Star Wars_ The New Jedi Order 21_ The Unifying Force - James Luceno [144]
Had Shimrra concocted the story only to rally the warriors and priests, and ensure that the Yuuzhan Vong die in a blaze of glory? Or had Nom Anor underestimated the Supreme Overlord yet again? Was he even more brilliant than he had first seemed on usurping the throne?
“Zonama Sekot is a death star,” Shimrra was saying. He aimed his amphistaff at Nas Choka and his Supreme Commanders “Fly to it, Warmaster! Take your mighty armada to Zonama Sekot, and make clear to the gods the unflinching resolve of the Yuuzhan Vong!”
What does the Force want for the Yuuzhan Vong?
The question echoed in Jacen’s mind long after he had returned to the hollow that had become his haunt on Zonama Sekot.
He drew his lightsaber from his cloth belt, activated the green blade, and waved it through the brisk air. Unnerved by the thrumming sound, birds perched in the surrounding boras took to the pale blue sky.
Jacen stood with his feet parallel, right foot forward, carrying his weight on the balls of his feet, then springing off his rear foot in attack. On the slope of the hill, he spread his feet wider, and angled them to one another. He swung the blade without ducking or flinching, bobbing or weaving, assuming an ideal attitude as he glided forward in uninterrupted motion, or took short steps with each foot to maintain his focus and equilibrium.
He held the pommel at middle guard, slightly in front of his stomach, with the tip angled up at thirty degrees, and worked through several velocity and dulon sequences. Then, lowering the tip as if to point at an opponent’s knees, he slashed diagonally upward. He raised the lightsaber over his head, handle pointed to his imaginary opponent’s eyes—critically angled for a Yuuzhan Vong—and slashed downward. Elbows pointed to the ground, he held the lightsaber upright, over his right shoulder and alongside his head, then spun through a series of jung attacks and jung ma parries. Finally he held the lightsaber low on his right side, with the blade pointing at the ground behind him, and performed a sweeping upward diagonal. Front-flipping high into the air to the edge of the pool, he threw himself through Forceassisted rolls and full-circle whirls, shooting to his feet to execute rotating side strokes and short twisting wrist snaps until his breath came fast and sweat dripped from his face.
Sensing, then, that someone was watching him, he deactivated the blade in sudden self-consciousness. He sighed and sat down. He was a decent lightsaber master and sai acrobat, but nowhere near as skilled as Luke, Kyp, Mara, Corran—or Anakin.
His heart just wasn’t in it.
As he stared at the hilt of his lightsaber, his thoughts began to spiral back three years, to the planet Duro, and the vision he had had returned to him, as if no time had passed.
One moment he was working alongside a group of Ryn refugees, and the next he was falling backward into a vacuum. Hearing Luke calling to him, he pivoted to see his uncle robed in pure white, half turned away, holding his shimmering lightsaber in a diagonal stance, hands at hip level, point high.
Jacen shouted that Jaina had been hurt, but Luke didn’t respond to him. Luke’s attention was fixed instead on a Yuuzhan Vong warrior in rust-brown armor, who was holding an amphistaff across his body and mirroring Luke’s stance. Standing on the far side of the slowly spinning disk that held the three of them, the warrior wasn’t visible through the Force. He was simply a void—a darkness that promised death, as surely as Luke’s luminosity promised life.
The disk resolved into a spiral-armed galaxy.
Poised at the center, Luke dropped into a fighting stance, raising his lightsaber to his right shoulder, point upward, while Yuuzhan Vong warriors advanced from the darkness. Luke was steadfast, holding the center and counterweighing