Clearly they were excavating something in the chamber or chambers below
that black floor, and doing so at the bidding of another. But where, and what,
was that being? There was no sign of the Yuuzhan Vong, no sign of Lord Nyax.
From the end of a metal beam that bobbed occasionally under the combination
of her weight and the stray breeze that moved through the chamber, Mara could
look straight down at the center of the floor. It sagged, suggesting that there
was a single large chamber beneath. She pulled out her comlink, "Luke," she
whispered.
"I'm here."
She knew that; she could feel him, dozens of meters away, toward one of
this chamber's four upper corners, at the hole Elassar had found. He was with
Tahiri, Face, and Kell. Any of them could have been the one to crawl out on this
metal beam, but it had been Mara's turn.
"I suspect it would be child's play to join one of the work gangs," Mara
said. "I don't think they'd react if a wampa in a war helmet and a dancing skirt
started working with them."
Face's voice came back: "Give me a minute, I can work up that disguise."
"How about you just keep your current outfit and go see what they're
digging up?"
"Spoilsport. Give me about ten minutes to get down there."
"Will do." She stiffened. "Wait a second. Something's changing."
The line of workers stopped in place, every one of the dozens of blank-eyed
Coruscant survivors turning toward a far corner of the chamber. Mara strained to
see, then gave up and brought out her macrobinoculars.
In that corner, a flap of sheet metal was pulled aside by something on the
other side... and Lord Nyax stepped through.
Mara felt a hiss try to escape her. She stilled it, an unnecessary
precaution, as at this distance no living creature could have heard her. But the
contrast between the malevolent Force presence she could feel from that man and
his cheerful looks atop that monstrously tall body was startling.
She almost dropped the macrobinoculars. "Luke, did you feel that?"
"I did. Maybe you should get back here."
"Maybe I shouldn't." She returned her attention to the man in the distance.
"But keep talking to me."
"Will do. What are you seeing?"
"Lord Nyax. He's come through the wall and he's walking toward the work
crews. He's alone."
"How's his expression?"
"Happy. Childish-happy." For a moment, she could see into Lord Nyax's
thoughts deeper than mere visual evidence should allow her. "He's pleased with
their progress. They've got it ready to go."
"Got what ready?"
"What they told him about." Mara shook her head again as if trying to fling
the alien thoughts from her skull by centrifugal force. "I can't seem to close
myself off, Luke. I can't seem to block it."
"Me, either. Or Tahiri. I'm coming out there."
Mara looked back. In the distance behind her, she saw a dark shape emerge
from a ceiling-high hole in the wall and come trotting across intact metal
beams, more nimble than any acrobat.
She felt another sensation in the Force, a hunger that seemed decidedly out
of character for Lord Nyax. She returned her attention to him.
The thing with Irek Ismaren's face stopped just short of the nearest work
crew and was now looking toward the corner of the chamber immediately beneath
Luke's entry point. There were shrieks from the stairwell there.
Figures burst up from the stairwell-armed and armored Yuuzhan Vong warriors
emerged, moving fast, and the fifth one out of the stairwell was being dragged
by a leashed voxyn. That was the hunger, the desperate craving of the voxyn to
find and destroy all Force-users.
The voxyn's head turned as its gaze swept the room. Mara saw its attention
flash across Luke, across her - she felt its awareness of her like a physical
touch-and then come to rest on Lord Nyax. It lunged in his direction, its
handler unable to hold it back despite the leash. A second warrior grabbed the
leash, added his strength to that of the first, and they managed to drag the
voxyn to a halt.
Lord Nyax smiled as the warriors, twenty of them now, spread out in a
semicircle. They approached him, amphistaffs ready, some of them handling
thudbugs or razorbugs. They moved through the crowd of workers, contemptuously
shoving those beings aside, hurling them off their feet.
The beam Mara was on bobbed more deeply as Luke arrived. He stretched out
behind her and pulled out his own macrobinoculars.
Mara felt a sudden surge of hatred-not for Luke, not for Lord Nyax, hut for
the Yuuzhan Vong. She knew it to be a sentiment from outside her, and that kept
it from being quite as compelling as it could have been.
And in that same instant, the workers screamed in rage of their own and
swarmed the Yuuzhan Vong warriors.
The warriors swung and stabbed. Mara saw workers Pierced through heart and
gut and brain. When those attacks were not instantly mortal, they continued
running and leaping at the Yuuzhan Vong, crashing into them bearing them to the
floor by weight of numbers.
The voxyn handlers went down. The voxyn leaped free and charged Lord Nyax,
its growl of rage rumbling through the chamber.
A lightsaber, a red one, ignited in Lord Nyax's hand. Then Mara took
another look. This wasn't a normal lightsaber; the energy blade emerged from the
back of his metallic glove. It pivoted as he flexed his right hand. Another
emerged from his left glove.
