The Unifying Force

by James Luceno

  solar

  •rn • smoke was denser at the outskirts of the sacred precinct, toort, where the Solos had lived and Han had kept the Falcon , w^,s a memory. Dirigiblelike, flame-spewing monstrosities . .j anj bobbed through the ruins of Skydome Botanical Gar-Column Commons, and Calocour Heights. Wherever Han ' 1 he saw evidence of the incredible damage wrought by ranged s and crashed Golan Defense Platforms, skyhooks, and Orbital Fnerey Transfer Satellites. Buildings that had stood for a thou-had either been reduced to rubble or become trellises

  sand years —

  - nrofuse alien vegetation. Fires raged on the surface and smoke

  lYllowed into the sky. Through gaps in the clouds, Han could dis-

  - rn crowds of Yuuzhan Vong civilians running every which way in

  pandemonium.

  Pursued anew by coralskippers, the Falcon raced across the devastated cityscape, then down into blazing chasms and corridors thick with roiling smoke. The landscape was jagged with ferrocrete debris; the remains of superstructures jutted up at odd angles, like experimental sculpture.

  "This place isn't worth saving," Jaina said in a stricken voice.

  "Shimrra obviously feels the same," Harrar said, equally

  disheartened.

  Homing in on the beacon, Han veered the Falcon slightly north

  and began a slow descent through the smoke. He realized that they

  were going to be setting down at the western terminus of the Gli-

  tannai Esplanade—but principally because the map display established

  .s much. Formerly a stretch of fashionable shops and restaurants

  spread across the spacious rooftops of Judicial Plaza, the Glitannai was

  ">°w a deep canyon, spanned in a few places by organiform bridges

  'd channeling a flow of Whitewater toward the Citadel.

  Aware of the Falcon's approach, Alliance soldiers began to appear

  1 a spacious sheltered balcony that jutted out over the former

  3rnenade and had been secured by commandos for use as a landing

  -• Engaging the repulsorlifts, Han steered the ship onto the ledge

  t her settle down on her landing gear. Just to be on the safe side,

  Wered the repeating blaster from its hidden compartment in the

  forward hull, and activated the interrupter template that woi I n vent the weapon from damaging the landing ramp or hardstand

  Last to file from the cockpit, Han found Leia, Luke, Mara T and Kenth waiting in the ring corridor, already sheathed in bi While Jacen and Jaina were slipping into their suits, he palmed bulkhead switch that extended the entry ramp.

  "Cakhmaim, Meewalh," he shouted toward the

  e •

  lu compartment. "You and the droids remain aboard. We're not

  to be here long."

  Heads ducked, the Jedi landing party scrambled down the ram A scorching, debris-laden wind was howling across the balcon -tearing at the enviro-suits worn by the soldiers who approached th ship.

  "Welcome home," Judder Page said, shouting to be heard as two A-wings streaked low overhead. "To, as we like to call it, 'Necropolis.' "

  Like his comrades, Page was wearing a jet pack and helmet, and carrying a blaster rifle. Along the lip of the balcony stood a dozen YVH droids. Han wasn't surprised to spy a couple of Wraiths among the commando platoon, but Pash Cracken was the last person he had expected to see.

  Jaina was even more stunned to see Jag Fel, who was waiting with a few others for a shuttle that would convey them to Westport, where there were starfighters that needed pilots. Jaina hurried to Jag while Page began to brief Luke, Kenth, Mara, and Jacen on the situation planetside.

  "The Shamed Ones are up in arms, but word has it that Shimrra has issued an extermination order. He's blaming them for every reversal the Yuuzhan Vong have faced, and is determined to see every last one of them die, along with Coruscant itself."

  "How fortified is the sacred precinct?" Luke asked, as the wind whipped his hair about his face.

  od

  "Several thousand ground troops, some reptoid slave soldier8 Cracken said, "but not much in the way of air support." He no to the flashing sky. "Most of the skips have gone upside."

  "The better for us," Luke said.

  • stepped into the howling wind to embrace her brother and then hugged Jacen as if she wasn't going to let him go. She did 'me with Jaina after Jaina had said hello and good-bye to Jag. "Luke," Leia started to say. "Thev're in my keeping, Leia," he said of Jaina and Jacen. "But all

  are in the custody of the Force."

