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“We’ll have no complaints from you, Artoo. If Captain Solo wants us to remain on the ship rather than accompany him into the Well of the World Brain, the least we can do is—”

R2-D2 razzed loudly.

C-3PO straightened in a huff. “Never satisfied.”

“All right, you two, quit arguing,” Han said. “Forget the mess. Just keep the ship warmed up and stick close to the comlink.”

Han extended the landing ramp, which didn’t drop far before hitting solid ground.

“Once we are inside the Well, we will be safe from ambushes by warriors,” Harrar said. “But whatever you do between here and there, Han Solo, you must not kill the shaper. We will need his or her scent markers to get us safely into the Well. I know certain things about the brain, but not enough to incapacitate it.”

Han passed out thermal charges to the Noghri, then clipped two onto his own belt. “Just in case we have any trouble persuading it to surrender.”

Leia activated her lightsaber and narrowed her eyes. “And I promised I’d never set foot in the Senate again.”

Han nodded at her. “We’ve all had to break promises we made to ourselves.”

The five of them hurried down the angled ramp and through the slowly sealing breach the concussion missiles had blown in the thick hatch sphincter. The hideously torn membrane opened onto a vast, dimly lit cavern of yorik coral. Han scarcely had time to look around, when fifty or more warriors armed with amphistaffs poured from a narrow corridor in the curved wall opposite the hatch.

Someone shouted commands in Yuuzhan Vong that needed no translation.

A flock of whizzing bugs and hurled amphistaffs flew for the Falcon’s company.

“I thought you said there wouldn’t be warriors inside the Well!” Han yelled as he and the Noghri were ducking and triggering blaster rounds.

“This isn’t the Well,” the priest said. “This is merely the atrium!”

Batting aside thud and razor bugs, Leia led the retreat. They backed through the iris hatch, firing at their pursuers without aiming. Stumbling into the plaza, they raced for the Falcon, only to find her completely enclosed by the thorned hedge.

Despite the impetus that the Prophet’s rallying cry had given the heretics, the counteroffensive was not going well. Caught in a violent storm, the Shamed Ones and their newfound allies were being sliced to pieces by coufees, knocked unconscious by thud bugs, slashed and split by amphistaffs. Nom Anor himself was bloodied, slipping on hailstones and his own black flow as he fought with coufee in one hand, amphistaff in the other. The now-drenched throng of would-be insurgents had managed to fight their way out of the Place of Hierarchy, but Shimrra’s avengers were attempting to herd them toward the Place of Bones. If the warriors succeeded in trapping them in the sunken amphitheater, there would be no escape, no hope.

Nom Anor was trading strikes and stabs with a warrior a head taller than himself when he heard the clamor of running feet and raised voices. When the warrior turned in the direction of the commotion, Nom Anor availed himself of the moment of distraction to send the point of his amphistaff through his opponent’s right eye. All around him other warriors were beginning to add their voices to the tumult and to press the attack.

Reinforcements, Nom Anor told himself bitterly.

The heretics would be lucky now if they even made it to the Place of Bones. Unexpectedly, though, the war cries of the Citadel guard began to fade, and the crowd was pushed back toward the Place of Hierarchy. It was the heretics who were being reinforced!

Nom Anor was suddenly inflamed.

If every cell of Shamed Ones could find the courage to rise up, there was a chance, though slim, that the heretics would yet win the day. His conviction surged as the reports of stun and flash grenades began to echo and rebound from the walls of the temples and the dormitories of the intendants. Hundreds were instantly flattened to the saturated ground. Then blaster bolts rang out.

Resistance fighters and Alliance commandos! Nom Anor realized.

It was the