The Unifying Force (38 page)

Was this real, or a product of his feverish brain?

Below the balcony—in arrant defiance of the daytime curfew Shimrra had imposed on them—a band of Shamed Ones were down on their knees, raising their hideous faces and rail-thin arms in celebration of the newly arrived planet that was literally shaking Yuuzhan’tar to pieces.

Weakly, fatalistically, Nom Anor accepted the truth.

Zonama Sekot had not only returned to known space; it had made Yuuzhan’tar its destination and target!

An updraft carried the voices of the Shamed Ones to Nom Anor’s ears: “The prophecy has come to pass! Our salvation is at hand!”

He hung his head in defeat. Everything he had predicted was coming true.

The balcony groaned and the front edge tipped downward.
Carefully, Nom Anor began to back toward his work chamber. He had just reached the threshold when someone threw a forearm lock on his throat, and he felt the point of a coufee press against his temple. His assailant dragged him backward into the room and whispered harshly in his right ear.

“Tell me what you know of this, or die this instant!”

Nom Anor recognized the voice of Drathul. “A weapon of the heretics,” he rasped, his own hands tight on the high prefect’s forearm.

The knife drew blood, sending a black trickle coursing down the yoke of Nom Anor’s robe.

“You would insult me further by lying? We know you have the Supreme Overlord’s ear on this and other matters!”

Drathul aimed his blade at the sky. Zonama Sekot was moving swiftly. Already its convex edge was nibbling at the sun. In moments the sun would be not merely eclipsed but entombed.

“We?” Nom Anor asked weakly.

“Those of us who would have preferred to heed Supreme Overlord Quoreal’s admonitions, along with the wisdom of his priests who counseled against invading this cursed galaxy,” Drathul said. “This is the living world discovered by Commander Krazhmir before the invasion. The same one recently rediscovered by Commander Ekh’m Val!”

“Then you know more than I,” Nom Anor said, close to passing out.

“A portent of defeat!”

“Portents serve weak rulers and superstitious fools,” Nom Anor said with his last remaining breath.

Abruptly, Drathul released his choke hold and spun Anor around. Grabbing a handful of Nom Anor’s tunic, he pulled him close and pressed the coufee into the front of his throat.

The landquake had ended, but Nom Anor was hardly out of danger.

“Speak the truth, or lose your ability to speak!” Drathul’s breath was foul with fright. “The heretics who bow in jubilation beneath this very perch while everyone else runs in panic … 
They
know it is the living world—the primordial homeworld promised to them by the Prophet. Not this travesty we have created of Coruscant. Do you deny it?”

Nom Anor was beginning to tire of the prick of coufees. Shoon-mi’s, months earlier; Kunra’s, just weeks ago; and now Drathul’s.

“It is a living world,” he admitted, “but only that. Neither portent nor fulfilled prophecy. Merely another surprise in a war filled to overflowing with surprises.” Pushing the coufee aside, he brought his right hand to his neck to staunch the flow of blood. “The living world whose return I tried to
prevent,”
he added, glaring at his superior.

“You
tried to prevent?”

Drathul’s weapon arm dropped to his side. He gazed at Nom Anor in naked incredulity.

“On Shimrra’s command,” Nom Anor said through his clenched jaws. He grabbed at his green robe. “How else do you think I come to wear
this?
Through merit? Through domain privilege?” He spat on the floor. “Through acts of treachery and deceit!”

Drathul sank to the floor in weary confusion. The room was growing darker by the moment, as Zonama Sekot cast its immense shadow across the face of Yuuzhan’tar. Hailstones the size of ngdins were striking the balcony, bouncing into the room and skittering across the floor.

The high prefect looked up at Nom Anor. “What should I do?”

Nom Anor took a moment to languish in his small victory. “Pray to the gods, Drathul, that Zonama Sekot has come in peace.”

The blank expression conveyed by the dedicated villip of Supreme Commander Saluup Fing belied the dread in his words.

