by Troy Denning
The smile Han gave her was as crooked as usual, but now more wistful than cocky. “Then let’s hope this one lasts until they finish charging our containment fluid.”
Shafts of color rose from distant rooftops to stab at the descending drop fleets, and vessels almost invisible to the naked eye showed damage in the form of white starbursts and flickering disks of orange. The turbolaser fire was answered by a torrent of plasma balls. Towers melted into liquid pillars of durasteel slag. In some cases, building shields endured the first strike, only to fall to the second, or the third. Dark swarms of coralskippers and airskiffs boiled down ahead of the drop fleets, taking advantage of the steady barrage to locate and attack the turbolasers. These attack craft were met by a far smaller number of New Republic atmospheric fighters, and a steady drizzle of smaller craft began to rain down on Coruscant.
General Rieekan’s voice came over the helmet comlink. “Light artillery, take your stations. Hold fire.”
Han slipped into the gunner’s seat on one side of the laser cannon, and Leia took the spotter’s station on the other. She would actually have the more difficult of the two jobs, finding and prioritizing threats on the weapon’s display. All Han would have to do was shoot them down. Leia activated the sensor feed and began to plot trajectories, assigning precedence based on which drop ships would be approaching nearest to their position.
Over the next ten seconds, the number of turbolasers firing decreased steadily, but they punched so many holes in the drop fleets that Leia had to update her targeting priorities twice. By the time the ships themselves began swelling from fingertip-sized circles of friction flame into glossy black wedge-wings, the turbolasers had opened holes the size of lakes in the great armadas.
“Open fire,” Rieekan commanded.
Han squeezed the trigger, and the air filled with the deafening screech of discharging actuators. Their attack took the first drop ship by surprise, burning away a wing and sending the wedge-shaped vessel tumbling in two different directions. Subsequent targets proved more difficult. Han had to pulse the trigger and stitch bolts across the hull to defeat the shielding crews, but it was easier to fire from a stationary turret than to defend aboard a wildly gyrating craft, and he and Leia sent two more drop ships crashing into the towers. They paid no attention to the skips and airskiffs diving on their position from all sides. Those were the responsibility of even lighter blaster cannons firing from adjacent towers, and their expert crews never let an attacker get close.
Finally, Leia could find no more targets on the tacscreen. She looked up into a dark miasma of smoke, fed by flaming ruins and fuming wrecks all across Coruscant. For a moment, all was quiet, then Rieekan’s voice came over the comlink again.
“Look sharp out there. They’re sending in the hunter-killers.”
Leia studied the tactical display and saw a line of blastboat analogs—she and Han called them blast boulders—streaking toward their position. Large enough to take a hit or two from a light blaster cannon, yet nimble enough to dodge the slower laser cannons, these craft posed a more serious threat than anything that had come before. Leia began to designate priorities and feed Han targets.
Borsk Fey’lya chose that moment to appear on the access lift, flanked by a pair of tall Orbital Defense soldiers with sandy hair and square chins. Their other features were also so similar they had to be brothers. In Leia’s time, relatives would never have been permitted to serve in the same unit, but those rules had changed under Fey’lya. Bothans had a different view of family.
“Leia, you have a comm message in my office,” Fey’lya said. His brisk tone suggested he had lifted himself out of the torpor into which he had sunk when her speech failed to bring the deserting senators and their pilfered flotillas back to Coruscant. “You can take it at my desk.”
“We’re kind of busy right now,” Han growled, pouring fire into the first blast boulder. “You might have noticed?”
“It’s Luke Skywalker,” Fey’lya said. “He seems to be trapped.”
Han stopped firing. “On the planet?”
“Over at the Western Sea, if I heard him correctly,” Fey’lya said. “The channel was scratchy.”
Han looked over the cannon at Leia, and she knew he was thinking the same thing. If Luke was on Coruscant, there was no telling where Ben was.
“These guards will take your station,” Fey’lya said, motioning to the brothers.
Leia slipped out of her seat and moved toward the lift. Instead of stepping out of her way as most soldiers would for a former chief of state, this pair stared down at her blank-faced. She knew instantly something was wrong, and confirmed it when she reached out with the Force and felt nothing from them.
