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“Commander Malik Carr plans to sacrifice us to the yammosk.”

Han looked past Leia to the circular yorik coral basin that housed the creature, then beetled his eyebrows in uncertainty. “Malik Carr …”

“From the Peace Brigade convoy,” Leia said. “The one who promised Judder that … well, that something like this would happen.”

Han grimaced. “Could be worse. I mean, at least we’re away from those blasted flitnats.”

Leia shook her head at him in a tolerant manner. “It doesn’t take you long to get back into character, does it?”

“Hey, I know this role by heart.” He smiled weakly, then grew serious. “But tell me something. How come I’m supposed to be dead, and instead all I’ve got is numb lips, a sore throat, and a headache?”

“We’re not sure. But the reason has something to do with Caluula.”

“They picked the wrong planet to occupy,” Wraw said, moving toward them. His fur rippled in a kind of delight.

“Everything’s sick,” Leia went on. “Not just the winged-stars. Everything here—the warriors, the dilating membranes, even the slayers’ amphistaffs—which means that their venom is probably also weakened.”

“Slayers?”

“The enhanced warriors.”

Han nodded. “No wonder they were able to take us like they did.” His eyes snapped open, as if he had just recalled something. “Sasso. Ferfer.”

“Dead,” Leia said, almost swallowing the word.

Han hung his head, then stiffened in her embrace. “Where are our weapons?”

Leia stretched out her arm. “There.”

Han followed her forefinger to where the weapons had been dumped in a heap on the far side of the chamber, close to where half a dozen Yuuzhan Vong guards were either dozing or passed out. Every weapon, including the two light-sabers, was smeared with red blood, perhaps fresh from Sasso and Ferfer.

“If this blorash keeps liquefying at the same rate,” Leia said, “we should be free in no time.”

She barely got the sentence out when Malik Carr shuffled into the chamber, accompanied by two ordinary warriors and a priest. The six sleeping warriors woke up and attempted to come to attention, but most of them were too weak to stand, let alone snap their fists in salute.

Their amphistaffs sprawled sluggishly beside them.

“Stay where you are,” Carr commanded, as the pair of warriors who braced him lowered him to a shallow step that encircled the yammosk basin. Seeming to sense the commander, the yammosk itself stirred, extending two tentacles over the rim of the basin and resting the tips on Carr’s horned shoulders. The tentacles were a sickly shade of green and covered with large blisters. Carr caressed one of them.

Breathing laboriously, the priest picked up one of the military blasters and handed it to Carr, who, with some effort, squeezed off a bolt into the domed ceiling.

“Still functioning—as you appear to be,” he said in Basic, gazing at his captives. His filmed eyes focused on Page. “And I thought Selvaris a terrible place. You’ve no obligation to tell me, Captain, but what is it that is peculiar to this cursed world that has brought illness and death on us?”

Page shook his head in ignorance. “Maybe the insects we call winged-stars. But a lot of the ones we saw were also dead or dying. So are Caluula’s flitnats.”

“Something about their deaths, then,” Carr mused. “If it’s true, Captain, then you will have a powerful weapon to use against us. Although I heard rumor of one such weapon that affected our warriors on Garqi.”

“Pollen,” Wraw answered for Page. “The product of a semisentient tree from a world you destroyed. Ithor.”

Carr struggled to make sense of it. “Is there some relationship between those trees and the winged-star insects?”

“No,” Meloque said.

Carr inhaled raggedly. “I’m dying,” he said in disbelief. “Neither in battle nor honorably, but of disease. Life turned against other life. It is something unknown to us, because we are symbiotic with all life—our biots, our weapons, our foodstuffs … We don’t die of disease, or of starvation. Many of us live three times as long