The Unifying Force (49 page)

It was immediately clear that the warriors had merely been practicing up until this point. For now, trapped in the Place of Hierarchy was a crowd into which they could wade like thrashing biots. Before them stood those responsible for keeping the Yuuzhan Vong from total victory at Zonama Sekot. These were the ones who would pay, against whom the warriors could exorcise their fear and confusion—even if those they put to death were as innocent as they were Shameless.

But the horror had scarcely commenced—with war cries answered by agonized screams—when fires began to break out in many of the quake-damaged structures that walled the place, including the prefectory and the Temple of the Lovers, Yun-Txiin and Yun-Q’aah.

For a moment Nom Anor was certain that the sudden blazes were the result of firebomb strafings by Alliance starfighters that had punched through Coruscant’s dovin basal voids. From his vantage at the top of the flight of yorik coral stairs that fronted the prefectory he could see that similar conflagrations were raging in all precincts of the city, and beyond. Flaring from the vegetation that cloaked the buttes that were the tops of buildings and towers, the flames were being carried by the wind to all quarters.

But the hot swirling wind also brought the foul odor of marsh gas to Nom Anor’s flattened nostrils, and he swung around in disbelief to see a cavalcade of fire-breathing Yuuzhan Vong beasts bobbing over the cityscape.

Quickly he lifted his gaze.

There were too few starfighters in the sky to account for so many fires, and no evidence of orbital bombardment, turbolaser bolts, or proton torpedoes. Then he understood, and his heart filled with such anguish that he dropped to his knees and remained there until he had caught his breath and regained his senses.

Shimrra was responsible!

Beyond reason, beyond madness, the Supreme Overlord had struck a deal with the dhuryam to destroy Coruscant—Nom Anor’s Coruscant! With the same ruthlessness that had allowed him to dispatch Warmaster Nas Choka’s armada on a suicide mission to poison Zonama Sekot, Shimrra had decided to eradicate all things Yuuzhan Vong. He had become the Yuuzhan Vong-specific poison he had fabricated for the elite—if only to spite gods he had once professed not to believe in!

Nom Anor railed and shook his fists at the smoke- and ember-filled sky.

I should have killed you when I had the chance!

He struggled to his feet, his expression growing more grave with every centimeter of elevation. His fists were balled, and his one eye blazed. His near-lipless mouth was drawn back, and his muscles were bunched under his thin garments. His sloped forehead was as inflamed as the city itself.

He stiffened his arm, catching in the windpipe a warrior too distracted by bloodlust to see the blow coming. The warrior fell to the steps gurgling, clutching his throat, eyes squeezed tight in pain. Nom Anor summoned the warrior’s amphistaff to come to him, and with one strike put the choking soldier out of his misery. He descended the broad staircase in a stupor, shucking out of the green robe and turban that identified him as an intendant. At the foot of the broad stairs he grabbed the tattered robeskin of a slain Shamed One and, donning it, began to shoulder his way into the Place of Hierarchy, ignoring the bloodshed occurring on all sides and aiming for a tall rubble pile at the center of the square. Short of the pile, a warrior rushed him, forcing him to step back and fight, amphistaff against amphistaff. Parrying two
blows, Nom Anor ducked down and slashed his opponent across the knees; then rose, bringing the sharp end of the serpentine weapon diagonally across the warrior’s face. The warrior screamed and raised his hands, and Nom Anor speared him through the neck.

With bodies falling all around him, he scrambled up the pile. There, alone at the summit, he loosed a bloodcurdling scream and raised the arm around which the living weapon was curled.

“I am Yu’shaa, the Prophet!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. “Our hour is at hand! I will lead you to victory!”

A long moment of stunned silence fell over the Place of Hierarchy. Then a roar went up from the oppressed, and they surged against the warriors, crude weapons cleaving, black blood streaming and misting into the air, fiery embers cycloning about them like a sacrament from the gods!

From one hundred thousand kilometers out, Coruscant was a vortex of destruction, lanced from all directions by turbolaser bolts, mottled by yawning dovin basal singularities, lit from within by flaring explosions.

“This party’s just the way we left it,” Han said as the
Falcon
streaked for the embattled galactic center.

“I missed that one, Dad,” Jaina said flatly from the copilot’s chair.

“Me, too,” Jacen said from behind her. Peripherally, Han saw his son glance at the Yuuzhan Vong priest in the adjacent chair. “Harrar and I were on a worldship over Myrkr.”

Regretting his facile statement, Han went back to attending to the
Falcon
’s instruments.

The fall of Coruscant had been among the worst days of his life—almost as horrible as when Chewbacca had died at Sernpidal. The images of the evacuation were burned into his memory: Yuuzhan Vong hurling themselves and hostages against the planetary shields, a steady rain of flaming spacecraft, he and Leia trying to flee Eastport with baby Ben, C-3PO, a YVH droid, and a potted ladalum … Their escape sabotaged at the
Falcon
’s docking bay by a disguised Senator Viqi Shesh and an innocent twelve-year-old kid named
Dab Hantaq—Tarc—who happened to bear a likeness to young Anakin.

The death of Adarakh, Leia’s bodyguard, at Shesh’s hand.

The sky dazzled by plasma balls.

Towers crumbling, people stampeding for the few starliners and government yachts that remained on the surface …

And light-years away at the Inner Rim world of Myrkr, Anakin dying, Jaina fleeing in a stolen enemy ship, Jacen in the clutches of Vergere—captured or rescued, depending on how you looked at it. Han squeezed his eyes shut in recalled despair.

