire,” Rieekan commands.

Han squeezes the trigger, and the air instantly fills with the deafening screech of discharging actuators. Their attack takes the first drop ship by surprise, burning away a wing and sending the wedge-shaped vessel tumbling in two different directions. Subsequent targets prove more difficult, though. Han has to pulse the trigger and stitch bolts across the hull to defeat the shielding crews, but it’s still easier to fire from a stationary turret than to defend aboard a wildly gyrating craft, and he and Leia handily send two more drop ships crashing into the towers. They pay no attention to the skips and airskiffs diving on their position from all sides. Those are the responsibility of even lighter blaster cannons firing from adjacent towers, and their expert crews never let an attacker get close.

Finally, Leia can find no more targets on the tacscreen. She looks up into a dark miasma of smoke, fed by flaming ruins and fuming wrecks all across Coruscant. For a moment, all is quiet, and then Rieekan’s voice comes over the comlink again with a pointed warning.

“Look sharp out there. They’re sending in the hunter-killers.”

Leia studies the tactical display and sees a line of blastboat analogs – she and Han have been calling them blast boulders – streaking towards their position. Large enough to take a hit or two from a light blaster cannon, yet nimble enough to dodge the slower laser cannons, these craft pose a more serious threat than anything that’s come before. Leia immediately starts to designate priorities and feed Han targets.

Borsk Fey’lya chooses that moment to appear on the access lift, flanked by a pair of tall Orbital Defense soldiers with sandy hair and square chins. Their other features are also so similar that they almost have to be brothers. In Leia’s time, relatives would never have been permitted to serve in the same unit, but those rules have changed under Fey’lya. Bothans have a different view of family.

“Leia, you have a comm message in my office,” Fey’lya announces. His brisk tone suggests that he has managed to lift himself out of the torpor into which he’d sunk when her speech failed to bring the deserting Senators and their pilfered flotillas back to Coruscant. “You can take it at my desk.”

“We’re kind of busy right now,” Han growls, pouring fire into the first blast boulder. “You might have noticed?”

“It’s Luke Skywalker,” Fey’lya merely notes, tilting his head in a manner somehow reminiscent of a slanted eyebrow. “He seems to be trapped.”

Han stops firing. “On the planet?”

“Over at the Western Sea, if I heard him correctly,” Fey’lya replies. “The channel was scratchy.”

Han looks over the cannon at Leia, and she knows that he has to be thinking the same thing she is. If Luke’s on Coruscant, then there’s no telling where Ben is, which in turn means that the traitor may have very well gotten her filthy hands on him, after all.

“These guards will take your station,” Fey’lya adds, motioning to the brothers.

A slow creeping horror of shameful guilt and helpless rage making her stomach roil and churn, Leia slips out of her seat and heads towards the lift. Instead of stepping out of her way as most soldiers would for a former Chief of State, though, this pair of soldiers stares down at her, blank-faced. She knows instantly that something’s wrong, and confirms it when she reaches out with the Force and feels nothing from them.

“Forgive me, soldier.”

Turning to hide her lightsaber hilt from view, Leia steps aside to let the infiltrator by, then catches her husband’s eye as he does the same thing. Han furrows his brow in confusion. She glances pointedly at his blaster and snaps the lightsaber off her belt. An alarmed light comes to his eye, and he reaches for his blaster pistol.

His Yuuzhan Vong spins on him, knocking him into the back wall. Han slumps to the floor and, never taking his weapon from its swing-free holster, blasts the infiltrator.

Leia is already pressing her lightsaber against her own foe’s ribs.

“Surren – ”

He whirls, elbow driving at her head. She ducks, thumbs the activation switch, and then steps gracefully away as the impostor collapses at her feet.

Fey’lya stares at the corpses, jaw snapping as the ooglith masquers peel away from their faces. “In my own office!” he thunders, clearly infuriated.

“Perhaps the time has come to destroy the data towers, Chief,” Leia suggests mildly.

Fey’lya’s eyes flash, but any reply he might’ve made gets cut off by a blaring attack alarm. One glance at the display tells Leia that the infiltrators have succeeded at least in part; with three blast boulders lining up for approach, they have no chance of saving their weapon.

“Go!”

