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Nom Anor charged into the brawl, slashing throats and hamstrings. Overwhelmed, the warriors fought brutally and valiantly, but more and more of them were falling and being trampled underfoot. Nom Anor was in the thick of things when new sounds drew his attention and he froze in surprise and dread.

Snap-hiss! Thrummm …

He risked a sideways glance to discover three Jedi, parrying and slashing with their lightsabers. Worse, one of them was Mara Jade Skywalker. The very Jedi who had fallen victim to Nom Anor’s coomb spores so long ago, now fighting all but alongside of him. Not far away from the red-golden-haired Skywalker was Tahiri Veila, the Jedi who had almost been shaped into a Yuuzhan Vong, and with whom Nom Anor had fought and escaped from on Zonama Sekot. And beside Tahiri, a tall, older male Jedi whom Nom Anor didn’t recognize.

He tried to conceal himself by wading deeper into the battle, but the conflict was too frenzied for him to make any headway. He began to angle toward the northwest entrance to the Place of Hierarchy, but there, too, he was rapidly hemmed in by clashing warriors and heretics. No matter which direction he attempted to move, he wound up being pushed inexorably closer to the two Jedi women.

Whirling, he slit the throat of a Shamed One and placed himself where the gushing blood could wash over his face. He found a sodden turban on the ground and pulled it down over his forehead, only to have it unwind and flop uselessly over his shoulders. He cursed himself for not having thought to carry an ooglith masquer with him.

A group of enraged warriors made a sudden sally, forcing the heretics away from the Place of Hierarchy and out into the broad boulevard that ran north to the Citadel. Again Nom Anor heard the distinctive thrum of a lightsaber, and shortly found himself pressed shoulder to shoulder with youthful Tahiri, who was shouting alternately in Basic and Yuuzhan Vong as her blue blade deflected overhead strikes from amphistaffs and lateral swipes from coufees.

Nom Anor’s attempts to squirm away were in vain. He turned his back at the same time the Jedi did, but surges in the crowd kept shoving them hard into each other. All at once, Nom Anor could feel small Tahiri’s body tense against his.

He pivoted in time to see Tahiri throw up her hands in some sort of Force gesture, and a dozen warriors hit the ground as if struck by a swarm of invisible thud bugs. A Force Wall! Nom Anor thought. Tahiri used her Jedi powers a second time to create an even wider circle of clear space, then whirled and grabbed Nom Anor by the arm, spinning him around to face her, her eyes already wide with discovery.

Sending his amphistaff flying with a Force command, she immobilized him by clutching the yoke of his robeskin. Then she turned and gesticulated toward her fellow Jedi.

“Mara, I have Nom Anor!”

Over the heads of combatants, through the hail, misted blood, and forest of flailing arms, Nom Anor could see Skywalker gazing directly at him in eager peril.

Summoning his strength, Nom Anor slashed upward with his coufee, missing Tahiri by a blade but succeeding in cutting the handful of robe she had gripped. Momentum propelled him backward through a splashing somersault, and while Tahiri’s attention was momentarily diverted, he shoved a wounded Shamed One at her feet. Crawling a sinuous and puddled path between the legs of warriors and heretics, he ultimately reached the northern edge of the Place of Hierarchy. There, where the crowd was thinner, he elbowed his way through a cluster of warriors and broke fast for the stairs and freedom.

Much like Millennium Falcon, Lady Luck had in the past five years undergone an atavistic transition from pleasantly appointed family craft to war vessel. But where Han’s Falcon was as armed as it was fast, Lando’s fifty-meter-long Soro-Suub yacht relied as ever on stealth, speed, and advanced sensor arrays that allowed it to observe and scrutinize vessels at far remove. With three lasers and a reinforced hull, Talon Karrde’s Corellian transport was