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“That would explain why no one’s been able to communicate with Sekot,” Kyp said. “The planet’s already poisoned.”

“Then the war is lost for everyone.”

Kyp gritted his teeth. “I’m not about to see another world die, Corran.”

“You and me both.”

FORTY

The final curve of the Citadel stairway terminated in a immense interior space with a convex ceiling of yorik coral as jagged as the hulls of Yuuzhan Vong war vessels. A wide circular aperture at the ceiling’s lowest point was the mouth of the turbolift analog chute Jacen had detected with his Vong-sense. Bioluminescent wall lichen projected a pool of green on the floor directly below the opening. Jacen was certain that the chute accessed the crown of Shimrra’s holy mountain, but the dovin basal that controlled the chute was either malfunctioning or refusing to admit anyone other than Yuuzhan Vong, because nothing happened when Luke positioned himself in the shaft of olive light.

“I guess we climb,” he told his niece and nephew.

Abandoning the watch for Yuuzhan Vong warriors, they turned to see Luke spring high into the chute. At the apex of his leap he pressed his back to the curved wall and his feet opposite. Then he began to chimney himself along.

Jaina and Jacen followed, recognizing that they were in some sense leaving the Citadel itself and entering an enormous escape vessel, much like the one Jacen had described as encompassing the World Brain. Ascending through an outer shell of yorik coral, they passed through a layer of metal-bearing nacelles, wrapped around the vigorous organisms that had created them. Next came a layer of nutrient capillaries, then one of musculature and tendons. Ultimately they emerged in an antechamber with a vaulted ceiling and great curving walls, the innermost of which contained a large but unadorned osmotic membrane.

Jacen wasn’t surprised to find the antechamber unoccupied. “Shimrra’s expecting us,” he said.

Jaina tightened her ringed grip on the pommel of her light-saber.

“We should at least announce ourselves,” Luke said.

He aimed the tip of his lightsaber at the membrane. Jacen and Jaina brought their lightsabers close to his, and the three of them pushed the glowing blades through. A rancid smell permeated the antechamber, and the thick membrane began to melt. Finally the lock retracted with an audible pop!

Luke gestured for Jaina and Jacen to withdraw to either side of the opening, and not a second later a shower of thud bugs whizzed out into the antechamber, caroming off the walls, ceiling, and floor. The three Jedi raised their blades, deflecting some of the winged creatures back through the portal, stunning others, and killing the few that remained.

While Jaina was dispatching the last of them, Luke whirled and leapt through the opening. Landing in a crouch five meters from the membrane, he held the lightsaber in a one-handed grip extended to his right and slightly behind him. Jacen was the next through, assuming a bent-legged forward stance, with his blade held straight out in front of him. Then Jaina came through, moving swiftly but vigilantly to Luke’s left side, with her blade raised over her right shoulder.

Though the floor was level, the walls of Shimrra’s circular, high-ceilinged lair were curved. A simple throne occupied the center of a raised dais that was encircled by a shallow moat flowing with what might have been diluted Yuuzhan Vong blood. The far wall contained a much more elaborate entry portal, and to the right of the throne a stairway climbed into the summit of the Citadel, presumably to the command and control areas of the escape vessel itself.

Between the moat and the Jedi stood fifteen warriors of modest stature, arrayed in a semicircle and armed with hissing amphistaffs. They affected no armor, but their burnished and blood-smeared flesh looked as impenetrable as vonduun crab topshells.

Luke recognized them from Han and Leia’s description as examples of the specially engineered warriors they had faced on Caluula, and against whom