“Forgive me, soldier.”
Turning to hide her lightsaber from view, Leia stepped aside to let the infiltrator by, then caught her husband’s eye as he did the same thing. Han furrowed his brow. She glanced pointedly at his blaster and snapped the lightsaber off her belt. An alarmed light came to his eye, and he reached for his blaster pistol.
His Yuuzhan Vong spun on him, knocking him into the back wall. Han slumped to the floor and, never taking his weapon from its swing-free holster, blasted the infiltrator.
Leia was already pressing her lightsaber against her own foe’s ribs.
“Surren—”
He whirled, elbow driving at her head. She ducked, thumbed the activation switch, then stepped away as the impostor collapsed at her feet.
Fey’lya stared at the corpses, jaw snapping as the ooglith masquers peeled away from their faces. “In my own office!”
“Perhaps the time has come to destroy the data towers, Chief,” Leia suggested mildly.
Fey’lya’s eyes flashed, but any reply was cut off by a blaring attack alarm. One glance at the display told Leia the infiltrators had succeeded at least in part; with three blast boulders lining up for approach, they had no chance of saving their weapon.
“Go!”
She pushed Han and Fey’lya onto the service lift, then followed. They commed a report to General Tomas’s aide, then emerged ten meters below in the chief of state’s office. An instant later, a series of explosions shook the blast-hardened ceiling, and the cannon turret was gone. Leia saw Garv Tomas coming through the far door, but she removed her artillery helmet and went straight to Fey’lya’s comm center.
“Luke … Luke, this is your sister … Luke?”
There might have been an answer; it was difficult to tell over the battle roar in the background. She stretched out and sensed her brother’s presence somewhere beyond the horizon. Though she was not sensitive enough to guess his condition or situation, Leia could feel that he was alive.
“Luke, if you hear me, we’ll be there as soon as the Falcon’s containment fluid is recharged.”
“Actually, it’s recharged now.”
Leia glanced over her shoulder to find Garv Tomas glowering at Fey’lya.
“I asked Chief Fey’lya to relay that news some time ago.”
Fey’lya shrugged. “They were needed in the cannon turret.”
“Check that, Luke.” Leia was not even angry. Being upset at the Bothan’s selfishness would have been like being angry at a Wookiee’s shedding—and they had been needed in the turret. “The Falcon is ready now. We’ll be coming soon, Luke.”
Again, there was no answer—only a small surge in her sense of her brother. Though Leia hoped it meant Luke had heard her, there was no way to be sure. It could have meant he was trying to find her, thinking about her, going to miss her—anything. Leia stood and turned to find Han already describing the infiltrators to Garv. The general was shaking his head angrily.
“The door guards have epidermal scanners and orders to use them, but disordered troops are pouring in by the tens of thousands, and no one wants to turn away a fellow soldier.” Garv ran his fingers through his hair. “For all I know, they’re all infiltrators.”
“It was bound to happen, Garv.” Leia turned to Fey’l
ya. “The time has come to destroy the data towers, Chief. To delay longer is to give the enemy his most precious advantage.”
Fey’lya’s eyes flashed angrily, almost madly, and Leia thought he would refuse. He spun away and went to stare at the carnage outside.
“You’re deserting me, aren’t you?” he asked. “Just like the senators.”
Han rolled his eyes, then hefted his blaster like a club and cocked his brow at the others.
Leia pushed his hand down, then went to stand behind Fey’lya. “Not like the senators. It’s time.”
Fey’lya stared over the smoking city for another moment and finally let his chin sink. “I suppose it is.” He took a moment to gather his strength, then turned to Garv. “General Tomas, give the order to destroy the data towers—if you haven’t already.”
“Very good, Chief Fey’lya.” The fact that Garv did not reach for his comlink suggested the order had indeed been issued. “I’ll have First Citizen prepared for departure.”
Fey’lya nodded wearily. “Evacuate as many as you can—and be sure you are aboard. That’s an order, General.”
“Yes, sir, as long as my duties here are completed.”
