heralded a further collapse that was probably imminent. "What's beyond that
wall, farmboy?" Luke shook his head. "I don't know. I didn't know this area was
here. I'm not sure there were any visible accesses into it before. Hey, we have
Yuuzhan Vong coming."
Despite the danger that her extra weight might present, Mara leaned in over
her husband's shoulder to look. Yuuzhan Vong warriors were scrambling over the
rubble and rushing toward the construction droid.
Coruscant survivors rushed out of the construction droid's base to meet
them. Unarmed, ill-fed, they still had a tremendous edge in numbers over the
warriors, and Luke saw several of the Yuuzhan Vong go down under struggling
masses of bodies. The stronger survivors picked up chunks of stone and brained
the troops. More Yuuzhan Vong entered. More survivors swarmed in, now coming
from surrounding areas of rubble instead of just from the droid's base.
Luke looked back at the others. "He's near. He's calling to them. Calling
for help."
Face pulled his helmet off, touched his forehead. He looked troubled. "I
know. I can feel him. In my head. I Want to go down there." He looked up into
their worried expressions, offered them a wan smile. "Well, mostly I don't. But
I can feel the draw."
"You're strong," Tahiri said. "Well fed. You have hope still. He'd have to
exert himself more to control you. But I suspect he can. I'm not sure he can't
control us."
"Kell to Face." The voice, small and tinny, floated up from Face's helmet.
The Wraith leader pulled his helmet up beside his features. "Face here."
"I've found the source of the locator signal. We're in luck. It's a
spaceworthy transport. It's our passage back to Borleias."
"What kind of condition is it in?"
"It's ready to go. Oh, it's blocked in by several tons of rubble."
"Can you handle that?"
"What's my bag full of?"
"That's what I thought."
Luke looked again at the battle raging below, a battle where his only
opponent of consequence was the creature they called Lord Nyax. "Face, our
mission is over. I want you to round up the others, get to that transport, and
prepare to leave Coruscant."
Face grinned at him as though he were waiting for a punch line. "And what
about you silly Jedi types?"
"We're going down there." Luke closed his eyes, just for a moment, as the
weight of that decision pressed upon him. He was about to lead his wife and a
teenager into a situation he wasn't sure he could handle, a situation that was
likely to get them all killed. He looked at Face again. "If we die here, the
other Jedi need to know about Lord Nyax. You're going to tell them."
Face thought about it, his smile disappearing. "I normally try to argue
against suicide missions."
"But you know what Lord Nyax can do."
"Yes. So all I can do is wish you luck."
Face left.
Luke took a couple of deep breaths, turned to the others. "Ready?"
"Ready," Tahiri said.
Mara just nodded.
Luke ignited his lightsaber and sliced into the gap he'd been peering
through, widening it.
Lord Nyax watched as his workers swarmed toward the warriors he could not
sense. He did not like the fact that he could not feel them, but he did enjoy
seeing his workers kill them-though it was usually at a cost of twenty or thirty
workers per warrior.
But he was summoning more workers from all around. No matter how well they
hid in the ruined undercity, his call reached them and forced many, most, to
climb free of their hiding holes, to stumble and then walk and then race toward
the scene of this conflict.
And he could feel the wall weakening. Soon it would give way completely.
The woman who had told him of this wonderful machine-he thought she was up at
its summit, making it move-had been right.
Then he sensed something and looked up. A bar of en-ergy flashed, and three
people fell out of a hole in the ceiling.
They drifted laterally to the top of the slope of the black wall, riding it
down, using their power to slow their descent, keep their balance, increasing
the friction between the clothes on their feet and the wall's surface.
Lord Nyax moved to be beneath them. He ignited his blades, all of them. He
knew they'd be here, knew it from the moment they stopped chasing him. He wished
they'd go away instead of tiring him.
The foremost of them, the male, slid down until he was not far above Lord
Nyax's reach, then leapt free, somersaulting to land somewhere behind him. Lord
Nyax reached out as the male came down; he slid a sharp-edged piece of stone
toward the male's landing area, timing it so that the stone would shear through
the male's legs. But the male slowed his descent and rotation, landing atop the
stone instead of in front of it, and bounded off, toward Lord Nyax. Meanwhile,
the women leapt clear of the stone, spinning down toward him, igniting their
weapons as they came.
Lord Nyax leapt free of the center of their formation, bounding up over the
head of the red-haired female. He hit the stone wall feetfirst, shoved off, and
rotated to a landing many steps away from the three pests.
Then he made a thought and drove it into their heads.
It hit Luke like a razorbug fired straight through his forehead. Luke
staggered under the pain. His back hit the irregular floor. He waved his
lightsaber up and in front of him, a defensive form, but there was no follow-up
blow for him to counter.