She pushes Han and Fey’lya onto the service lift, then follows. They comm a report to General Tomas’s aide, then emerge ten meters below in the Chief of State’s office. An instant later, a series of explosions shake the blast-hardened ceiling, and the cannon turret is gone. Leia sees Garv Tomas hurrying through the far door, but she removes her artillery helmet and heads straight to Fey’lya’s comm center.

“Luke . . . Luke, this is your sister . . . Luke?”

There might even have been an answer; it’s difficult to tell over the battle roar in the background. She stretches out and senses her brother’s presence somewhere beyond the horizon. Though she isn’t nearly calm or focused enough to guess his condition or situation, Leia can feel that he’s still alive.

“Luke, if you hear me, we’ll be there just as soon as the /Falcon/’s containment fluid is recharged.”

“Actually, it’s recharged now.”

Leia glances over her shoulder to find Garv Tomas glowering at Fey’lya.

“I asked Chief Fey’lya to relay that news some time ago.”

Fey’lya shrugs. “They were needed in the cannon turret.”

“Check that, Luke.” Leia’s not even angry. Being upset at the Bothan’s selfishness would have been like being angry at a Wookiee’s shedding – and he’s right enough in they had been needed in the turret. “The Falcon is ready now. We’ll be coming soon, Luke.”

Again, there’s no answer, aside from a small surge in her sense of her brother. Though Leia hopes it means that Luke has heard her, there’s no way to be sure. It could just as easily have meant that he was trying to find her, thinking about her, going to miss her – anything. Leia sighs, forces herself to take a deep breath and to school her features into something at least resembling serenity, stands back up, and turns to find Han already describing the infiltrators to Garv. The General is shaking his head angrily.

“The door guards have epidermal scanners and orders to use them, but disordered troops are pouring in by the tens of thousands, and no one wants to turn away a fellow soldier.” Garv, in a clearly harassed-feeling and frustrated motion, swipes his fingers through his hair. “For all I know, they’re/ all/ infiltrators.”

“It was bound to happen, Garv.” Leia turns to Fey’lya. “The time has come to destroy the data towers, Chief. To delay longer is to give the enemy his most precious advantage.”

Fey’lya’s eyes flashed angrily, almost madly, and Leia thinks for a moment that he will refuse. He spins away and goes to stare at the carnage outside.

“You’re deserting me, aren’t you?” he bites out. “Just like the Senators.”

Han rolls his eyes, then hefts his blaster like a club and cocks his brow at the others.

Leia pushes his hand down and goes over to stand behind Fey’lya. “Not like the Senators,” she quietly insists. “It’s time.”

Fey’lya stares over the smoking city for another moment before finally letting his chin sink. “I suppose it is.” He takes a moment to gather his strength, then turns towards Garv. “General Tomas, give the order to destroy the data towers – if you haven’t already.”

“Very good, Chief Fey’lya.” The fact that Garv does not reach for his comlink suggests that the order has indeed been issued. “I’ll have/ First Citizen/ prepared for departure.”

Fey’lya nods wearily. “Evacuate as many as you can – and be sure you are aboard. That’s an order, General.”

“Yes, sir, as long as my duties here are completed.”

“They are,” Fey’lya stonily replies. “Don’t make me dismiss you.”

Garv reluctantly inclines his head. “Very well, then.”

“Good.” Fey’lya turns back towards the transparisteel. “And tell Captain Durm not to wait. I won’t be joining you.”

“What?” Han explodes. “If you think you can make some kind of deal – ”

“Han, that’s not what the chief is thinking.” Leia’s stomach plummets with the sudden certainty that Fey’lya has no intention of leaving this tower alive – /ever/. She holds a finger to her lips, then carefully adds, “Chief Fey’lya, you can’t accomplish anything here.”

“And what could I accomplish anywhere else? Who would follow me after /this/?” He waves a hand towards the battle. “History will blame me for what happened today. Don’t try to tell me otherwise.”

Leia does not. Even if she might’ve wanted to lie, Fey’lya is far too smart to simply believe her. “There are other ways of serving.”

Fey’lya snorts. “Perhaps for you, Princess.” He turns his back and walks towards his desk, his back rigidly straight, proudly upright. “But not for me. Not for Borsk Fey’lya.”

***

“Snap to, people!” The Captain has to yell to make himself heard inside the turbolaser’s cavernous turret; the battery intercom ended up going with the rest of the communications. “Here comes the second wave.”

