The Unifying Force (43 page)

“Now witness the beauty of cosmic balance at work!
Tchurokk Yun’tchilat!
—Witness the will of the gods! For this ill-omened world that lights our night sky, this living world encountered by our forces so many years ago, drifting at the very rim of this galaxy, must, too, have been fashioned by Yun-Yuuzhan and be linked to us in prophecy. Linked, and therefore
vulnerable
to the deadly contagion fashioned by our enemy, and sanctioned by the gods!”

Once more Shimrra gesticulated with the Scepter of Power. “The crippled vessel is the amphistaff we will hurl to drive the stranger from our gate! The ship that shall be our salvation, and our means of transcending the test the gods have seen fit to engineer!”

Nom Anor was beginning to feel like a gnullith: inflated by Shimrra one moment, only to be deflated the next. A toxic chemical agent capable of poisoning Zonama Sekot? Anyone familiar with Commander Zho Krazhmir’s reconnaissance mission to the living world knew that Krazhmir had attempted and
failed
to poison Zonama Sekot. And if a Yuuzhan
Vong-created toxin had failed, how could an enemy-produced toxin be expected to succeed? More important, if such a bioweapon existed, surely Nom Anor’s former network of spies among the Peace Brigade, or those still in place on Mon Calamari, would have learned of it by now.

Had Shimrra concocted the story only to rally the warriors and priests, and ensure that the Yuuzhan Vong die in a blaze of glory? Or had Nom Anor underestimated the Supreme Overlord yet again? Was he even more brilliant than he had first seemed on usurping the throne?

“Zonama Sekot is a death star,” Shimrra was saying. He aimed his amphistaff at Nas Choka and his Supreme Commanders “Fly to it, Warmaster! Take your mighty armada to Zonama Sekot, and make clear to the gods the unflinching resolve of the Yuuzhan Vong!”

What does the Force want for the Yuuzhan Vong?

The question echoed in Jacen’s mind long after he had returned to the hollow that had become his haunt on Zonama Sekot.

He drew his lightsaber from his cloth belt, activated the green blade, and waved it through the brisk air. Unnerved by the thrumming sound, birds perched in the surrounding boras took to the pale blue sky.

Jacen stood with his feet parallel, right foot forward, carrying his weight on the balls of his feet, then springing off his rear foot in attack. On the slope of the hill, he spread his feet wider, and angled them to one another. He swung the blade without ducking or flinching, bobbing or weaving, assuming an ideal attitude as he glided forward in uninterrupted motion, or took short steps with each foot to maintain his focus and equilibrium.

He held the pommel at middle guard, slightly in front of his stomach, with the tip angled up at thirty degrees, and worked through several velocity and
dulon
sequences. Then, lowering the tip as if to point at an opponent’s knees, he slashed diagonally upward. He raised the lightsaber over his head, handle pointed to his imaginary opponent’s eyes—critically angled for a Yuuzhan Vong—and slashed downward. Elbows pointed to the ground, he held the lightsaber
upright, over his right shoulder and alongside his head, then spun through a series of
jung
attacks and
jung ma
parries. Finally he held the lightsaber low on his right side, with the blade pointing at the ground behind him, and performed a sweeping upward diagonal. Front-flipping high into the air to the edge of the pool, he threw himself through Forceassisted rolls and full-circle whirls, shooting to his feet to execute rotating side strokes and short twisting wrist snaps until his breath came fast and sweat dripped from his face.

Sensing, then, that someone was watching him, he deactivated the blade in sudden self-consciousness. He sighed and sat down. He was a decent lightsaber master and
sai
acrobat, but nowhere near as skilled as Luke, Kyp, Mara, Corran—or Anakin.

His heart just wasn’t in it.

As he stared at the hilt of his lightsaber, his thoughts began to spiral back three years, to the planet Duro, and the vision he had had returned to him, as if no time had passed.

One moment he was working alongside a group of Ryn refugees, and the next he was falling backward into a vacuum. Hearing Luke calling to him, he pivoted to see his uncle robed in pure white, half turned away, holding his shimmering lightsaber in a diagonal stance, hands at hip level, point high
.

