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Corran squared off with him, presenting his left flank for attack. He held the lightsaber’s hilt up near his right ear, with the blade pointing straight forward. He leveled it at the Vong’s eyes, then gave the alien a nod. “You want me, come get me.”

The Yuuzhan Vong took a step forward, and Corran cranked his right wrist around. The throttle assembly twisted, swapping a diamond for an emerald in the lightsaber’s interior assembly. The energy beam narrowed and went from silver to purple, then more than doubled in length. The blade’s tip stabbed deep through the younger Vong’s left eye socket.

The Yuuzhan Vong jerked and bounced as his limbs snapped straight. He fell back, slipping from the blade’s tip, with smoke rising from his skull. He clattered to the shell floor, his limp limbs rebounding from the hard surface, then he twitched once and lay still.

And Ganner ridiculed me for having an old-style, dual-phase lightsaber. Corran returned the blade to its normal length and nodded to the elder Yuuzhan Vong. “He was too eager. I knew I could use that trick once, and only with him.” The Jedi sincerely doubted the alien warrior understood what he’d said, but clearly the tone of his voice had conveyed some sort of message.

The elder Yuuzhan Vong moved down the steps with a fluid gait that was not hurried. He did not waste the effort to twirl his amphistaff, but instead held it in two hands, high right, low left, ready to fend off any long-bladed strike at his eyes. The leathery joints on his armor creaked as he moved, slowly circling. Hungry eyes watched Corran and seemed to take note of the fluid dripping from his left wrist when the Jedi let the arm hang at his side.

The elder Yuuzhan Vong stopped and set himself. He pulled both hands up above his head. The amphistaff straightened itself into a spear, with its head flattening out into a thin blade. Corran crouched low, making himself a small target, with his lightsaber held in both hands. The sizzling silver beam splashed bright highlights over the Vong’s armor.

They waited.

Corran could not sense the Yuuzhan Vong through the Force, and the magnificence of the Vong warrior challenged his physical senses as well. All the other activity outside the shell vanished as Corran focused on his enemy. Despite all their differences—their nature, their origins—the two of them were shaped in the same mold. The Yuuzhan Vong had killed people Corran claimed as his own, and vice versa. Both of them were trained warriors now facing a skilled foe. Only one of them would walk away at best.

Corran suspected he would not be the one. Images of his wife and children surfaced in his brain. He made himself remember them laughing and smiling. He refused to allow images of them grieving to enter his mind. If I am going to be lost to them and they to me, I want good memories, not bad.

He wondered if the Yuuzhan Vong warrior was thinking the same thing, and then the Vong attacked. He slashed low and to the right. Corran parried, then lunged with his hissing blade. The Vong slipped to the right, trailing smoke from where the blade caught the armor over his right hip, then he slashed back with his amphistaff. The tip caught Corran on the right thigh, slicing through clothes and flesh, spraying blood up onto the walls.

Corran whirled, shunting the pain aside, then darted in and slashed twice at the Yuuzhan Vong’s right flank. The Vong brought the amphistaff across in a vertical block and then, with a twist of his left wrist, powered the lightsaber blade up and around. Corran cocked his wrists, bringing the blade back so it almost touched the crown of his head, then lashed forward with it. The lightsaber sparked off the armor on the Vong’s right shoulder.

The Yuuzhan Vong spun away from a cut at his neck, then continued the spin and slashed with a backhanded cut at Corran’s knees. The Jedi leapt above it, then sliced down at the Vong’s left elbow as it flashed past. The silver blade pierced the leathery joint