  Han embraced his children and Mara, and clamped his hands on > tops of Luke's shoulders. "We've been in worse straits than this,

  right?"

  Luke grinned. "More times than I can count."

  Han nodded soberly. "Then maybe we should make this one count as the last one."

  "I'll abide by that if you will."

  "You just watch me."

  Han put his arm around Leia and began to lead her back to the Falcon after the Jedi, Page's Commandos, and the YVH droids had moved out. At the ramp Leia blew out her breath and looked up

  at him.

  "For our next trick ..."

  "We set a course for the World Brain."

  "And when we get there?"

  Han compressed his lips. "I'm hoping Harrar'll think of something."

  The living ship forged from the seed-partners to which Kyp had bonded soared soundlessly and effortlessly through Zonama Sekot's tormented sky. In pairs and trios, coralskippers pierced the planet's envelope to attack the vessels the planet itself had fashioned to frustrate them, but so far none had made it through to the surface. The ev that had succeeded in getting past the Jedi pilots had been repelled by Zonama itself, with powerful updrafts or unseen gravity nerators that had hurled the skips to the edge of space—repulsed in the way that reminded Kyp of magnets, when their like poles were br°ught into contact.

  Kyp and one coralskipper pilot in particular had been testing and

  toying with each other for far too long, but each time Kyp had H a bead on the skip the Sekotan ship's weapons had failed, or n refused to fire. The same was true with the skip, whose contr |i yammosk, falsely perceiving that the pilot was firing on another brood, would whisk the coralskipper through a turn to sabota shots. As acutely as Kyp could feel the gravitic tugs from the mosk, he could also feel draws and joggles from Sekot. Zonarna's sciousness was manipulating the Jedi ships into flying with the s unsettling sense of conformity displayed by the flights of coralskinn Yuuzhan Vong and Jedi ships alike were part of a zigzagging aeri I dance that was being choreographed from afar.

  Against almost any of the enemies that had massed to test the durability of the New Republic during the past twenty years, a dozen Sekotan ships, a Skipray blastboat, and a couple of X-wings wouldn't have been adequate to protect an entire world. But the Yuuzhan Vong were not an ordinary enemy, and Zonama Sekot was hardly an ordinary world.

  True to the behavior they had demonstrated from the start, the Yuuzhan Vong had their own rules of engagement, centering on challenge, honor, and persistence to the last. In the same way that their priests placed themselves at the service of a pantheon of cruel gods, the pilots of their war vessels surrendered individual action to obey the commands of the tentacled creature that coordinated them in battle. Their sense of honor was as distorted by their slavish devotion to sacrifice as local space was warped by the dovin basals that propelled and shielded their weapons. Over and above what the Alliance had accomplished, it was the Yuuzhan Vong's unswerving subordination to the will of the gods and the importance of captives that had cost them hundreds of vessels and countless lives at Ebaq 9, Obroa-skai, and other arenas. As extraordinary as they were as a species—and as warriors—it was foolhardy courage and inflexibility that could end i costing them Zonama Sekot, as well.

  That was assuming that the Jedi would eventually grow cornroi able with piloting the Sekotan
ships, Kyp mused. Merely settling intc the pulsing red-and-green cockpits had required resolve. The canof was similar to the mica-like transparency of a coralskipper, but,

  . jn the cockpit, it was warm to the touch. Comparable to a ation yoke, accelerator, and weapons trigger, the main control ally reached up and wrapped around his right hand, molding • wav some of the controls of Centerpoint Station were it tif- * . d to have molded to Anakin Solo's hand.

  The console was an organiform surround of control levers that

  bled ligaments, switches that had the resiliency of blisters or cal-

  and tracking displays as fluid as those on a Mon Calamari

  •ser Odors that were by turn cloying and sharp pervaded the

  -kpit, as if encouraging the pilot to make use of olfactory cues, as

  •ell as audiovisual and tactile ones.