There was, however, a new priority. He was to switch off his lightsaber and
then go attack the Yuuzhan Vong. He leapt to his feet and turned his weapon off.
He could see Mara and Tahiri doing the same.
But that would mean dying-and, worse, failing.
No, it's what he had to do.
No, he couldn't do that.
He stood, frozen by the dilemma, straining against the thought that filled
his mind, the thought that was slowly driving out every other consideration.
So he did what he had to whenever he was confused. He reached out, touching
Mara in the Force. He didn't have to open his mind to her; his mind was as open
as it could be, held open by Lord Nyax's thought. He just had to reach for her,
and she was there, locked in as much confusion and pain as he.
She had no answer for him. He reached for Tahiri and found her to be
identically immobile.
He felt Lord Nyax grow impatient, then angry, and Lord Nyax expressed his
anger through pain. Luke felt his fingers and toes, hands and feet, shins and
forearms explode. He fell, writhing, then stared in amazement as he realized
that his limbs were still attached-the pain was real, but no injury had caused
it. He could feel Mara's pain, feel Tahiri's.
There was something different about Tahiri's. He looked over to where she
lay.
She was rolling to her stomach, forcing her way to her feet. Off-balance,
weaving as she stood, she nevertheless managed to pick up her lightsaber and
ignite it. She looked at Nyax, anger blazing in her eyes. "I know something
about pain you don't," she said. "Pain drown
s other people. I just swim in it."
She took a step toward her tormenter.
Luke could feel Nyax's anger, his moment of confusion. And though Luke
couldn't move, he could act. He reached out through the Force and grabbed the
stone that Nyax had tried to use against him moments earlier. He jerked it
toward his enemy.
And though he was weakened by pain, by distraction, it flew those few
meters and slammed into Nyax's back, driving him forward, slamming him off his
feet.
Tahiri leapt forward, bringing her lightsaber down in an all-out attack.
Nyax managed to get one of his arm-blades up to intercept it, then kicked out,
shoving off against a pile of rubble. He slid away from Tahiri, and the slide
continued well past the point that it should, carrying him clear of her... but
he left skin and blood behind on rubble he crossed.
Luke felt Nyax's astonishment, his outrage at having been wounded, however
trivially. Then Nyax drove another thought into Luke's brain: Kill Tahiri.
This time, Luke was ready for it. He'd had a moment to center his thoughts
and, most important, emotions. He was ready with his memories of Tahiri, all the
time's he'd been delighted as she'd made another gain in her study of the Force,
all the hopes he'd had for her future and happiness. He could hold up like a
shield his memory of her love for his nephew Anakin Solo. All those memories
blunted Nyax's attack, shattered its speartip.
Luke reached for Mara again and found her similarly armored, but with
logic, not emotion. Running through her mind was a cold calculation of allies
and opponents, actions and consequences. Uppermost in it was a realization that
Nyax could rule any individual, and out of individuals whole galaxies were made.
But deep beneath the analysis was a stream of emotion, an awareness of
their son Ben, of what he would be if Nyax could find him and shape him.
Luke came up on shaky legs, felt Mara doing the same. And though Nyax was
not letting up on the pain-energy, it affected Luke less now. He could feel
Tahiri's part in that, the way she opened herself to the pain, was not daunted
by it, was not shut down by it.
They faced Nyax as a single creature. The part of them that was Mara
rejected the false truths Nyax tried to impose upon them. The part of them that
was Luke rejected the false hatreds, the lying enmities. The part that was
Tahiri made the pain part of what they were, a fuel for their strength.
Nyax looked between them, and a flicker of distress, a childlike expression
of fear, crossed his features.
Then all four of them felt the wall break. Whatever was beyond it roared
forth to sweep them away.
Elsewhere
Above Borleias, on a routine surveillance sweep in her X-wing, Jaina Solo
was jolted out of her detachment by a surge in the Force. She could feel Luke
and Mara in the surge. She knew they were in danger. And she could see Kyp's X-
wing wobble as he, too, was hit by the sensation.
Thousands of light-years away from Borleias, Ganner Rhysode, Jedi Knight,
kept a firm hand on the controls of his rickety transport as he closed the last
few meters to dock with the space station ahead. But his arms spasmed as the
Force seemed to howl at him. His transport jerked forward, hitting the docking
bay at a greater velocity than he intended. As he shook his head to clear it, he
heard the dockmaster over his comlink: "Idiot."
In an artificial environment dome, part of an evergrowing station hidden
away in the Maw, Valin Horn,
Jedi apprentice, jerked awake so violently that he fell from his narrow
couch. He sat up, trying to remember what nightmare had caused this reaction,
but he couldn't. Then he heard the wailing of the infant Ben Skywalker from two
compartments down, the voice of an adult trying to soothe him, the voices of
other Jedi trainees as they compared details of what they'd just felt.