“Party,”
Harrar said abruptly. “Many of our warriors use that term to describe combat engagements. You have the makings of a Supreme Commander, Han Solo.”

Han laughed shortly, recalling that Jacen had said that the priest was fascinated with him. “Thanks for thinking of me, Harrar, but no matter what anyone says about it, I happen to like my face just the way it is.”

Jacen and an uneasy Harrar had taken the cockpit’s rear chairs after Leia and Luke had climbed into the quad laser turrets. Mara, Kenth, Tahiri, Cakhmaim, Meewalh, and the droids were in the forward compartment. At the cost of some discretionary power, Han planned to keep the
Falcon
’s, artificial gravity enabled for as long as possible, if only to prevent everyone from being bounced all over the ship.

Alliance capital vessels were concentrating fire along the transitor and well into Coruscant’s bright side, but the battle was raging planetwide. Star Destroyers, cruisers, and frigates were still vectoring in from hyperspace routes rarely used since the days of the Old Republic, and enemy forces were blasting up the gravity well to reinforce the defense flotilla. The Yuuzhan Vong were widely dispersed but consolidated over the equator, above what had been Imperial/New Republic City, in the western hemisphere. The Alliance had yet to press any capital ships through the blockade of kilometer-long, weapons-studded vessels, but hundreds of starfighters had penetrated enemy lines and were attacking the arrays of dovin basals in orbit at the edge of Coruscant’s atmosphere.

Now it was the
Falcon
’s turn to try to slip past.

It was the opposite of what Han had had to do to get the
freighter safely off Zonama Sekot. There the upper reaches of the envelope had been a dizzying clash of coralskippers and Sekotan fighters. From what Luke had been able to gather from Kyp and the other Jedi pilots, the sight of living ships had thrown the skips into disarray. But the Jedi had also discovered that Magister Jabitha hadn’t been understating anything when she had said that the Sekotan ships were for defense only. As often as not, the fleet fighters wouldn’t fire unless fired upon, and for all their astounding alacrity, they weren’t flying circles around the coralskippers so much as matching them maneuver for maneuver.

Two hundred thousand kilometers from the living world drifted the enemy task force that had delivered the coral-skippers, along with the yammosk-carrying clustership that was guiding them.

It was still anyone’s guess why Warmaster Nas Choka had sent a splinter group to Zonama Sekot, but it stood to reason that the Yuuzhan Vong wouldn’t wait long before bringing their capital ships to bear on the planet. Although
Errant Venture
and Tenel Ka’s flotilla of Hapan Battle Dragons and Nova-class cruisers were reported to be on the way, it was unlikely that they could prevail against the task force. Engaged in a ferocious battle near Muscave, Wedge Antilles and Keyan Farlander wouldn’t be able to lend support until Kre’fey’s First Fleet arrived to relieve them.

With so much action in the Coruscant system—from Vandor 3 clear to the Ulabos ice bands—Han had considered staging the
Falcon
through a series of microjumps. Ultimately, however, he had decided to jump the ship directly to Coruscant. They had reverted to realspace behind Alliance lines, but close enough to their target to be staggered by what they saw. Green and white where it had once been a sheen of artificial light, orbited by the remains of a shattered moon, its polar caps reduced to icebergs … Coruscant might as well have been an unfamiliar world.

A tone sounded from the comm board, and a baritone voice issued from the cockpit annunciators.
“Millennium Falcon
, this is
Right to Rule
control. Your best insertion point is presently at Bacta Sector, eight-one-seven. But we’ll keep you updated on the situation.”

Jaina leaned forward to study the tactical display. “Copy that,
Right to Rule
. And thanks for the help.”

“Millennium Falcon
, Grand Admiral Pellaeon wishes you good fortune.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Who’s escorting who?” Jaina asked.

“Let’s call it a party of three,” the other pilot said.

“Party,”
Harrar murmured.

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

“Feed that thing something!” Jaina said over the net.

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

The
Falcon
shook and shuddered, and the engines roared in protest, but the gambit worked to keep the ship from being wrenched off course. One of the X-wings wasn’t as fortunate. Even while the pilot was attempting to confuse the dovin basal with stutterfire and two remaining torpedoes, the creature’s singularity reached out and grabbed the starfighter, which disintegrated before it disappeared entirely.

The
Falcon
swooped lower on a sinuous tail of blue energy, but the gauntlet didn’t end with the dovin basals. A matalok cruiser racing up the well caught sight of the freighter and spewed a volley of magma missiles from its starboardside plasma launchers.

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

Han yawed hard to port, and began weaving through the storm of ejecta. The X-wing that had ridden in on the
Fal
con’s tail hung close, but couldn’t keep pace with the larger ship. Han tried to swerve back on course to shield the starfighter, but even the
Falcon
was capable of only so much twisting and veering. Molten rock splashed against the
Fal
con’s screens, but the main body of the salvo flooded over the mandibles and caught the hapless X-wing head-on.

Han bit back a curse and leaned into the control yoke, dropping the
Falcon
like a stone, straight for the ascending matalok. Intent on squaring off with the cruiser, he had the concussion missile launchers armed when the proximity alarms began to blare.

“Four skips to starboard!” Jaina said. “Intercept course!”

Han performed a lightning-fast pushover. “Give your mom and your uncle a heads-up!”