  More important, the ship engaged a pilot's mind in a kind of tele-oathic dialogue. There was no astromech droid to report on the status of the systems; no cognition hood interface, as on the stolen Yuuzhan Vong vessel that had come to be called Trickster. But the Sekotan ship incorporated some of the qualities of each by speaking telepathically to the pilot. The ship didn't have a voice—it wasn't telepathy on the order of that honed by the Jedi—but Kyp could sense what the vessel was feeling and thinking, the way he had been able to sense the feelings of the crazy little seed-partners that had clung to him.

  All this came standard with the ship—as well as with the ships Zonama Sekot had furnished for the lucky few Old Republic-era pilots who had been wealthy enough to afford them, and who had formed the requisite attachment to seed-partners. But as Han Solo was forever saying about the Millennium Falcon, some special modifications had been made to the Jedi ships. Like coralskippers, the ships were capable of hurling plasma, but unlike coralskippers they lacked shields, relying instead on astonishing nimbleness. Absent ion drives, !eat exchangers, exhaust ports, or anything resembling conventional lgme components, the ships were faster than A-wings and more maneuverable than TIE fighters.

  Kyp was beginning to think of them as the Sekotan equivalent of

  Shtsabers. The pilot didn't have to be a Jedi—flying the ships didn't

  •quire a special connection to the Force—but a ship's ability to per-

  ^ appeared to be directly related to the degree to which a pilot could

  ender him- or herself, become egoless and empty. Saba, Lowbacca,

  and Tarn Azur-Jamin—whose call signs were Hisser, Streak, and n respectively—were demonstrating this to be the case. Kyp was in the maneuvers they were executing, to the point that he sornetim focus on the battle itself. Despite his talents, his mastery ofthe For had yet to be able to take his ship through similar moves.

  Or was it that the ship was having trouble taking him thro similar moves?

  Kyp's comlink toned. Over the past few years—since Mvrkr h

  Jedi had become adept at communicating with one another throu

  Force-melds, but between attending to the Sekotan ships and flvine'

  - o ^n the atmosphere of the living world, these melds were proving difficult

  to sustain.

  "Kyp, you getting the hang of these things?" Corran Horn asked The intership comlink transmission was being relayed through Jade Shadow, which was in stationary orbit at the edge of the battle zone unpiloted, but slave circuit and all countermeasures enabled.

  "I've been wondering if the ship is having trouble getting the hang of me."

  "You and me both. I did a lot better with the Sekotan ship Tahiri and I piloted from Coruscant. I mean, I know I'm targeting correcdy, but a lot of my shots are going wide—even when there aren't voids standing between me and the target."

  "Something about Sekot's need for us not to be killers."

  "I've got a theory about that," Corran said, "but I'll save it for another time."

  "Then why are we up here—just for show?"

  "Maybe it's the same between Sekot and us as it is between the ships and us. Sekot's still trying to get a feel for us. Once that happens, we'll be able to target more accurately."

  "So I should think of this as some kind of insane simulation," 1 said.

  "With one difference. It's the ships that are learning."

  Kyp thought about this statement after he signed off with Corn Perhaps it wasn't only this ships that were learning. Why had !

  partners bonded to some Jedi and not others? Why him and not Jai

  i A Saba Was there anything to the fact that Kyp had destroyed a woria,

  ne destroyed, and both Alema and Corran held themselves lvld ^""hh for the destruction of theirs? Would Ganner Rhvsode have rCSp
  T3P0J.13.'

  Would Anakin have bonded?

  Wniat did Sekot understand about all of them that they didn t understand about themselves?

  sudden darkness had fallen over the Vong-formed cityscape.

  Their lightsabers ignited—glowing blue, violet, green—the Jedi drew on the Force to propel them across the fissured and rain-slicked rooftops and balconies that dangled over what was once the Glitannai Esplanade. Piles of debris, precipitous ledges, and gaping chasms posed no obstacles for the six as they hurdled, vaulted, leapt in a race to reach the Citadel, and the Yuuzhan Vong most responsible for what Coruscant had become. Thanks to their jet packs, Captain Page's Commandos were just managing to keep up.