“They are,” Fey’lya said. “Don’t make me dismiss you.”
Garv reluctantly inclined his head. “Very well, then.”
“Good.” Fey’lya turned back to the transparisteel. “And tell Captain Durm not to wait. I won’t be joining you.”
“What?” Han asked. “If you think you can make some kind of deal—”
“Han, that’s not what the chief is thinking.” Leia held a finger to her lips, then said, “Chief Fey’lya, you can’t accomplish anything here.”
“And what could I accomplish anywhere else? Who would follow me after this?” He waved a hand outside. “History will blame me for what happened today. Don’t try to tell me otherwise.”
Leia did not. Even if she had wanted to lie, Fey’lya was too smart. “There are other ways of serving.”
Fey’lya snorted. “Perhaps for you, Princess.” He turned his back and walked to his desk. “But not for me. Not for Borsk Fey’lya.”
“Snap to, people!” The captain had to yell to make himself heard inside the turbolaser’s cavernous turret; the battery intercom had gone with the rest of the communications. “Here comes the second wave.”
Luke hardly needed the officer’s warning. He had only to crane his neck to look through a ten-meter hole in the ceiling and see a sheet of orange friction flames crackling down from above. If anything, this assault looked larger and faster than the first, and the first had reduced Coruscant’s turbolaser capacity by two-thirds.
“They’re coming through this time,” Mara said, not quite reading Luke’s thoughts. She was sitting on a bench in the observation bay, her bacta-casted ankle propped on a spare blast helmet. “That first wave was just to soften us up.”
Luke took her hand. “Han and Leia will get here,” he said. “I told Borsk where we were.”
“But did he tell them?”
Luke knew better than to offer hollow reassurance. The fear they had been sensing in Ben all morning had become a strange disconnectedness, and Mara—always more of a realist than an optimist—assumed the worst. Never one who liked counting on others, she blamed herself for leaving the baby with Han and Leia after Anakin’s death—which only made her all the more determined not to count on anyone else for his rescue. Luke chose to place his trust in the Force, though he knew that an unhappy outcome would certainly lead to a profound crisis of belief.
The twin turbolasers began to hurl blue streaks skyward, each discharge shaking the huge turret so hard that Luke’s knees felt like they would buckle. This time, far fewer starbursts and orange flares appeared in the heart of the drop fleet. A steady stream of white pinpoints swelled into crackling orbs of white plasma and burst against the battery’s hastily repaired shields. Each time, the internal lighting dimmed a little more, and a few more pieces of equipment sparked out.
In the middle of it all, R2-D2 started to tweet and whistle so fiercely that he was audible even two bays away. Luke looked toward the number two targeting bay, where the little droid was filling in for a damaged R7 unit, and saw a scowling fire control officer waving him over.
“I’ll be right back,” Luke said to Mara.
A plasma ball finally crashed through the shield and burned a second hole through the armored ceiling. In the next instant, two more fiery balls roared into the turret itself and erupted against the back wall, filling the chamber with smoke and screams. One of the big turbolasers fell silent, and the evacuation alarms blared.
“Hold on, Skywalker.” Mara stood and limped after him. “You’re not going anywhere without me.”
Computer operators began to pour out of both targeting bays, but the officer who had waved at Luke stayed long enough to shake a finger at a vid display.
“Your droid frizzed out and said you had to see this.” He turned to depart with the others, calling over his shoulder, “He picked it out of a teletargeter data stream—it was in one of the old flash codes.”
The display showed a string of times and orbital coordinates, then a four-word message: “Byrt bet covered—Calrissian.”
“Lando!” Mara exclaimed. “I could kiss him.”
Luke tapped the console keys, ordering a flimsiplast printout. “And I could let you.”
* * *
Instead of continuing down into the teeth of Coruscant’s still-plentiful light artillery, the second wave of drop fleets pulled up at two thousand meters and began to disgorge spiraling lines of dark flecks. As they came closer, the flecks resolved into V-shaped wings over tiny dark rectangles, then into Yuuzhan Vong warriors suspended in the grasp of huge, mynocklike creatures. Watching from the privacy of his office balcony, Borsk found himself admiring the way Tsavong Lah built one attack off another, lulling the enemy into believing he was trying one thing while actually doing something else. It was classic cutthroat dejarik strategy, and the warmaster was executing it like one of the old Bothan masters.