The voxyn, canny and old, charged to within three meters of Lord Nyax and
then arched its back. It made a noise like a bedchamber's worth of carpet being
suddenly ripped in two, and a gout of dark, smoking liquid sprayed from its
mouth.
A portion of flooring between the voxyn and Lord Nyax tore free, lifting
into the fluid's path. The voxyn's acid splashed across it, almost instantly
burning through it, but its momentum was arrested. It and the flooring fell, the
sound of the chemical reaction of the acid audible even at this distance.
Fallen Yuuzhan Vong warriors were rising now, having torn themselves free
of the masses of people bearing upon them. Mara saw limbs being severed from
torsos by expert amphistaff blows, saw trails of blood, some of it jets of
arterial blood gouting high into the air, from the frenzied but ineffective
workers as they were cut down.
More red lightsaber blades sprang forth from Lord Nyax's body. Mara saw
blades emerge downward from his elbows, upward from his knees.
"We have to help," Luke said.
Mara turned. Luke was wrapping the cord of his beltgrapnel, long abandoned
but definitely a useful tool for the exploration of Coruscant's lower reaches,
around the metal beam.
"Help who?"
"Help the Vong. Yeah, I know, I know, it's something you've never heard
anyone say before." Luke rolled off the beam and fell, his descent arrested by
his hand on the cord; more cord deployed from his belt as he descended. "I'm not
worried about the fate of the Yuuzhan Vong," he told her. "But we desperately
need any resources we can use against Lord Nyax."
Mara hissed in vexation. She tucked her macrobinocu-lars away, grabbed
Luke's cord, and swung out over open space, then slid down after her husband.
In the corner of her eye, she saw the voxyn charge Lord Nyax. He dodged
under the beast's leap and flexed an arm. His elbow-blade sheared through the
voxyn's gut, slicing the beast cleanly in two. It landed in pieces behind him.
Then, as Mara swung around on the rope during her descent, she saw the
woman.
The woman was dark-haired, attractive, standing at the top of the staircase
by which the Yuuzhan Vong had arrived. Unlike the workers, she was alert,
watching the fight with an expression of detached interest.
She was Viqi Shesh.
Mara felt coldness sweep over her. The woman who had helped betray
Coruscant to the Yuuzhan Vong, the woman who had stolen Mara's son, Ben, was
here, palling around with her Yuuzhan Vong masters while the world crumbled
around them.
She opened herself to Luke through the Force, some-thing she preferred not
to do while cold thoughts of murder were strong in her, and let him see Viqi
through her eyes. " Viqi first," she said.
"Lord Nyax first," he answered. At ten meters above the floor, he detached
the cord spool from his belt and let go with his hand, dropping the remaining
distance. He landed in a tuck and roll and came up in a full-speed run straight
at Lord Nyax.
Mara spared one last look at Viqi, a glance that, had it become a physical
manifestation of her anger, would have sliced through the woman as cleanly as an
amphi-staff point, and dropped. She came up in a roll and followed her husband.
Ahead, the first pair of Yuuzhan Vong warriors had reached Lord Nyax.
Viqi watched the huge pale man slaughter Yuuzhan Vong warriors.
The first two warriors stopped a dozen steps from the thing and hurled
thudbugs. The pale man twitched and the lightsaber blades from one forearm and
one knee rose, incinerating the living weapons.
Two more warriors raced up and, under cover of more thrown thudbugs,
charged, whipping their amphistaffs around, one lashing out with the tail and
the other with fangs.
The pale man stepped in close to the second warrior. The first warrior's
fang attack missed by a meter. The pale man's left forearm blade lashed out at
the second warrior, who blocked the attack by catching the blade in an
amphistaff coil. Then the pale man's left elbow blade raked across the warrior's
throat, separating it from his body. Meanwhile, the pale man's right-arm, right-
elbow, right-knee blades rose, darted, swayed, and wherever they went,
incandescences flared-sign of thudbugs being vaporized.
The pale man flipped the dead warrior's amphistaff toward the first
warrior. The warrior contemptuously swept it out of the way, overcorrected as
his own staff came back to block a lightsaber thrust-and could not block the
other lightsaber blade as it simultaneously thrust into his helmet's eye socket.
He fell, smoke pouring from the mask as he died.
More warriors arrived-two still threw thudbugs, four more skidded to a stop
beside them and waited for a bare second to calculate their strategy.
A piece of ceiling steel whirled down like a spinning sawblade from above.
It flashed across the warriors' position at knee height, and just for a fraction
of a second Viqi thought that it had missed. Then those six warriors collapsed,
legs severed at the knees, blood gouting from the stumps and limbs.
Seconds had passed. Eight Yuuzhan Vong warriors and their voxyn were dead.
Seventeen more remained.
These warriors approached more cautiously. Directed by Denua Ku, they
circled around the smiling, confident pale man who towered over them.
The whirling steel panel came around for another Pass, but this time, a
chunk of machinery, an air-cooling unit a meter on a side, fired off from the
floor as though it were a guided missile and hurtled into the sheet's path. The
sheet wrapped around it with a ferocious, almost shriek of metal bending, and
both fell to the floor.