Coruscant
Rushing up a flight of emergency stairs, Bhindi ahead of her, Elassar
behind, Danni stumbled as the sensation hit her. She crashed down atop the
steps, bruising shin and ribs, and lay there gasping.
Elassar knelt beside her. "Don't move. Let me look."
"I'm not hurt." She ignored the Devaronian and heaved herself upright. She
knew she had to look as rattled as she felt. "Something happened. Something
just...got loose."
FIFTEEN
Luke swam out of a sea of-not pain, not shock, but something between
exultation and complete confusion. His back was against a mound of rubble, and
his wife and the girl were beside him. He couldn't remember their names, or his
own.
Red fluid dripped down upon his shoulder. He craned his neck to look up and
saw a body on the mound above him, that of a human man. Its right arm was
missing and blood poured down the rubble below, one stream of it pooling and
then dripping onto Luke.
Luke. That was it, Luke. And Mara and Tahiri. And the Yuuzhan Vong, and
Nyax. Luke rose, saw his lightsaber a few meters away, and yanked it to him with
a casual display of the Force. It struck his palm with far more energy than he'd
intended, and he dropped it again.
Then he saw Nyax, standing beneath the hole in the black wall. The hole,
one of the construction droid's wrecking claws still within it, was twenty
meters up. Nyax danced on the pile of rubble beneath it. His was the
uncoordinated, artless, dance of a child. It was a dance of joy.
Mara rose beside him. Luke had known she was unhurt.
"Force energy," she whispered.
This must have been a wellspring of it, he thought. The old Jedi Temple
must have been built above because it was here. They were guarding it. And
guarding the planet from it.
Nyax finished dancing. He turned to look at the Jedi. His expression was so
full of uncomplicated happiness that it seemed impossible that he would ever try
to hurt them.
Nor did he attack them now. He simply raised a hand.
Above him, a portion of the ceiling, a plug some ten meters across, shot
straight up and out of sight. Debris rained down, but drifted to one side before
it could hit Nyax. Tremendous crashing noises emerged from the hole above, and
the walls all around them began to shake.
Tahiri joined Luke and Mara, tucking something away in her backpack. "We're
in trouble," she said.
One of the advantages of running around in a lawless, ruined city several
kilometers deep, Face reflected, was there was always gear to find.
Such as this airtaxi. It had been perhaps the thirtieth one he'd seen since
leaving the Jedi, the fourth undamaged one he'd come across-and the first one to
start up with a single press of the controls. Now he roared along the tumbled
canyons of Coruscant, following a comm beacon, keeping well below rooftop
altitude.
It was a necessary precaution. He saw a lot of coral-skippers. All seemed
to be heading toward one location.. the same location he'd recently fled.
He reached the vicinity of the beacon, gained until the signal was its
strongest. That put him directly opposite the collapsed corner of a building. He
<
br /> could see something shining silver there-a simple antenna, attached so recently
that nothing had had time to grow on it; no dust or soot had darkened it. "Face
to Kell," he said. "I see your antenna."
"Drop six stories and drift over to the next building. Come in the first
big window," Kell answered. "The access to where I am is in the main chamber
there."
"On my way." Face lost altitude and sideslipped. He peered in through the
shattered viewport of what had once been a luxury apartment, could see the
stairwell reaching from the ceiling. He gunned his thruster and crashed through
the framework around the viewport, then cut power. His airtaxi dropped half a
meter to the floor.
Seconds later, he squeezed in through the access hatch of the vehicle named
Ugly Truth.
Kell was above him in the pilot's seat. He didn't turn around. "Did you
feel something a couple of minutes ago?" Kell asked.
"No."
"Good. Me either, then."
Face looked up through the cockpit viewport at the jumble of rubble
overhead. "Do you really have enough explosives to blast through that?"
"Approximately... but that's not what we're going to do."
"Ah."
"A detonation like that might damage this frail little flower of an escape
ship." Kell pointed down toward his feet. "But the building wall on that side
isn't a support feel their confusion, too. Nyax, his objective accomplished, had
released them. As their volition returned, their physical exertions, their
outrage at the way they had been violated for so long, overwhelmed them. "I have
to get up there," Luke said. "Persuade them to drive that thing out of here
before the building comes down."
"No, you don't," Mara said.
He looked at her, surprised at such a merciless, unnecessarily cruel
statement. But then he sensed her amusement at his mistake.
"Just tell them," she said.
Luke reached up and found minds-dozens of them, all receptive to the Force.
In the wash of Force energy emerging from the crack in the wall, he found he
could reach any of them, all of them.
He projected a strong demand for silence, a sense of calm, and could feel
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