Luke hardly needs the officer’s warning. He only has to crane his neck to look through a ten-meter hole in the ceiling to see a sheet of orange friction flames crackling down from above. If anything, this assault looks larger and faster than the first, and the first one handily reduced Coruscant’s turbolaser capacity by two-thirds.

“They’re coming through this time,” Mara notes, not quite reading Luke’s thoughts. She’s sitting on a bench in the observation bay, her bacta-casted ankle propped up on a spare blast helmet. “That first wave was just to soften us up.”

Luke takes her hand in his. “Han and Leia will get here,” he insists. “I told Borsk where we were.”

“But did he tell /them/?”

Luke knows better than to offer hollow reassurance. The fear they’ve been sensing in Ben all morning has become a strange disconnectedness, and Mara – always more of a realist than an optimist – has assumed the worst. Never one who likes counting on others, she blames herself for leaving the baby with Han and Leia after whatever it was that actually happened with Anakin and the strike team – which only makes her all the more determined not to count on anyone else for his rescue. Luke chooses to place his trust in the Force, though he knows that an unhappy outcome will certainly lead to a profound crisis of belief.

The twin turbolasers begin to hurl blue streaks skyward, each discharge shaking the huge turret so hard that Luke’s knees feel like they’re going to buckle. This time, far fewer starbursts and orange flares appear in the heart of the drop fleet. A steady stream of white pinpoints swell into crackling orbs of white plasma and burst against the battery’s hastily repaired shields. Each time, the internal lighting dims a little more, and a few more pieces of equipment spark out. In the middle of it all, R2-D2 starts to tweet and whistle so fiercely that he’s audible even two bays away. Luke looks towards the number two targeting bay, where the little droid is currently filling in for a damaged R7 unit, and sees a scowling fire control officer waving him over.

“I’ll be right back,” Luke quickly promises Mara.

A plasma ball finally crashes through the shield and burns a second hole through the armored ceiling. In the next instant, two more fiery balls roar into the turret itself and erupt against the back wall, filling the chamber with smoke and screams. One of the big turbolasers fall silent, and the evacuation alarms start to blare.

“Hold on, Skywalker.” Mara pushes herself upright and limps after him. “You’re not going anywhere without me.”

Computer operators start to pour out of both targeting bays, but the officer who’s waved at Luke stays long enough to shake a finger at a vid display.

“Your droid frizzed out and said you had to see this.” He turns to depart with the others, calling over his shoulder, “He picked it out of a teletargeter data stream – it was in one of the old flash codes.”

The display shows a string of times and orbital coordinates, then a four-word message: “/Byrt/ bet covered – Calrissian.”

“Lando!” Mara exclaims giddily. “I could kiss him.”

Luke taps the console keys, ordering a flimsiplast printout. “And I could let you,” he laughs back, not even bothering to try to hide his own utterly relieved joy.

***

Instead of continuing down into the teeth of Coruscant’s still-plentiful light artillery, the second wave of drop fleets pulls up at two thousand meters and starts to disgorge spiraling lines of dark flecks. As they come closer, the flecks gradually resolve into first V-shaped wings over tiny dark rectangles, then Yuuzhan Vong warriors suspended in the grasp of huge, mynocklike creatures. Watching from the privacy of his office balcony, Borsk finds himself admiring the way Tsavong Lah has built one attack off another, lulling the enemy into believing he’s trying one thing while actually doing something else. It’s classic cutthroat dejarik strategy, and the Yuuzhan Vong Warmaster is executing it like one of the old Bothan masters.

Borsk hates him for it. The Yuuzhan Vong are robbing him of all he’s spent a lifetime seeking, and they are, moreover, ensuring that he will be forever remembered as the Bothan who lost Coruscant. For that, Borsk would have liked to teach the kintan strider death gambit to Tsavong Lah; such a coup would certainly have changed how New Republic historians remembered Chief of State Fey’lya.

When the descending warriors begin to fling firejellies down on the palace, Borsk takes a last gulp from the snifter of Endorian port in his hand, then turns and heads back to his desk. Not allowing himself to hesitate or tremble, he reaches down to his bottom drawer and keys in a code he’s never expected to use. He carefully removes a small medkit scanner/transmitter, then depresses the activation switch and holds the device up next to his heart. When the function light starts to beep in time with his pulse, he places it in the center of the desk and reaches down again, this time arming a fuse attached to the proton bomb that fills most of the drawer. The bomb is not huge, of course, but it is, nevertheless, large enough to destroy this wing of the palace – and all of the secrets housed within it.