  Rain was falling hard and being driven every which way by fierce gusts of wind. Overhead it was no longer possible to differentiate flashes of lightning from the artificial brilliance of deadly engagements. It was impossible to distinguish between the lament or t wind and the howl of strafing starfighters; the billowing smoke r scudding storm clouds; the sizzle of fires being extinguished by tl

  ""TVi/*

  rain from the sound of laser bolts cleaving the saturated air. booming cannonades of distant weapons might easily have rolling thunder; the red-orange pillars on the horizon, erupting ° noes or the glowing ejecta of plasma launchers.

  For Luke, the nebulous nature of the surroundings mirrorec

  The darkness was coercing a commingling of disparate Coruscant was fast becoming a void, a singularity into which ' tabnc of life was being stretched and distorted. Was this Cor-' nv longer, or was it really Yuuzhan'tar — as the original world n at its end, when, angered by the Yuuzhan Vong's turn to sods had robbed their children of the Force and cast

  hem into a bottomless abyss?

  "The quickest route is through the north concourse," Mara told

  , , page when everyone had come to a halt on a puddled ledge.

  dripped from the visors of their helmets and cascaded down the

  it of their biosuits. Mara was leading the combined teams from

  eniorv, though also relying on Jacen and Tahiri's "Vongsense" to

  keep everyone from encountering patrols of Yuuzhan Vong warriors.

  Page had his gaze fixed on the water-beaded display of a positioning unit built into the sleeve of his biosuit. "According to this, there was bridge access to the concourse."

  Mara nodded. "The Bridge of Unity. I used to have lunch in the restaurant on the lower level."

  Even with all that Coruscant had become, she sounded wistful. Luke could imagine her, thirty years earlier, frequenting the esplanade's expensive shops and restaurants; wandering among the crowds attending the Imperial Fair; a sometime visitor to the Imperial Palace, in her guise as the Emperor's Hand. It was the Coruscant Luke had known only from HoloNet transmissions and the occasional dramas and documentaries that had found their way to Tosche Station on Tatooine. By the time he had finally visited the capital world in person, most of the governmental district had been in ruins, following Coruscant's liberation by New Republic forces.

  But over the decades Coruscant had become his home, as Yavin u, only to have suffered a similar fate. Luke hadn't expected to be so eartsick; but then he hadn't expected
to find Coruscant so altered— ernade — in the two years since he and Mara had left. Mara was waving everyone back in motion.

  "'fteen minutes of flat-out running brought them to the Bridge of

  F5 1 which had lost the ornamental wirework and inscribed plaques

  had earned it landmark status. Now the bridge was little more

  380

  than a ferrocrete slab spanning the esplanade canyon. Lashed h gale, vines and slimy vegetation trailed from the edges, and a sh but fast-moving curtain of water plunged into the frothing HV below.

  From the bridge's southern abutment, the Jedi had thei unobstructed view of their objective. Several kilometers to the illuminated by forking lightning and accented by the laser beams of • cling starfighters, Shimrra's Citadel towered above the infernal 1 scape. A veritable mountain, it stood where the Imperial Palace n had, encompassing everything from the Mon Calamari Inglenook t the PliaAa di am Imperium, as the eastern terminus of the Glitann ' Esplanade was known. The Citadel's base was lost in swirls of dark smoke, but halfway to the rounded summit four walkways approached from separate directions, linking the Citadel to surrounding structures

  This close, the mountain was revealed to be as craggy and pocked as any of the Yuuzhan Vong worldships Luke had seen. But Shimrra's was adorned with a pair of filigree wings that lent something insectlike to its appearance. The way it sat in the crater that served as its cradle, it might almost have been nesting.

  Flights of X- and E-wings were taunting the crown, but voids blacker than the stormy sky were devouring everything the starfighters hurled at them. Two of the snubfighters were circling closer when plasma projectiles geysered from launchers above the wings. The X-wings might as well have been flying without shields. Caught on their starboard sides by the superheated missiles, they began to spiral down, S-foils and ion engines slagged. Luke could see pieces fly from the fighters as they struck outcroppings in the Citadel's coarse hull. They disappeared into the smoke at the foot of the mountain, and, seconds later, roiling fire mushroomed into view.