Jacen shouted that Jaina had been hurt, but Luke didn’t respond to him. Luke’s attention was fixed instead on a Yuuzhan Vong warrior in rust-brown armor, who was holding an amphistaff across his body and mirroring Luke’s stance. Standing on the far side of the slowly spinning disk that held the three of them, the warrior wasn’t visible through the Force. He was simply a void—a darkness that promised death, as surely as Luke’s luminosity promised life
.

The disk resolved into a spiral-armed galaxy
.

Poised at the center, Luke dropped into a fighting stance, raising his lightsaber to his right shoulder, point upward, while Yuuzhan Vong warriors advanced from the darkness. Luke was steadfast, holding the center and counterweighing the invaders, until at last their numbers increased sufficiently to tip the balance of the disk in their direction
.

Desperate to know what to do, Jacen called to Luke again
.
This time Luke turned and tossed his lightsaber in a low humming arc, trailing pale green sparks onto the galactic plane. Anger welled up in Jacen, even as fear and fury focused his strength. He wanted to destroy the enemy. He stretched out his hand for the lightsaber … and missed
.

That miss was all it took
.

A dark, deadly tempest gathered around the invaders, and the galactic plane tipped more swiftly toward them
.

Jacen felt himself begin to shrink until he was no more than a tiny, insignificant point in the dark tempest. Helpless, disarmed by a moment of anger, doomed by a single misstep—the galaxy doomed with him
.

A voice like Luke’s but deeper shook the starfields, booming
, Jacen, stand firm!

The horizon tilted farther and Jacen lunged forward, determined to lend his small weight to Luke’s side—to the light—only to misstep once more. He flailed for his uncle’s hand, missing time and again
.

Finally, Luke seized Jacen’s hand and held it tightly, urging him to weather the storm. The slope steepened under their feet. Stars extinguished. The enemy scrambled forward, eclipsing worlds, entire star clusters, distant galaxies
.

And again the voice boomed:
Stand firm!

As the Yuuzhan Vong attacked
—

Jacen returned to himself—to the here and now.

Since that vision he had fought the enemy on countless worlds, wounded Warmaster Tsavong Lah, triumphed over many lesser opponents, been stripped of and returned to the Force by Vergere, and been deemed a Knight by his Jedi Master, Luke. And yet he continued to feel as if he were a student.

The Jedi of the Old Republic had been too focused on indoctrination and ranks. If you were a Padawan, then you were something less than a Knight; and if you were a Knight, you were something less than a Master … But who was to say, now that there was no Jedi Council of sagacious Masters, that even a mere Padawan couldn’t be more Forceful than someone of higher rank? Perhaps it was something a Jedi needed to hear directly from the Force?

Ranks now were more like battlefield promotions—like Jaina’s promotion to colonel. Even the Jedi Knighting ceremony … It made no more sense to him than it had to Jaina. They had to analyze their paths separately from those things.

But if his twenty years of tutelage had been his education, and the time he had spent with Vergere in the bowels of the Yuuzhan Vong seedship and on conquered Coruscant had constituted the trials of a Padawan, what then was the decision he faced now?

Was it, too, not a trial, of sorts?

What does the Force want for the Yuuzhan Vong?

Stand firm
, the voice in the vision had told him.

Occasionally he would get a sense that his education was nearing completion, and that the past year had been his true trial—possibly unlike any a Jedi Knight had ever faced—but the feeling never lasted long.

“Practicing, Jacen?” a female voice asked suddenly.

He knew then who had been watching him.

Sekot’s thought projection of Vergere rose from the center of the pool.

“Always,” he said.

“To achieve what?”

“Mastery.”

Vergere nodded. “Jacen, to tap deeply into the Unifying Force, we will have to surrender our desire to control events. We will have to unbridle ourselves of words and of thinking, because thoughts, too, are born of the physical world. We must refrain from analyzing the Force, and simply allow the Force to guide us. Our relationship with the Force must be impeccable, without the need to be supported by words or reason. We must carry out the commands of the Force as if they were beyond appeal. And we must do what must be done, no matter who attempts to stand in our way.”

We are committed
, Wedge told himself as explosions bloomed like time-lapse fire flowers over night-side Corulag.

