Coruscant
Luke woke in darkness, disoriented for a moment by the lack of familiar
sights and smells, but comforted by the knowledge that Mara was beside him. In
fact, it was her settling into the broad cot with him that reminded him where
and when he was. "Just coming off watch?" he murmured.
"That's right." She rested her chin on his shoulder making him her pillow.
"Go back to sleep."
"I ought to get up."
"You don't want to do that. All the news is bad."
"What news?"
"Ask the scientists."
"We've spent so much time down in the ruins," Danni explained, "that we
haven't had much of an opportunity to take all the readings we needed to."
Before she could continue, she yawned, then looked embarrassed at the way her
exhaustion had betrayed her.
They were in the Complex's control chamber, Luke and Danni and Baljos. Both
scientists looked tired, but now, at least, there was sufficient fresh water to
bathe and wash clothes, so they all looked better than they had in some days.
"What readings?" Luke asked. "Every time I look at you two, you're taking
readings."
"We've been taking biological readings, mostly," Baljos said.
"Electromagnetic energy flow readings. Chemical tests of water and food sources.
That sort of thing. But not until a few hours ago, when Kell and Face went
topside and set up some holocams and other monitoring equipment, have we been
able to do any astronomical recordings."
Luke shrugged. "So what have you found out?"
"Gravitational readings suggest that we're closer to Coruscant's sun now,"
Danni said. "The planetary orbit has changed."
"The atmospheric temperature is several degrees higher than it should be at
this time of year," Baljos said. "That was the impression I got with our hand
units, but there was no way to tell before now whether it was just a seasonal
fluke. No, there's a lot more moisture in the atmosphere than there should be.
Consistently. Laser-based spectroscopic analysis gives similar readings out to a
considerable distance. Master Skywalker, I think the polar ice is melting."
"Luke. It's just Luke." Luke sat back, frowning. "Is this their
worldshaping?"
Danni nodded. "More like 'Vongforming.' It's a lot faster, more brutally
efficient than our equivalent techniques."
"Is there any good news?"
"A little." Danni pointed at the first of three computer screens.
This one showed a holocam view of a building roof. It seemed to be
shedding; fragments of some leaflike material were being tossed around by winds.
"We're witnessing a die-off of some of the Vongforming plants. The grasses and
explosive fungi they used to begin the breakdown of the building surfaces are
starting to die. We don't know whether it means they're not adapting well to
this environment, or just that they're the first step of the Vongforming
process, with more steps to come. Doctor Arnjak suspects the latter."
"That's 'Science Boy' to you," Baljos said.
"So that may or may not be good news," Luke said.
Baljos nodded. "Correct. Here's some news that's a little less ambiguous."
He indicated the other two screens, one full of graphical charts and text, the
other broken down into eight holocam images-still images of Yuu-zhan Vong
warriors digging through rubble, engaged in training exercises, lined up in a
disciplined row.
Luke peered at the screens. The information on the first one seemed to
relate to proportions of gases in the atmosphere. "What's it mean?"
"The proportion of toxic gases in the atmosphere has pretty much
stabilized. Oh, they're worse at some specific altitudes than others, but
they're not increasing in proportion. I think they relate to the biological
actions of the Vongforming plants that are breaking down the dura-crete and
metals. Meaning that the Vong aren't trying to make the atmosphere poisonous to
us. This increases the chances of survival of, well, the people who are still
alive down here."
"That's something, I guess." Luke looked at the scientists. "And the other
one?"
Danni said, "You remember that we brought along some little stealth droids.
Shaped like fungi, mosses, that sort of thing. We've been taking them out and
depositing them in areas the Vong seem to patrol heavily. They're following
those paths, very slowly, and transmitting images in very short, hard-to-track
comm bursts. These are our first sets of images. They don't tell us much yet,
but we hope they will someday."
"So, what do you get from the atmospheric data?"
Danni and Baljos exchanged a look, and Luke could read all sorts of things
into it. They'd already come to some conclusions. They were just trying to
decide which ones to present him, and in which order.
"We've kind of been giving the survivors the impression that the New
Republic forces are going to come back and seize Coruscant," Danni said.
Luke nodded. "That's the objective."
"I don't think there's going to be a Coruscant to come back to. How long
will it take? A year? Five years? Ten? By the time our forces get here, it's
going to be something else. A Yuuzhan Vong world."
"That won't give the survivors much hope."
"So," Baljos said, "we think we should take a different approach to what we
were doing. We teach the survivors how to survive on this world-this alien
world. Not necessarily so they can come out fighting when the big push comes.
