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Nom Anor railed and shook his fists at the smoke- and ember-filled sky.

I should have killed you when I had the chance!

He struggled to his feet, his expression growing more grave with every centimeter of elevation. His fists were balled, and his one eye blazed. His near-lipless mouth was drawn back, and his muscles were bunched under his thin garments. His sloped forehead was as inflamed as the city itself.

He stiffened his arm, catching in the windpipe a warrior too distracted by bloodlust to see the blow coming. The warrior fell to the steps gurgling, clutching his throat, eyes squeezed tight in pain. Nom Anor summoned the warrior’s amphistaff to come to him, and with one strike put the choking soldier out of his misery. He descended the broad staircase in a stupor, shucking out of the green robe and turban that identified him as an intendant. At the foot of the broad stairs he grabbed the tattered robeskin of a slain Shamed One and, donning it, began to shoulder his way into the Place of Hierarchy, ignoring the bloodshed occurring on all sides and aiming for a tall rubble pile at the center of the square. Short of the pile, a warrior rushed him, forcing him to step back and fight, amphistaff against amphistaff. Parrying two blows, Nom Anor ducked down and slashed his opponent across the knees; then rose, bringing the sharp end of the serpentine weapon diagonally across the warrior’s face. The warrior screamed and raised his hands, and Nom Anor speared him through the neck.

With bodies falling all around him, he scrambled up the pile. There, alone at the summit, he loosed a bloodcurdling scream and raised the arm around which the living weapon was curled.

“I am Yu’shaa, the Prophet!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. “Our hour is at hand! I will lead you to victory!”

A long moment of stunned silence fell over the Place of Hierarchy. Then a roar went up from the oppressed, and they surged against the warriors, crude weapons cleaving, black blood streaming and misting into the air, fiery embers cycloning about them like a sacrament from the gods!

From one hundred thousand kilometers out, Coruscant was a vortex of destruction, lanced from all directions by turbolaser bolts, mottled by yawning dovin basal singularities, lit from within by flaring explosions.

“This party’s just the way we left it,” Han said as the Falcon streaked for the embattled galactic center.

“I missed that one, Dad,” Jaina said flatly from the copilot’s chair.

“Me, too,” Jacen said from behind her. Peripherally, Han saw his son glance at the Yuuzhan Vong priest in the adjacent chair. “Harrar and I were on a worldship over Myrkr.”

Regretting his facile statement, Han went back to attending to the Falcon’s instruments.

The fall of Coruscant had been among the worst days of his life—almost as horrible as when Chewbacca had died at Sernpidal. The images of the evacuation were burned into his memory: Yuuzhan Vong hurling themselves and hostages against the planetary shields, a steady rain of flaming spacecraft, he and Leia trying to flee Eastport with baby Ben, C-3PO, a YVH droid, and a potted ladalum … Their escape sabotaged at the Falcon’s docking bay by a disguised Senator Viqi Shesh and an innocent twelve-year-old kid named Dab Hantaq—Tarc—who happened to bear a likeness to young Anakin.

The death of Adarakh, Leia’s bodyguard, at Shesh’s hand.

The sky dazzled by plasma balls.

Towers crumbling, people stampeding for the few starliners and government yachts that remained on the surface …

And light-years away at the Inner Rim world of Myrkr, Anakin dying, Jaina fleeing in a stolen enemy ship, Jacen in the clutches of Vergere—captured or rescued, depending on how you looked at it. Han squeezed his eyes shut in recalled despair.

“Party,” Harrar said abruptly. “Many of our warriors use that term to describe combat engagements. You have the makings of a Supreme Commander, Han Solo.”

Han laughed shortly, recalling that Jacen had said that the priest was fascinated with him. “Thanks for