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The third attendant flicked her huge drum in a slow, inexorable beat. The other two raised clawless hands and plucked their creatures’ taut tendons. An eerie, atonal music filled the room.

The priestess lowered her arms. Out of one sleeve slithered a black amphistaff. From the other sleeve, one of the furry, red coil creatures rolled down her other arm. It tightened around her wrist.

Leia had seen something exactly like it, looped like a garrote around Abbela Oldsong’s throat. She pulled a deep breath, using the Force to stay calm.

“I would be glad to serve you as an interpreter,” she insisted. “You need a translator for more than just language and words. Someone who understands idiom. Your earworms obviously can’t—”

“Silence,” he ordered. “You mistake my intention.”

The priestess glanced at him sharply.

The warmaster stepped toward Leia. “My watchers tell us that someone is trying to enter this built-thing. One of your kind, a Jeedai.”

Jaina? Leia thought frantically. Jacen? Get out of here, get to the Falcon!

Or could it possibly be Luke?

He nodded curtly toward the priestess. “We have seen how your people flock to the injured like carrion flies, hoping to feed your dreams of immortality by rescuing each other. You will be honored to serve the gods by suffering. Your screams should lure the other one to me.”

“Stop,” she said, backing away, refusing to understand. “Think about this. If you kill me, I can’t help you any longer.”

He stood between her and the window, but there was just a chance she could get past him. And jump. And use the Force to land softly. And lead them away from whoever else had gotten into the building. It’s a trap, Jaina! She flung that thought out into the Force. Get away!

The warmaster stepped away from the window.

A massive tan object lashed at him. Randa’s powerful tail, unrestrained by the guards or their creatures, whipped the amphistaffs out of two guards’ hands, then lashed again toward the warmaster.

“Run, Ambassador!” he thundered. “I have my wish, after all!”

The gaunt priestess plucked the ropy red creature off her wrist and swung it over her head. Leia rushed Nom Anor, scrabbling with her fingertips for her lightsaber, still tucked in his belt. She wouldn’t get far without that.

The priestess launched her rope. In flight, it stretched out to twice its former length. It struck the Hutt’s neck and wrapped around like a whip. Randa lashed at the warmaster’s guards with his mighty tail. They ducked out of range.

Leia drove Nom Anor against a wall, wrestling to unhook her lightsaber with her claw-contained hands. His nails raked her arms. She hit the activation stud, extending the ruby-red blade. It barely missed the Yuuzhan Vong’s foot, burning a hole in the duracrete flooring.

Powerful hands wrenched her away, piercing her arms with knifelike claws. The warmaster’s guards dragged her off her treacherous researcher.

In the middle of her office floor, Randa lashed and quivered, fighting the tightening cord with his neck muscles. “Leia,” he gasped. “Betrayed you … it’s … my nature … I’m … sorry …”

The priestess’s drummer beat a crescendo. The garrote creature tightened again. Randa’s huge eyes bulged.

Leia struggled uselessly against her guards. Those close to Randa now had dented and gouged battle armor.

The warmaster stepped around her massive desk, kicked the Hutt’s motionless tail, then ordered his guards, “Take it to the kitchens.”

Four of them dragged the huge body away. If Randa had been older and heftier, they probably couldn’t have budged him, but their physical prowess was staggering.

Nom Anor fiddled with the handgrip of her deactivated lightsaber. “We will study this abomination,” he told her, brandishing it. “We will take it down to small pieces and improve our defenses against it.”

He thrust it back into his belt.

The remaining guard, the priestess, and her musicians formed a circle around Leia.

Get away, get away, get away. She thought it at the Yuuzhan Vong, at Jacen, at Jaina—at Han, hopefully in the Falcon by