The Unifying Force (55 page)

Nas Choka betrayed no emotion. “Return to your duties, Supreme Commander.”

The warrior rose and saluted again. When he had exited, the tactician moved to Nas Choka’s left side.

“You have the unconditional fealty of your warriors, Fearsome One. They would follow your every order—even those orders that might countermand their faith.”

Nas Choka’s gaze remained fixed on the battle. “Tell me of Yuuzhan’tar, tactician.”

“Enemy fighter craft have broken through our dovin basal shields, and war parties are on the surface. Some one thousand ground warriors battle ours in the sacred precinct. Others have gone to the aid of the heretics. Fortunately, the dhuryam has taken steps to confuse matters.”

“How so?”

“With fires, and by loosing some of our beasts. Nevertheless, the territory surrounding the Citadel is in great turmoil.”

Nas Choka waved his hand in unconcern. “Structures can be remade. Where is Shimrra?”

“The Supreme Overlord is in his coffer.”

“Then that, too, is as it should be.”

“He wishes it relayed to you, Warmaster, that you do honor to your elite rank. The Supreme Overlord proclaims that your name will live on as an inspiration to others. You will be the zenith all those who follow you will seek to attain.”

“That means little unless we are successful at Zonama Sekot.”

The tactician nodded. “Hapan warships are still arrayed in a blockade, preventing our vessels from escorting the poisoned one to the surface.”

Nas Choka frowned. “I thought the Hapans had settled their score with us at Obroa-skai. But, no matter. It is the nature of vendettas that they continue to escalate, until one or the other party is wiped out.”

He gave the tactician a sideways glance. “Divert to Zonama Sekot the vessels of Domains Tivvik, Tsun, Karsh, and Vorrik. Caution the commanders not to make their intentions too obvious—even if this requires their taking additional time to reach the living world. We will make the Hapans suffer as they did at Fondor. Then our barb will find its mark, and, with the gods at our backs, we will rid this galaxy of vendetta and warfare.”

Mara heard Tahiri call that she had found Nom Anor. Buried in the ferocious tangle of heretics and warriors, and even while dodging amphistaffs and coufees, Mara had had to stand on the crumpled body of a warrior to see him. The
look hadn’t lasted long—just long enough for her to see the fear in his eye—then he was gone, slithering his way through the crowd. Unable to track him through the Force, she did the next best thing, which was to Force-leap to the edge of the embattled crowd, then to the top of a flight of stairs, and there watch for some sign of him.

True to their nature, Shamed Ones and warriors alike were running
toward
the melee rather than fleeing from it, no matter how bloodied they were or who was winning, as the outcome kept changing hands. But it wasn’t long before Mara spied a lone figure slinking away, then scurrying down into a public square that was surrounded on three sides by groundquake-damaged structures. Though the relatively short figure was wearing the robeskin of a Shamed One, he ran with the stealth of an executor.

Taking a moment to touch Tahiri and Kenth through the Force, Mara vaulted from the steps to the high platform of a temple, then dropped down to the ground and raced after Nom Anor, her lightsaber close at hand to deal with anyone who might try to stand in her way. Rushing into the square, she stopped to scan the several exits, and again spotted her quarry disappearing around the toppled end of a high wall. She fairly flew after him, pursuing him up and over piles of rubble and debris, through stands of towering fire-blackened trees, then on a zigzag path down into what once had been the Column Commons—a midlevel area of open spaces studded with thick columns that supported the sprawling cityscape overhead. Hundreds of HoloNet and holodrama publishers had kept offices there, along with all the major media bureaus. During the Galactic Civil War, the commons had crawled with COMPNOR truth officers, who had ensured that everything published was in keeping with the propaganda of the Empire.

Mara was certain she was more familiar with the area—even in ruins—than Nom Anor was. But in his guise as the Prophet he had obviously gotten to know Coruscant’s canyons and depths as well as any slythmonger or death stick peddler, because he led her on a chase that was as labyrinthine as the tracings of a conduit worm. The deeper they descended, the darker and danker became the surroundings.
But Mara had already decided that she would chase him to the core of the planet if that was what it would take to apprehend him.

The pursuit led ever downward, into darker levels, where fetid water dripped from cracked ceilings, and the only light was that which found its way down through gaps in the crushed buildings and the riotously verdant areas that now roofed them.