The pale man looked off to Viqi's left. She followed its gaze. There,
advancing on the pale man, lightsabers lit were Luke Skywalker and Mara Jade.
Viqi's eyes grew wide. What were they doing here?
The Yuuzhan Vong, too, seemed caught off-guard. Denua Ku had no more love
of the Jeedai than any warrior, but he was smart; Viqi saw him wave his warriors
back, waiting for the intentions of the Jedi to be revealed.
It was time to go. No matter who the victor was, Viqi would either end up
dead or pressed once more into the service of the Yuuzhan Vong. She spun to
sprint to the stairwell.
She tripped over an outstretched leg. It was clad in vonduun crab armor.
She looked up, confused. All the Yuuzhan Vong warriors had been ahead of
her. Where had this one come from? He was the tallest she'd seen, and wore
unusual black-and-silver armor. So did the shorter warrior next to him, the one
with the distinctive branding marks on his face.
That one said, "What do we have here, Explosion Boy?" His voice was
cultured, his Basic perfect.
The tall one said, "Dunno." He, too, spoke Basic. He reached down, seized
one of Viqi's ankles, and straightened. He held her upside-down at arm's length.
"Runt of the litter, I'd say."
Disoriented, Viqi could only watch as a lithe female Jedi, lightsaber
blazing, ran past the three of them, paying these Yuuzhan Vong warriors no
attention.
A clang over her head startled her. She looked up - down, at the floor-and
saw her locator lying there.
She reached for it, but the tall warrior swung her to one side. "Grab that,
would you, Poster Boy?"
"Got it." The one addressed as Poster Boy seized the device and
straightened. "Ah, a military-spec vehicle locator. Uulshos makes these. Hey,
it's live."
Viqi finally found her voice. "That's mine."
"Not anymore, Senator."
Luke and Mara approached Lord Nyax and his Yuuzhan Vong attackers. They
kept their guards up, their senses-both physical and Force-alert.
Luke searched the face in front of him. He looked for some trace of
humanity. He saw only smiling mockery, and he could feel the thing through the
Force, its appreciation at having slaughtered warriors, its appreciation at the
thought of slaughtering Luke and Mara.
There was no recognition in its emotion, no acknowledgement of kinship of
any sort.
"I don't know if you can understand me," Luke said. "But whatever you're
doing, whatever your plans are, I have to stop you."
Lord Nyax's smile grew broader. It seemed to recognize Luke's intent, even
if it could not grasp his words.
Then it answered-not in words, but in images. Luke saw the power of its
will, expressed through the Force, rolling over the remaining people of
Coruscant like water roaring down a canyon through a burst dam. He saw them
sweeping across Coruscant, killing and eating everything in their way-the
Yuuzhan Vong, the disobedient, the Force-blind. He saw the workers here boarding
the machine beneath their feet, crashing it through k
ilometers of buildings
until they came to some place, a source for more power to fuel this glorious,
deliriously happy destructive impulse.
In that instant, Luke joined in the plan. He longed to slaughter the
outsiders, those who did not understand or join. He longed to taste their flesh,
He turned to Mara, beckoning her to join. She was facing the Yuuzhan Vong
warriors, preventing them from surprising Luke with an attack, but her gaze was
yanked to Luke. Her eyes widened, and he could feel her leaning toward him,
leaning toward acceptance of this crucial duty.
But the sight of her brought memories. Luke saw worlds of beauty. He saw
his son, composed of Luke and Mara and years to come. Around the edges of Lord
Nyax's command he felt the Force, its other natures, the life from which it
flowed.
He turned back toward Lord Nyax and struggled to find the words to express
his thought. "I... stand... in... your... way."
It was the Jedi way. Jedi did not attack. But to position oneself in the
path of a violent aggressor who would not yield achieved the same result.
All he could ever do as leader of the wartime Jedi was lead them into the
path of the enemy. That was, Luke realized, perhaps his greatest limitation, and
in struggling against it without understanding it, he may have hampered the Jedi
effectiveness against the enemy.
But once recognized and accepted, it was also perhaps his greatest
strength. Whether by accident or design, by his own will or by the permutations
of the Force, he had always found his way into the path of the great enemies of
all things living.
And here he was again. "I stand in your way," Luke repeated, and was
pleased that he had regained control over his voice. "What you see, you will not
achieve."
The expression on Lord Nyax's face turned from mocking amusement to
seriousness... even sadness, for a brief moment, as though the thing had at last
recognized some kinship and discovered that it did not bridge the gulf between
the two of them.
Then it charged.
Kell finished binding Viqi's hands behind her back and looked up in time to
see Lord Nyax lunge toward Luke.
Luke raised his lightsaber, caught the downward sweep of Lord Nyax's right-
hand forearm weapon. He spun clockwise, narrowing his profile as the left-hand
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