By the time he’s finished, the enemy drop troopers are circling the palace’s burning data towers and fighting their way onto its bitterly defended balconies. Finding no guards outside the Chief of State’s office, a squad drops onto the balcony where he had been sitting only a few moments earlier. Borsk waits quietly behind his desk and watches as the warriors kick in a door they could have opened with the touch of a button. The first two race to his side and thrust amphistaffs towards his throat, but stop short of killing him when they see that his furred paws are resting in plain sight. Several more rush through the room to secure the doors and equipment, and then a heavily tattooed officer came to his desk.

Before the Yuuzhan Vong can ask, Borsk declares with a proud sneer, “I am Borsk Fey’lya, Chief of State of the New Republic. Harm me at your own peril.”

This draws a derisive snort. “It does not look like I have much to fear from you or your New Republic, Borsk Fey’lya.”

“Then from your own Warmaster,” Borsk evenly replies. “Tsavong Lah will certainly wish to speak with me. You may tell him I will receive him here.”

“You will see the Warmaster when and where it pleases him.” The officer glances at the heart-rate scanner on Borsk’s desk. “What is this abomination?”

“A communications device,” Borsk handily lies. “I can use it to communicate with all New Republic troops on Coruscant.”

Quicker to see the obvious than the Chief of State has dared hope, the officer thrusts it at Borsk’s face. “Tell your troops to lay down their arms, and they will be spared.”

“/After /I have worked out terms with Tsavong Lah.”

The officer slaps his amphistaff down painfully across Borsk’s hand. Something sharp penetrates his furry flesh, and then the Bothan feels a fiery tide of venom rolling up his veins and notices the frantic blinking of his heart-rate scanner. Quickly regaining his composure, he reaches over with his free hand and pinches the pressure point inside his armpit, then looks up at the officer and shrugs. “Pump me full of all the poison you wish. It makes no difference to me if you offer your gods a spoiled sacrifice.”

“You assume much in thinking yourself worthy, Fey’lya.”

Despite his words, though, the officer turns and speaks into the air. One of the villips on his shoulder says something in reply. He nods curtly and, saying nothing else to his prisoner, stations his squad at various points around the tower suite. Borsk wishes he had thought to bring in the port from the balcony. He feels sure he will die the instant he releases the pressure point, but the pain is not nearly bad enough to have prevented him from holding the snifter in the poisoned hand – and, judging by his success so far, he could probably have bluffed the officer into letting him finish it.

Outside, Yuuzhan Vong drop troopers continue to swirl around Coruscant’s aeries, trading fire with light artillery emplacements and slowly claiming control of the towertop strongholds. As the cannonfire dwindles, the blast boulders start to venture down again, melting stubborn pockets of resistance into naked skeletons of durasteel. Finally, the drop ships begin to descend, landing whole brigades of reptoid slave-soldiers on captured rooftops. The Yuuzhan Vong might claim to be great warriors, but Borsk knows who will be doing the hard fighting down in the underlevels, and he sneers at the thought of such hypocrisy.

Despite the pains shooting up his arm, Borsk calls upon his long experience as a diplomat to keep an impassive face. At last, a large blast boulder stops outside his balcony and disembarks a company of much-tattooed warriors. An earless individual wearing a cape of colorful scales over armor enters the office and strides over to Borsk’s side. He has fringed lips and a face so mutilated that it’s difficult to tell the tattoos from the scars, but Borsk knows that this is not Tsavong Lah. Like nearly everyone else in the New Republic, the Chief watched the Warmaster’s broadcast after the fall of Duro, when he had demanded the surrender of the Jedi, and even this grisly face cannot compare to Tsavong Lah’s.

“You may stand,” the newcomer announces.

“When I see Tsavong Lah.”

The Yuuzhan Vong holds his hand out and instantly receives an amphistaff from one of his subordinates. He brings the butt of the weapon down on Borsk’s poisoned hand. The Bothan bites his tongue to keep from screaming and grows immediately dizzy. “Tell the Warmaster to hurry,” Borsk manages to insist, even as he fights to stay upright. “I will be dying soon.”