“The planet appeared out of darkspace and hurtled into the Yuuzhan’tar system, Fearsome One. It nearly grazed the holy world, sundering the rainbow bridge and scattering the moons—the innermost of which nearly struck Yuuzhan’tar as it was outward bound. It is a catastrophe of epic proportions, Warmaster. As if engineered by the gods—”

“Enough, Commander!” Nas Choka said. “The vessels under your watch will remain where they are. None should attempt to move against the intruding planet.”

“At your command, Warmaster.”

“The armada will soon return, and I will decide then our best course of action.”

The countenance of Saluup Fing smoothed out as the villip relaxed and inverted to its normal leathery aspect. Nas Choka paced from the choir of biots to his command bench, but found on arriving that he was too agitated to sit down.

He had ordered
Yammka’s Mount
to revert from darkspace in the Mid Rim, so that he could receive a follow-up report from the Supreme Commander on the events that had transpired at Yuuzhan’tar some time earlier. The warmaster had ordered everyone but the chief tactician from
Yammka’s Mount
’s command chamber, and Nas Choka turned to him now.

“There have been rumors,” the tactician said carefully, “of a world capable of moving through darkspace.”

“The world encountered by Commander Krazhmir’s reconnaissance force, during the reign of Quoreal,” Nas Choka said.

“Yes, Warmaster. I feared broaching the subject with you, because—”

Nas Choka silenced him with a motion of his hand.

He had been a mere commander at the time, but loyal to Domain Jamaane—Shimrra’s domain—and one of a group of high-ranking warriors who had helped Shimrra wrest power from his predecessor, putting to death many of Quoreal’s warriors and intendant supporters. Regardless, rumors of a living planet had persisted. It was rumored further that the planet, known as Zonama Sekot, not only had warded off Zho Krazhmir’s forces, but also had been pronounced an omen of ill tidings by Quoreal’s coven of high priests.

Knowing, however, that Quoreal feared the warrior caste, the commanders loyal to Shimrra saw the priests’ pronouncement as a ruse—a subterfuge aimed at steering the worldship convoy away from the galaxy to which it had drifted, and thus avoid an invasion that would escalate the warrior caste. Quoreal had paid only lip service to the importance of sacrifice and war, without ever recognizing that the deterioration of Yuuzhan Vong society owed in large part to their absence. But Shimrra knew better. He understood that the warriors
needed
a war, lest they go on killing themselves, and, more important, that the Yuuzhan Vong needed a home.

All well and good. But now a living world had suddenly reappeared. Nas Choka was too much of a realist to give credence to the idea of the planet being an omen of defeat, but as a strategist he had to wonder: if it was the same world that had defended itself successfully against Zho Krazhmir, then Zonama Sekot had had an additional
fifty standard years
during which to become a weapon unlike any the Yuuzhan Vong had ever faced.

“Warmaster,” the tactician said, “could this alleged living planet be nothing more than a fabrication of the Alliance—or, more accurately, the
Jeedai?”

Nas Choka considered it. “I would hear more of this.”

“Fearsome One, perhaps this world, this fabrication, is the secret strategy the Alliance was engineering while we readied the armada for the battle at Mon Calamari. All the rushing about, all the diversion observed at Contruum and Caluula and other worlds … Perhaps all that was executed in an attempt to divert our eye from what was being fabricated and prepared for launch?”

“Only a fool would reject the possibility out of hand, tactician,” Nas Choka said. “But suppose for a moment that it is not a fabrication but an actual living world—the source of the rumors that have endured since before the invasion began.”

The tactician frowned. “If that proves to be true, and if indeed the infidels have coaxed it to enter the war on their side, then they have perpetrated their greatest transgression yet.”

Nas Choka nodded sullenly, then took a deep breath. “Whichever the case, the Alliance waited too long to spring this surprise. With our war vessels only two jumps from Yuuzhan’tar, and additional battle groups being recalled from Hutt space and other sectors, no intruder—living or fabricated—can prevail!”