Closing the gap between them, she saw him grab hold of a fall of vines and swing himself across a wide chasm. Securing the vines on his side of the abyss, he stopped to smirk at her, confident that his escape was secure. She came to a brief standstill opposite him—just long enough to answer his sneering grin with a glare—then dashed for a narrower place in the chasm and leapt to the far side.

By then Nom Anor had disappeared into the ruins of a news bureau building. She could hear him stumbling forward, crunching through expanses of transparisteel debris and smashing through wooden doors. There, too, shafts of dismal light dappled the puddled floors, and a stinging odor of rot and decay pervaded the thick air.

She second-guessed him when he tried to set a trap for her—making it appear that he had gone through a doorway, on the other side of which there was a half-kilometer plunge into pitch darkness. And she outwitted him again by stopping just in time when he used his uncommon strength to dislodge a girder that supported a fractured slab ceiling.

He remained as steadfast in his desire to escape as she did in her desire to hunt him down. He began to scamper through a warren of rooms in a building where residual power allowed him to seal doorways behind him. But Mara merely kicked through them, and when she couldn’t, she found alternate routes, never surrendering her momentum.

Breathing hard and stumbling more often, Nom Anor was beginning to tire. Mara’s acute hearing told her that much—and more. As she was kicking down a final door, she heard a hand blaster’s safety click off, and entered the room to discover Nom Anor hiding behind the putrid remains of a Twi’lek, still dressed in security guard garb.

Mara used the Force to call her lightsaber to hand, even as Nom Anor was triggering off the first bolts. Her blade deflected one after the next, until he had emptied the blaster of fuel. He had sense enough not to hurl the depleted weapon at her. Instead, he began to scrabble backward on the palms of his hands and feet, his gaze riveted on her as she advanced, calm but coldly fixed on her prey.

A wall brought an abrupt end to his retreat.

Growling, he shot to his feet, coufee in hand, and began to slash wildly at her, the lightsaber notwithstanding.

She leapt backward, out of reach, then deactivated the blade and encouraged him to charge. Her hands moved in a dexterous blur as she deflected his knife blows and got inside his frantic movements to slap and tap him in the chest or the jaw, never hard enough to stun him, let alone incapacitate him, but driving him backward with each smack. Ducking his increasingly desperate lunges and crosscuts, she swept his feet out from under him with a circling sidekick, then allowed him to come to his feet only long enough for her to cripple his knee with the toe of her right boot. He flung himself at her, but she sidestepped his headlong rush and sent him hurtling into a wall.

She continued to hurt him, telling herself:
This is for Monor Two
, where she had fallen victim to the coomb spores he had unleashed;
and this is for the trouble you stirred up at Rhommamool
.

Knocking the coufee from his grip, she thrust her stiffened fingers into his windpipe, then sent him reeling with an upper-cut.
This is for founding the Peace Brigade; for your part in sending Elan to assassinate the Jedi with
bo’tous;
for your double dealings with the Hutts and Viqi Shesh; and for sabotaging the refugee settlements on Duro
.

Making the most of her agility, she left deliberate openings in her defense, luring him into striking, only to set up combinations aimed at punishing his bald head; his flat-nosed face; his blue right eye, with its stripe of feline pupil.
This is for the false appeals you made to Leia and Han at Bilbringi; for your disdainful appearance before the Senate; for whatever role you played in the deaths of Chewbacca and
Anakin; for your attempt to deliver Jacen into the hands of Tsavong Lah; for your sabotage at Zonama Sekot …

Her blows were beginning to do damage. Deftly she moved inside his flailing arms, using her elbows and the backs of her clenched hands to bloody his scarred lips and swell his ears, ever mindful of that dangerous left eye of his, which she was certain he was saving as a last resort. She pivoted on her left foot and kicked him hard with her right, forcing the wind from him. He dropped to his knees, his right hand pressed to his chest.

He had trouble getting to his feet, but when he did, she sent him down again with a fist to the face. Dread shone in his real eye. He had spent too long among beings who cherished life, and he had come to cherish it himself. Unlike those fighting to the death in the streets and squares above, Nom Anor wanted desperately to live. Mara could read it in his wretched look; she could smell it coming off of him in waves. He backed away from her until his back was pressed to a wall, then he sank slowly to his knees.

