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Mara’s nostril’s quivered. “You almost robbed me of any chance of having a child.”

“I know that,” he said, holding her gaze. “But am I not part of life as your infant is—part of the Force?” He gestured to himself. “I am helpless!”

Mara took another step, raising her lightsaber.

“I can help!” he screamed. “I’ve changed. You saw me leading the Shamed Ones. Just as you do, I want to see the war ended. I would have been an ally of yours already if Vergere and Jacen had agreed to take me off Coruscant in the coralcraft I had built just for that purpose. You see, Mara Skywalker? I say Coruscant. I know this world is yours. It has always been yours, and it will remain so even if we are victorious. One last chance. Let me prove myself to you.”

She brought the glowing blade of the lightsaber close to his neck, then deactivated it and clipped the handle to her belt.

The expression on Nom Anor’s face was unreadable. Clearly he hadn’t expected leniency. He recognized that his words hadn’t caused her to stay her hand—they had spilled from his mouth by rote. Something else had influenced her decision; something beyond his comprehension. For a long moment he regarded her in perplexity.

“A Yuuzhan Vong warrior would have been disgusted by my actions,” he said at last. “He would have killed me as easily as if I were a droid. And yet you didn’t find my cowardice contemptible. You let me live.”

Mara narrowed her eyes. “I don’t believe a word you said, and I’ve known from the first that you’re a coward. You’re guilty of too many crimes to list, but I won’t be your executioner. Your ultimate disposition is a matter that will be decided by others.” She gestured for him to stand up. “If you really wanted to put an end to the war, you shouldn’t have interfered at Zonama Sekot.”

“I was only trying to spare the planet,” Nom Anor said. “Even now Shimrra is out to destroy it. He believes it was given to the Jedi by the gods, as a means of testing our worthiness. He claims to have a poison capable of killing Zonama Sekot.”

A chill laddered up Mara’s spine. “What poison?”

Nom Anor heaved his shoulders in a shrug of indifference. “Something concocted by the Alliance and deployed on a world called Caluula.”

Alpha Red, Mara realized in anguish.

She grabbed Nom Anor by the shoulder and shoved him toward the closest exit from the building. “You’re going to show me you’re deserving of the extra time I’ve given you.”

Echoing the shape of the worldship Citadel, Shimrra’s coffer—his bunker in the crown of the fortress—was a huge vaulted space with polished walls and stately columns. From the eastern side of its circular floor a stairway of yorik coral spiraled into an upper level, where some said resided the controls that could launch the summit of the Citadel into space, in much the same way that the Well of the World Brain could be launched, to ensure that the Supreme Overlord and the dhuryam survived, no matter what befell the rest of the Yuuzhan Vong and their multitude of biots.

The coffer contained a throne, but Shimrra had yet to take it since entering the coffer from the lavish shaft that accessed the bunker—a dovin basal version of a turbolift. The Supreme Overlord was too restless to remain seated, too mesmerized by villip-assembled images of Yuuzhan’tar engulfed in flames; of Shamed Ones running loose in the streets; of Alliance troops locked in battle with warriors; and of fighter craft darting through the smoke-filled sky, stinging the Citadel with packets of energized light.

Shimrra’s slayer bodyguards were with him, as was Onimi, perhaps the only Shamed One on Yuuzhan’tar or any other occupied world still content to curl at the feet of the elite. A shaper doubled as a villip mistress to make certain that the Supreme Overlord didn’t miss a moment of the devastation he had called down on the planet.

“We should be rejoicing,” Shimrra was saying as he meandered about, much to the consternation of his limited audience. He gestured to Onimi, who was squatting almost possessively close to the austere throne.