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Without warning, the YT veered sharply. Only the copilot chair's safety harness kept Reeze from landing in Jadak's lap. Status indicators flashed on the console, and another chorus of alarms filled the cockpit.

“Port braking thruster's taken a bad hit,” Jadak said as he brought the YT back on course. “We'll check it out when we set down.”

Reeze snugged the harness. “The eternal optimist.”

“Someone in this cockpit's gotta be.”

With half of the warship's mass lost to space, whoever had the controls was managing to keep the truncated forward portion on track for a controlled crash, probably on one of the old hardened landing strips in the government district. Repulsors howling, the YT continued to follow it down, shedding altitude and velocity. But with only twenty kilometers to go, icons began to paint the threat screen and proximity alarms wailed. Jadak saw flights of ships screaming up the well to render aid to the Invisible Hand.

“Fireships,” Reeze said. “Couple of clone fighters, too.”

“Time to make ourselves scarce.”

“We've got that authorization code—”

“Better save it for when we really need it. Switch us over to terrain-following.”

“Quick circumnavigation?”

“No time for that.”

Jadak consulted the topographic display then banked out of the warship's wake, main thrusters protesting and intense waves of heat assaulting them. Two of the clone fighters gave chase but ultimately peeled away to rejoin the Invisible Hand, which was fast approaching the landing strip.

The YT slewed west over the spaceport tower and the Jedi Temple, then out over The Works, through columns of oily black smoke billowing from crash craters and fires that had spread into some of the outlying districts.

“Looks like the alien sectors took the brunt of it,” Reeze said.

“A lot of folks have been trying to get rid of those slums for decades.”

“Grievous in league with the urban renewal lobbyists?”

“Why not?”

Jadak had never seen the striated airlanes so empty. But in among the emergency vehicles and police cruisers were clone-piloted ARC-170s on the prowl for intruders until martial law was lifted. In the time it took to bring the YT about, several of the fighters had taken an interest in the freighter.

“About twenty gun emplacements have us in target lock,” Reeze said.

“Open the comm.”

“YT-Thirteen-hundred,” someone said over the subspace comm. “Identify yourself and state your destination.”

“Stellar Envoy out of Ralltiir,” Jadak said toward the microphone. “Destination is the Senate Annex.”

“The Senate is restricted airspace. If you've an authorization code, transmit it now, or turn about. Failure to comply will be met with lethal force.”

Jadak nodded to Reeze. “Go ahead.”

Reeze swiveled his chair and punched a code into the comm board.

“Transmitting authorization.”

“Stellar Envoy,” the same voice said a moment later, “you are cleared for the Senate Building.”

CLIMBING THROUGH THE LOW-LEVEL TRAFFIC LINES, THE STELLAR Envoy banked broadly as she approached the governmental district, which was delineated from the surrounding urban sprawl by a kilometers-deep canyon that encircled it like a moat. Some of Coruscant's most majestic towers ringed the area, rising like sandstone spires eroded over eons by wind and rain. Even deeper canyons radiated from the vaunted circle, and it was from one of these that the YT emerged, the dome of the Senate Annex dominating the foreground, the squat mushroom that housed the Senate Rotunda looming behind.

Just ahead of the Stellar Envoy and veering gently toward one of the annex's open-air upper-tier landing berths flew a blunt-nosed Senate speeder bus, trimmed in muted purple. The YT continued to ascend until she came even with the base of the annex, then leveled out and aimed for one of the minimal berths in the dome's lowest tier.

Jadak engaged the braking thrusters and repulsors, but the ship came down hard on her port-side landing gear despite his best efforts.

“We've gotta repair that