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Luke sighed. “Just getting in his way.”

Kell shook his head and gained altitude. As soon as he reached rooftop level, he looped around again, back toward the ziggurat.

Nyax lay in pain at the bottom of the pit.

He’d never known what pain was before he met those three with the power. Now there was nothing but pain.

He would find them, and he would kill them. He must do so soon because he could feel his strength ebbing. No matter how much strength he drew from what lay behind the black wall, he could feel himself failing. Soon he would sleep.

He extended himself, finding the minds of every living thing his power could detect. Where a mind was strong and complex enough to hear him, to obey, he looked through that creature’s eyes.

In the first few moments, he could see only a blur of superimposed images. Then he learned to subtract some, overlap others, remap the image into a coherent one in three dimensions.

The power-wielders who had hurt him were not visible. But two chunks of coral he could not feel with his own power, big ones, were approaching him from two different directions.

His enemies had to be aboard them, hidden by whatever power they possessed to block his senses. Since they never gave up, they must be coming back after him. They had to be aboard because he would not sleep until they were dead.

He roared out his pain and sent ton after ton of rubble into the sky.

Kell lost altitude and slid to a landing on a rooftop four kilometers from the ziggurat. From here, they could see the two Vong mataloks, cruiser analogs, approaching from north and south.

Two sprays of rubble leapt from the hole in the ziggurat, each going after one of the mataloks. Nyax’s aim was getting worse; in the first few seconds of the attack, neither Vong ship took a hit.

And both fired, raining plasma projectiles as numerous as raindrops into the ziggurat.

Luke jerked as he felt his flesh burn. He looked at his arm, but no blackness appeared there, no seared flesh. It was Nyax, his pain being transmitted to all close enough to feel it, and he could see that pain reflected in the faces of Mara, Tahiri, Danni, even Kell.

Then the rubble streams hit the mataloks. They poured across the vessels, some small portions of them being swallowed by voids, the majority eating away at the yorik coral as though it were sugar. The mataloks sideslipped, desperately trying to avoid the streams of destruction, but the rubble blasts tracked them, followed them, wore them down.

A constriction in Luke’s chest, one he had been unaware of until now, suddenly loosened, vanished. “He’s dead.”

“Lord Nyax?” Face frowned back at him. “I don’t think so. Look, more rubble than ever is flying out of there.”

“Luke is right,” Mara said. Her voice had a distant quality as she tried to interpret what she felt through the Force. “Nyax is gone. But he’s imbued his surroundings with some of his hatred. Some of his last intent.”

The mataloks rose above the rubble-stream, launching a new volley of plasma before the blasts tracked them, tore into them again. In the distance, more Yuuzhan Vong capital ships raced toward the disturbance.

“It’s going to continue,” Luke said, “as long as some part of him is there. As long as some part of him can exert his will on his surroundings, and that wellspring of the Force allows it to happen. But he’s gone.” He took a deep breath. “Let’s go home.”

“Not quite yet,” Kell said. “You hear this?” He dialed up the comm board, and suddenly everyone could hear a noise—sniffing. No, sniffling. Weeping. “This is from an open comlink Face left behind for stragglers. Back where the Ugly Truth was. So someone’s there.”

“And I bet I know who,” Face said.

Viqi, leaning against the side of the airtaxi for support, finally heard the hum when its volume rose higher than the sounds of her own distress. It sounded like repulsors, and the noise floated in through the shattered viewport. She moved up to it to look.

The Ugly Truth drifted up into her view, hovering mere meters away.

Her heart lifted, then as swiftly sank. Through