Just so they can survive. Maybe escape. We analyze all the new life-forms we run
across, the ones introduced by the Yuuzhan Vong, and teach our people which ones
are good to eat. Teach them how to find safe water."
"Maybe how to wall off whole complexes," Danni said, "so the Vong just
never come down into them."
"If we do all that..." Luke considered the matter for long seconds. "We're
admitting that we've lost."
"That we've lost Coruscant, anyway," Danni said. "Not the war."
"I can't accept this." A flash of anger ignited within Luke, but he calmed
himself, willed it away. " You're suggesting that this entire mission is a
failure!"
"Not a failure." Danni carefully considered her words. "The mission didn't
match the reality we found. It's like any scientific investigation. You observe
evidence, you come up with a theory to explain the evidence, you put the theory
to the test... and in most cases, the theory has to be revised. We arrive at
truths one faltering step at a time."
"Just like Jedi training."
"That's right."
Luke sighed. "I have to think about this."
Luke was still thinking about it two days later when he went on another
vehicle hunt with Face and Bhindi.
They weren't always traveling in Yuuzhan Vong armor anymore; now that they
had a base of operations and less need to travel in a large group through
unknown territories, Luke and the others often made do with civilian clothing.
It was lighter and far more comfortable than the Yuuzhan Vong armor, especially
in the increasingly steamy atmosphere of Coruscant's lower levels. Kell and Face
were the exception
s-quite taken with just how horribly dashing they were in the
armor, they insisted on wearing it during all missions, evidently a competition
to see which one would give up and admit discomfort first.
With initial objectives achieved-the team had a base of operations and its
members were interacting with the local non-Yuuzhan Vong population-they could
begin implementing the plan for their eventual escape from Coruscant.
Their insertion method had not included a getaway vehicle, for they knew
that, given how many millions of vehicles still remained here, in varying
conditions of preservation, they would be able to find, salvage, or steal a
working vehicle-or, with Tahiri's help, perhaps even a Yuuzhan Vong vessel.
Logic dictated that there had to be thousands if not millions of vehicles
in the wreckage that was Coruscant. The trick was in finding them, since all
vehicles visible from the air had been strafed and destroyed by coralskippers.
Only those that had been hidden or buried had a chance to be intact.
And so far, though they'd found hundreds of vehicles in their searches, not
one was even remotely likely as an escape vehicle. They'd found scores of
airtaxis, numerous crashed starfighters, the remains of a hangar with a troop
transport-and troops-crushed beneath incalculable tonnage of collapsed building.
Luke thought that, with a month to work on it, he could cobble together enough
parts from various destroyed starfighters to make one working model... which
would get one of them off-planet when the time came.
That was just one more failure to weigh upon him. He sat in a fiftieth-
story viewport of what had once been a Starfighter Command recruiting office,
staring out into the cavernous street beneath, while Face and Bhindi struggled
to get the office's computer operational, and he wondered why he'd bothered with
this mission.
His son Ben was light-years away, hidden out of sight - out of Yuuzhan Vong
sight, but also out of his sight-in a secret Jedi base in the Maw, a region of
space surrounded and concealed by black holes. Mara had to be question-ing his
competence. The Jedi, whom he had hoped to inspire and unite in this bold
mission into the territory most strongly held by the Yuuzhan Vong, would lose
faith in him.
Something attracted his attention, just the merest sensation that there
were eyes upon him, and he looked up from the rubble-strewn depths he'd been
regarding.
Across the avenue, at about the same altitude, some-One stood in a viewport
staring at him. At this distance, about a hundred meters, Luke could not be
sure, but he thought it was a man. A very pale man. Luke pulled out his
macrobinoculars and trained them on that person.
He stared into a face that was half-strange, half-familiar.
This man was pallid, with curly dark hair, sea-blue eyes, and a prominent
nose that suggested old aristocracy. He was young, barely twenty, if that old.
He wore a pale kiltlike wrap around his midsection and shiny items at various
points on his body-fingerless gloves, elbow covers, knee covers; though thick
and metallic, these looked like a very inadequate set of armor. His head was
held at an angle as though he'd been tilting it one way and another as he
watched Luke.
Luke knew his face, but couldn't place it, couldn't call up that memory. In
fact, it was easier not to think right now.
When Luke's eyes met his, the man smiled. It was the smile of a child
suddenly captivated with the wonders of pulling legs off insects.
Luke found he could sense the man in the Force - could do so without even
reaching out for him. The man was a glowing light in the Force, a beacon in the
midst of darkness. A beacon of darkness... but that suddenly didn't matter much.
Luke felt his breath go out of him. It was as though the roof had slowly
collapsed and deposited two tons of dura-crete on his torso while he was
distracted.