Its surface etched with intersecting trails of light, the Core world filled the bridge viewports of
Mon Mothma
. Between the planet and the refitted Star Destroyer floated Yuuzhan Vong mataloks and yorik-akaga—blushed cruisers and pearlescent pickets—arrayed to provide cover for a swift-moving yammosk carrier clustership. Harried by squadrons of X- and E-wings disgorged from the warships
Mon Adapyne
and
Elegos A’Kla
, the enemy vessels were saturating local space with blazing projectiles and gouts of superheated ejecta, but they were already beginning to pay the price for having been caught unawares.

A state of controlled frenzy prevailed on
Mon Mothma
’s bridge, with couriers and officers coming and going, and Wedge attempting to sustain half a dozen separate conversations. Displays flickered and computer consoles chirped as updates were transmitted from gunnery, communications, and tactical centers elsewhere in the ship. As accustomed to the noise as Wedge had become, he couldn’t help but reflect on the reasons that had prompted his retirement—especially now, in the wake of Ackbar’s death. His uniform and command cap felt borrowed from someone two sizes smaller.

The surprise attack had required his battle group to jump directly from Contruum to the Bormea sector, inserting as close to Corulag as was achievable, given the planet’s several moons and formidable defenses. Once the site of an Imperial Navy base, the largest moon had been transformed into a kind of rest facility for enemy patrol vessels assigned to the
Perlemian Trade Route. Scimitar assault bombers were laying waste to the facility now, while Shocker and Blackmoon Squadron starfighters nipped at the yammosk carrier like packs of rapacious howlrunners.

“Generals Farlander and Celchu have the enemy boxed in,”
Mon Mothma
’s commander reported.
“Harbinger
has dropped from hyperspace and is pressing forward at battle speed to rendezvous with
Elegos A’Kla
at rally point manka-flechette-dewback.”

With
Mon Mothma
too far removed to allow for visual contact with any of the capital ships, Wedge studied the tactical console’s checkerboard of display screens. Determined to shield the yammosk vessel, the Yuuzhan Vong cruisers were indeed bracketed by
Mon Adapyne
and
Elegos A’Kla
, both of which were lancing the enemy configuration with continuous bursts of turbolaser fire. And now, closing fast, was
Harbinger
—the Mon Cal cruiser commanded by Garm Bel Iblis. Caught in the crossfire, coralskippers were being pulverized almost as fast as they could be deployed. With its quick-response cannons and gravity-well generators,
Mon Mothma
was seeing to any skips that escaped the cordon.

Corulag itself was taking punishment. Evidence of orbital bombardment and surface fighting, infrared hot spots were flaring in and around many of the major cities. Decrypted transmissions revealed that the fighting was intense, and atrocities were widespread.

Unlike other worlds along that important stretch of the Perlemian—Chandrila, Brentaal, and Ralltiir—Corulag had capitulated to the Yuuzhan Vong to escape devastation. No one had expected otherwise of a planetary government that had supported the Emperor during the Galactic Civil War, and had since been forced to languish in Coruscant’s shadow. Regardless, most of Corulag’s ten billion citizens opposed the puppet government set up by the Yuuzhan Vong, and simmering discontent had finally erupted into open rebellion. The wealthiest and most influential families fled for Kuat and Commenor, but there was no evading the Yuuzhan Vong. Kuat had fallen soon after Senator Pwoe’s brief visit, and Commenor had been hit hard and repeatedly. Galvanized by the rescue of Corulag’s unofficial hero, Judder Page, resistance
groups on- and offworld had reached out to the Alliance for help in liberating the planet, at whatever costs to life and limb. Sovv and Kre’fey couldn’t have been more receptive to insystem support for an invasion. If Corulag could be reclaimed, the Alliance would hold a key hyperspace position in the Core.

Even two standard months earlier, an assault would have proved catastrophic. Yuuzhan Vong forces had been deployed well into the Slice, from Coruscant through Alsakan almost all the way to Corulag, and from Ixtlar and Wukkar on the Corellian Run a quarter of the way around the Core toward Kuat and Commenor. But with dozens of battle groups withdrawn to join the armada, Corulag had been left vulnerable at last.

Wedge’s gaze was still glued to the displays when Captain Deevis drew his attention to a tight formation of fighter craft emerging from Corulag’s crescent of transitor.

“TIEs,” Wedge said in genuine surprise. “Ours or theirs?”

“I’m not sure, sir.”

“Then find out!”

“Transmission from Curamelle,” Lieutenant Cel interrupted while Deevis was hurrying off. “Governor Forridel, sir.”