Mara ignited her lightsaber and held it with the tip low and to her right. One upward swing and she could send his head five meters.

Nom Anor bent at the waist and pressed his face to the littered floor in a posture of servility.

“You’ve defeated me, Mara Jade Skywalker,” he said without lifting his head. “I beg for mercy.” When she made no immediate reply, he risked raising his face to her, and when he saw that she hadn’t moved forward he continued. “What would killing me accomplish now? Yes, it will satisfy you, but will it put an end to the war?”

“For the moment, I’ll content myself with satisfaction,” she told him.

He gulped, then found his voice. “I am a dissembler and a killer. I have brought woe to you and many others. But were you any less when you were in service to the Emperor? To Darth Vader? An
executor
, you did what you were trained to do. We all serve a master, Mara Skywalker. But I was given to believe that you now served the Force.”

As Mara stepped forward, his pleas became more frenzied.

“You’re a mother now! What if your son were watching you? Is this what you would want him to learn—the art of murdering in cold blood?”

Mara’s nostril’s quivered. “You almost robbed me of any chance of having a child.”

“I know that,” he said, holding her gaze. “But am I not part of life as your infant is—part of the Force?” He gestured to himself. “I am helpless!”

Mara took another step, raising her lightsaber.

“I can help!” he screamed. “I’ve changed. You saw me leading the Shamed Ones. Just as you do, I want to see the war ended. I would have been an ally of yours already if Vergere and Jacen had agreed to take me off Coruscant in the coralcraft
I
had built just for that purpose. You see, Mara Skywalker? I say
Coruscant
. I know this world is yours. It has always been yours, and it will remain so even if we are victorious. One last chance. Let me prove myself to you.”

She brought the glowing blade of the lightsaber close to his neck, then deactivated it and clipped the handle to her belt.

The expression on Nom Anor’s face was unreadable. Clearly he hadn’t expected leniency. He recognized that his words hadn’t caused her to stay her hand—they had spilled from his mouth by rote. Something else had influenced her decision; something beyond his comprehension. For a long moment he regarded her in perplexity.

“A Yuuzhan Vong warrior would have been disgusted by my actions,” he said at last. “He would have killed me as easily as if I were a droid. And yet you didn’t find my cowardice contemptible. You let me live.”

Mara narrowed her eyes. “I don’t believe a word you said, and I’ve known from the first that you’re a coward. You’re guilty of too many crimes to list, but I won’t be your executioner. Your ultimate disposition is a matter that will be decided by others.” She gestured for him to stand up. “If you really wanted to put an end to the war, you shouldn’t have interfered at Zonama Sekot.”

“I was only trying to spare the planet,” Nom Anor said. “Even now Shimrra is out to destroy it. He believes it was given to the Jedi by the gods, as a means of testing our worthiness.
He claims to have a poison capable of killing Zonama Sekot.”

A chill laddered up Mara’s spine. “What poison?”

Nom Anor heaved his shoulders in a shrug of indifference. “Something concocted by the Alliance and deployed on a world called Caluula.”

Alpha Red
, Mara realized in anguish.

She grabbed Nom Anor by the shoulder and shoved him toward the closest exit from the building. “You’re going to show me you’re deserving of the extra time I’ve given you.”

Echoing the shape of the worldship Citadel, Shimrra’s coffer—his bunker in the crown of the fortress—was a huge vaulted space with polished walls and stately columns. From the eastern side of its circular floor a stairway of yorik coral spiraled into an upper level, where some said resided the controls that could launch the summit of the Citadel into space, in much the same way that the Well of the World Brain could be launched, to ensure that the Supreme Overlord and the dhuryam survived, no matter what befell the rest of the Yuuzhan Vong and their multitude of biots.

The coffer contained a throne, but Shimrra had yet to take it since entering the coffer from the lavish shaft that accessed the bunker—a dovin basal version of a turbolift. The Supreme Overlord was too restless to remain seated, too mesmerized by villip-assembled images of Yuuzhan’tar engulfed in flames; of Shamed Ones running loose in the streets; of Alliance troops locked in battle with warriors; and of fighter craft darting through the smoke-filled sky, stinging the Citadel with packets of energized light.