“I am Romm Zqar, commander of the drop,” the Yuuzhan Vong declares. “You must surrender to me.”

Borsk shakes his head. “Then there will be no surrender.”

Instead of striking again, Zqar presses the amphistaff’s fanged head to the hand holding the pressure point. “Why must you speak with the Warmaster personally?”

“Honor.” Borsk has been expecting this question and long ago thought of a suitable answer. “If I am to surrender, I must do it to someone of equal station.”

Zqar surprises him by speaking into the air in Yuuzhan Vong. There are a few minutes of silence. Borsk continues to grow dizzy, and the light on his heart-rate scanner starts to blink more slowly. Finally, one of the commander’s shoulder villips answers. Zqar nods and utters a single Yuuzhan Vong word, then orders the others to evacuate the office.

When his subordinates file onto the waiting blast boulder, Zqar arrogantly delcares, “You are not Tsavong Lah’s equal, but he sends his compliments.” He flicks the amphistaff, and the head sinks its poisoned fangs deep into the hand holding the pressure point. “He believes the kintan strider death gambit to be the only worthy move in your infidel dejarik game.”

***

The detonation flash would have been visible from orbit even without the magnification of the /Kratak/’s great eye, but through the lens Tsavong Lah sees the white sphere of Borsk Fey’lya’s death bomb flash into existence across a full kilometer. It hangs there for many seconds, its heat melting the faces of the surrounding towers and shattering every yorik coral vessel within two hundred meters. In addition to Zqar’s departing command vessel, the blast easily destroys two drop ships and at least twenty airskiffs, and the warriors inside a good portion of the Imperial Palace, as well – in all, perhaps twenty-five thousand Yuuzhan Vong.

“I should have had Zqar let him bleed to death,” Tsavong Lah grumbles. “Our losses today are already too heavy.”

“I am glad you are not among them, Warmaster.” Seef is standing next to him at the edge of the great eye, staring down on the world they are conquering. In her hands, she holds the villip of the priest Harrar, whom the Warmaster has dispatched to Myrkr to consecrate the capture and return of the Solo twins. “Eminence Harrar was wise to advise you not to go.”

Tsavong Lah considers this, then addresses the villip. “Seef praises your wisdom, my friend. She does not think me ready to stand before Yun-Yammka either.”

“It is not a matter of your readiness, Warmaster,” Harrar’s villip replies. “It is a matter of what the gods desire. If it was not their wish to take you when the Sunulok/ was destroyed, it would have been a blasphemy to let the infidel leader slay you.”/

The Warmaster looks back to the Imperial Palace and watches the fiery sphere contract into its own vacuum, drawing clouds of smoke and rubble and tumbling bodies after it. The blast has annihilated almost all of what Viqi Shesh’s diagrams identified as the executive and administrative wings of the Imperial Palace. Only the Grand Convocation Chamber and senatorial offices remain more or less intact, and there’s no reason to believe they will contain many of the vital records the readers have been hoping to capture.

“I am not so certain the gods will be all that pleased with my survival, Eminence Harrar.” Tsavong Lah glances down at the scales and spines protruding from the still-rotting flesh at his shoulder, then adds, “It is better to die in the service of a victorious end than suffer the disgrace of a Shamed One.”

/“Then the corruption is advancing again?” /Harrar asks.

“It has not abated,” Tsavong Lah corrects. “The gods have given me Coruscant. Now I must give them their /Jeedai /twins.”

“You will, Mighty One.” It is a mark of their friendship that Harrar addresses him so, for priests rarely afforded warriors such respect. “Vergere is a crafty one. Even if Nom Anor’s efforts fail, that one will surely manage to make the twins her prisoners.”

“How go their efforts?”

“When last we spoke, Nom Anor assured me that the girl was within his reach.”

Seef exhales in relief, but the Warmaster’s stomach grows queasy. Yal Phaath has already contacted him to complain about both the trail of destruction the Jeedai have left behind them, in their penetration of the /Baanu Rass/, and the inexplicable difficulty they have had in actually tracking them down, so he knows just how short Nom Anor’s reach truly is. He folds his hand and radank claw together before his chest and bows to Harrar’s villip. “Glory to the gods, Eminence. All of Coruscant awaits your return.”

***