PART THREE
A TIME TO EVERY PURPOSE

The
Millennium Falcon
meandered with design through a press of large and slowly tumbling asteroids. Just short of the outer edge of the field, the freighter slipped into the shadow of an enormous hunk of cratered rock, matching velocities with it so as to remain concealed.

No sooner had the
Falcon
returned to Mon Calamari from Caluula than Han and Leia had heard from Luke and Mara. With the HoloNet crippled, and Luke and Mara transmitting from
Jade Shadow
, the conversation had been garbled and brief. Han had summarized the events that had led to the ultimately bewildering battle at Mon Calamari, and Luke had as much as said that the Jedi search party had ridden Zonama Sekot back to known space. Despite the fact that the Yuuzhan Vong armada had returned to Coruscant, Luke had assured Han and Leia that it was safe for them to join the Jedi on the living planet, and that Vergere had been correct about Zonama Sekot’s being the key to ending the war.

He promised to explain fully when they arrived.

Dismayed by what had unfolded on Caluula, Han and Leia had departed almost immediately for the Core, but not before both of them had been thoroughly examined by medical teams, and Leia had met with Alliance Chief of State Cal Omas, to acquaint him with the tragic truth about Alpha Red and what its deployment may have loosed on the galaxy. A fellow Alderaanian, Omas had been shaken by Leia’s report, and had claimed that deployment of the biological agent had been a difficult decision, born of difficult times—one that might have saved countless lives.

The Yuuzhan Vong vessel that had evaded
Errant Venture
’s, weapons at Caluula was still unaccounted for, and it was
hoped—even by some members of the Alliance’s militant factions—that the craft had died in hyperspace. Omas had given his word to Leia that the Alpha Red project would be terminated at once, but she feared that, with Dif Scaur continuing to helm the Intelligence division and the Bothans still crying for ar’krai, Omas might not be able to make good on his pledge again. At best the project would remain on hold until Alliance scientists could determine if Alpha Red had actually been responsible for the deaths of so many of Caluula’s winged-stars and flitnats. If the bioweapon wasn’t to blame, then Alpha Red would continue to hang over everyone’s head, as if a sword suspended by a delicate thread.

That had been seven standard days ago.

With the Perlemian still under sway of the Yuuzhan Vong, Han and Leia had taken the long way to the Coruscant system, jumping the thoroughly repaired
Falcon
to Kashyyyk, Colla IV, and Commenor, then skirting the Corellian Trade Spine into the Core. At the same time, Sovv and Kre’fey had united the scattered Alliance fleets in the Mid Rim, at Contruum.

Alliance command hadn’t known what to make of the reports that had eventually reached Mon Calamari by couriers of a
planet
that had streaked from hyperspace into the Core. With no actual recordings of the event, all Sovv, Kre’fey, and the rest had to go on were the statements of resistance fighters and smugglers, and a few grainy holos of a verdant world that hadn’t been there days earlier, now orbiting in the Coruscant system. What mattered was that whatever it was that had nearly collided with Coruscant had drawn the Yuuzhan Vong armada back to the Core, along with the secondary cluster of vessels, which had turned up briefly at Contruum, only to make an abrupt departure—presumably upon learning of the newly arrived planet.

Not one of the top-ranking Alliance officers was willing to state publicly that a planet had transported itself to the Core from the far reaches of the galaxy. Privately, however, many professed a belief that the Jedi had put their heads together and collectively
moved
the planet—as they were rumored to have moved Imperial warships during an attack on Yavin 4 some twenty standard years earlier.

For days Kre’fey waited for the recalled armada to storm the mystery planet, but no attack had been launched. Resistance groups were reporting that the planet had fomented widespread fear and confusion on Yuuzhan’tar, not only among the Shamed Ones, but also among the priests and other elite. Whether or not that was the case, Warmaster Nas Choka had positioned the vessels of his mighty flotilla in broad cover of Yuuzhan’tar, apparently while Supreme Overlord Shimrra made up his mind about what to do.