Borsk hated him for it. The Yuuzhan Vong were robbing him of all he had spent a lifetime seeking, and they were ensuring that he would be forever remembered as the Bothan who lost Coruscant. For that, Borsk would have liked to teach the kintan strider death gambit to Tsavong Lah; such a coup would certainly have changed how New Republic historians remembered Chief of State Fey’lya.
When the descending warriors began to fling firejellies down on the palace, Borsk took a last gulp from the snifter of Endorian port in his hand, then stood and went to his desk. Not allowing himself to hesitate or tremble, he reached down to his bottom drawer and keyed a code he had never expected to use. He removed a small medkit scanner/transmitter, then depressed the activation switch and held the device next to his heart. When the function light began to beep in time with his pulse, he placed it in the center of the desk and reached down again, this time arming a fuse attached to the proton bomb that filled most of the drawer. The bomb was not huge, but it was large enough to destroy this wing of the palace—and all the secrets within it.
By the time he finished, the enemy drop troopers were circling the palace’s burning data towers and fighting their way onto its bitterly defended balconies. Finding no guards outside the chief of state’s office, a squad dropped onto the balcony where he had been sitting. Borsk waited behind his desk and watched as the warriors kicked in a door they could have opened with the touch of a button. The first two raced to his side and thrust amphistaffs toward his throat, but stopped short of killing him when they saw his furred paws resting in plain sight. Several more rushed through the room to secure the doors and equipment, then a heavily tattooed officer came to his desk.
Before the Yuuzhan Vong could ask, Borsk said, “I am Borsk Fey’lya, chief of state of the New Republic. Harm me at your own peril.”
This drew a derisive snort. “It does not look like I have much to fear from you or your New Republic, Borsk
Fey’lya.”
“Then from your own warmaster,” Borsk said evenly. “Tsavong Lah will certainly wish to speak with me. You may tell him I will receive him here.”
“You will see the warmaster when and where it pleases him.” The officer glanced at the heart-rate scanner on Borsk’s desk. “What is this abomination?”
“A communications device,” Borsk lied. “I can use it to communicate with all New Republic troops on Coruscant.”
Quicker to see the obvious than the chief of state had dared hope, the officer thrust it at Borsk’s face. “Tell your troops to lay down their arms, and they will be spared.”
“After I have worked out terms with Tsavong Lah.”
The officer slapped his amphistaff across Borsk’s hand. Something sharp penetrated his furry flesh, then the Bothan felt a fiery tide of venom rolling up his veins and noticed the frantic blinking of his heart-rate scanner. Quickly regaining his composure, he reached over with his free hand and pinched the pressure point inside his armpit, then looked up at the officer and shrugged.
“Pump me full of all the poison you wish. It makes no difference to me if you offer your gods a spoiled sacrifice.”
“You assume much in thinking yourself worthy, Fey’lya.”
Despite his words, the officer turned and spoke into the air. One of the villips on his shoulder said something in reply. He nodded curtly and, saying nothing else to his prisoner, stationed his squad at various points around the tower suite. Borsk wished he had thought to bring in the port from the balcony. He felt sure he would die the instant he released the pressure point, but the pain was not bad enough to prevent him from holding the snifter in the poisoned hand—and, judging by his success so far, he could probably have bluffed the officer into letting him finish it.
Outside, Yuuzhan Vong drop troopers continued to swirl around Coruscant’s aeries, trading fire with light artillery emplacements and slowly claiming control of the towertop strongholds. As the cannonfire dwindled, the blast boulders started to venture down again, melting stubborn pockets of resistance into naked skeletons of durasteel. Finally, the drop ships descended, landing whole brigades of reptoid slave-soldiers on captured rooftops. The Yuuzhan Vong might claim to be great warriors, but Borsk knew who would be doing the hard fighting down in the underlevels.