He glanced over at Face and Bhindi. They had the terminal running; the glow
from its screen colored their faces blue. Bhindi removed a datacard from its
slot in the terminal and made a noise of satisfaction. They were both utterly
unaware of what Luke was seeing, feeling.
Luke knew that, when he turned his attention back to the distant viewport,
the pale man would be gone; it was among the oldest tools in the bag of tricks
of the makers of supernatural holodramas. But when he looked through the
macrobinoculars again, the man was still there, motionless.
Luke unlatched the viewport's locks. All he had to do was step out on the
walkway that now stretched between this building and the other. He could walk
right up to this man and begin asking questions. But some faint stirring of
alarm-his pilot's ability to glimpse and memorize topographical details-shook
him out of the fog that had overcome his thinking.
There was no walkway before him. One step through this viewport and he'd
plummet to his death.
The man's grin grew wider. Then he sidestepped and disappeared from sight.
Luke felt the great weight lift from him. He could breathe again. "Are you
two done here?" he asked.
Face looked up, frowning. "Luke, are you all right?"
"No. Trouble's coming. Let's go."
Bhindi rose. "If trouble's coming, we're done here."
Luke, Face, and Bhindi crouched in a crater that had been one corner of a
skyscraper-the same skyscraper in which, minutes before, the pale man had stood.
They Were about twenty stories above the window the figure had occupied, and all
three had macrobinoculars trained on the viewport Luke had, minutes before,
tried to open.
The room beyond the viewport was filled with people. They wore tatters.
Some wore nothing but dried mud and blood. There was a light in their eyes that
suggested they were on stimulants and had been for days or weeks. They rampaged
through the Starfighter Command office, destroying every piece of furniture,
smashing every wall, a riot whose violence was directed at everything and
nothing.
"What are they?" Bhindi asked. "They're not your run-of-the-mill survivors.
"
"Some of Yassat's cannibals, I expect," Face said. "You felt them coming,
Luke?"
"Something like that," Luke said. "C'mon, let's go down."
They found the chamber in which Luke had seen the pale man. It had once
been the main chamber of a hotel suite, and possibly not occupied since
Coruscant fell. The beds were still made. Floor-to-ceiling viewports offered a
good view of Coruscant's sky-if one looked high enough, anyway.
Luke could feel it here, a twinge in the Force, the same one he'd been
pursuing ever since he came to Coruscant. But that was not what held his
attention.
It was the viewports. He was sure from their dimensions that one of these
was the viewport in front of which the pale man had been standing.
He'd filled it, from floor to the top of the viewport frame. And these
viewports were three meters tall.
"You're tired," Mara said. "And this makes you more susceptible to Force
powers. He meddled with you, certainly... but once you get some sleep you'll be<
br />
more fit to face him."
Mara knew little, other than from observation and studies in psychology,
about comforting those who were hurt. Most of what she knew she had learned
since Ben had been born. Luke so seldom needed comforting-his wisdom and his
humor had always provided him with a durable armor against life's cuts and
blows. But sometimes events got past that armor-Ben's kidnapping, Anakin Solo's
death. Now it was this eerie visitation by someone who'd come within a
centimeter of tricking him into taking a fatal plunge. And at such times Mara
could do little but stay close, act as an anchor for him to hold onto.
"I don't think so," Luke said. "I'm certain being tired made it easier for
him to transmit all that despair and the mental compulsion through the Force,
yes. But I also have a sense that he's powerful. And I know I've seen his face
somewhere. I-" Luke's next words were cut off as he yawned.
Mara gave him a stern look.
"I know, I know. I need sleep. I'm tired." He stretched out on the cot.
"Tired, and I have to admit it, scared of something that could sneak up on me
and plant a Force-based suggestion in my mind. As though I were some spice
addict with no resistance, no training."
"Tired and wounded in pride."
He grinned. "Well, maybe."
"Get some steep, farmboy. You'll feel better-and think better-once your
power cells are recharged."
"True."
In minutes, Luke was asleep, his breathing regular. But Mara lay awake long
after that, her own Force senses extended in an alert screen, attuned to detect
any flicker of hatred or despair that might drift their way from the thing that
wanted to take her husband's life.
Borleias
The sun named Pyria was just a tiny bright dot in the forward viewport, no
more a draw to the naked eye than one well-illuminated planet usually is from
the surface of another. It certainly was not sufficient to distract Han and Leia
from their tasks.
"Got it, thanks." Leia leaned back from the comm board. "Borleias Control
has given us the map of known locations of dovin basal mines. They're not too
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