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Grunting, Anakin struggled to his feet. The whole left side of his body felt curiously numb. He reached back and found that a hole had been gouged in his shoulder. He felt something hard in the hole and pulled it out.

It was a mass of cracked chiton.

His legs threatened to buckle again. The Yuuzhan Vong was advancing, weapon trained on him. All around him, Anakin could hear more enemies rushing toward him.

Oddly enough, he still didn’t feel frightened or angry. He didn’t feel much of anything, except the Force.

And a familiar presence, something not too far away. Not one presence, really, but one that was legion.

“Two can play that game,” Anakin whispered.

He dropped his weapon and held his hands up. “Nice going,” he told the Yuuzhan Vong. “You shot me in the back with a bug. Very brave.”

He could see three or four of them now, with his peripheral vision.

He hadn’t expected the warrior to answer, but he did, in Basic.

“I am Field Commander Sinan Mat. I salute your bravery, Jeedai. I must deny you the embrace of death in battle. For this I apologize.”

A little closer, Anakin thought. If they don’t mean to kill me …

“Will you fight me, Sinan Mat? Just you and me?”

“That is my desire. It cannot be. I am to bring you living to the shapers.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. And … well, I’d feel worse about this if you hadn’t shot me in the back, but … forgive me.”

Mat frowned and touched his ear. “The tizowyrm doesn’t know that word, forgive. What—” Then his eyes widened. The forest was screaming a song of death.

The piranha-beetles fell upon the Yuuzhan Vong in a cloud. Sinan Mat dropped his weapon and clawed at his face as it disintegrated beneath the fierce mandibles. The piranha-beetles didn’t spare the other Yuuzhan Vong, either, and a chorus of pain and rage rose counterpoint to the strident song of the insects.

Anakin picked up his staff and hobbled away, knowing his legs wouldn’t carry him much farther. He needed to find a place to hide.

Ten minutes later, he leaned heavily against a tree. In the distance the ravenous piranha-beetles had finished their task, and now, finally, Anakin felt his control of the Force slipping. His shoulder at last understood what had been done to it, and the pain was like burning liquid, dripping down his ribs, drooling across his chest and the side of his head. Each footstep brought a new wave of dizziness and nausea.

He tried to take another step and found he couldn’t. With a sigh, he sank down onto the moss. Just a little rest, and then—

A shadow fell across him. He looked up to find two Yuuzhan Vong warriors looking down at him, obviously not a part of the group he had just killed.

He called on all of his energy, trying to find the piranha-beetles again, but they were a distant presence and gorged now, not as easily attracted to a meal by Anakin’s will.

A third warrior appeared from the forest behind the first two. He looked different, somehow—mutilated like every other Yuuzhan Vong Anakin had seen, but he was more strikingly grotesque. Unlike the other two, this one was empty-handed.

The newcomer snarled something in his language, and the other two turned.

Anakin wondered, then, if he had slipped into a dream. The first two warriors grunted and spat words at the third. Anakin had heard the tone before—when the Yuuzhan Vong spoke of machines, or other things that they considered abominations. It was a tone of pure contempt.

For a moment the newcomer seemed to cringe beneath this abuse, but then he grinned, all needle teeth and malice. Then he slashed one of the warriors in the neck with the edge of his gloved hand. The other warrior gave a hoarse cry of outrage, lowered his amphistaff, and thrust at the attacker. The unarmed warrior caught the shaft, leapt high in the air, kicking with both feet and striking the staff-wielder in the face.

The first warrior down was coming back up, clutching his throat. The unarmed one grabbed him by the hair and drove stiffened fingers deep into his eyes, lifting him from the ground by the sockets. The warrior