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Bleeding from the nose and mouth, with his left eye slowly swelling shut, Jacen regained his feet. He extended his right hand, drawing his lightsaber to it, and in a second, thumbed the green blade to life. “That thing, that vehicle, must have been a warmaster, a command and control center. The slaves have gone mad.”

All around them the reptoids swarmed over the ramparts. Many had dropped their weapons and howled, tearing at the nearest target with their claws and teeth. They did not limit their assaults to Bril’nilim’s troopers, but attacked each other. It seemed less a military force than a swarm of insects pouring into the camp.

The two young Jedi moved into the flow of the reptoids. Anakin slashed right and left, cutting down Yuuzhan Vong soldiers as he went. With Jacen, he angled over to the right, clearing a path to several of Bril’nilim’s troopers who had become trapped. With them in tow, they fought their way deeper into the refugee camp. Ahead of them from where the refugees had gathered, blaster fire sounded. Anakin could see errant bolts flying off in all directions, which suggested to him some confusion among the volunteers defending the refugees.

Above them the Impervious swooped and poured gouts of fire into the massed soldiery. Smaller blaster bolts thinned the ranks between the Jedi and the refugees. Jacen and Anakin darted forward, using their lightsabers to redirect blaster bolts away from the troopers coming with them and at reptoids. They broke into the refugee compound and fended off more reptoids, but those that had gotten through had already wrought havoc.

Blaster-burnt reptoid bodies lay everywhere, splashed with the blood of their victims. Children lay broken, and men and women stared sightlessly up at the bellies of the freighters beneath which they’d huddled. Moans and screams filled the area, sparked by the whine of blaster bolts or the sight of another reptoid face.

Leia ran to her sons, and Anakin saw she’d been wounded. “Mom, you’re hurt.”

“Not that badly. Elegos says the second half of the Yuuzhan Vong host is still coming. Luke can’t deal with the other vehicle. The torpedoes bought us some time, though.” She pointed at the freighters. “We have to get everyone aboard and out of here as fast as we can. We have to leave Dantooine.”

Jacen frowned. “But there wasn’t enough food for a run to another system before, and we’ve been here for days . . .”

Anakin looked around. “Not as many mouths to feed anymore.”

His older brother hesitated for a moment. “Oh.”

“It doesn’t matter, boys.” Leia clapped them on the shoulders. “Get started rounding people up. Get them to move. We’ve precious little time before we all die.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

Jaina Solo rolled her X-wing to port and leveled out for a ground-attack strafing run. Sparky switched her targeting controls over to ground-attack mode, which superimposed a targeting grid over her view of the ground. On the secondary monitor the sensors calculated the number of life signs found in each square of the grid and then colored those squares. The brightest colors meant they had the highest concentrations of life. The heads-up display likewise added these colors to the grid it displayed, but in muted tones so the pilot could still see the ground.

Jaina ruddered her X-wing around and hit the flicker trigger for the lasers. Hundreds of laser splinters shot through the night, lancing down toward the Yuuzhan Vong soldiers climbing up out of the pit the proton torpedoes had created. Some of the splinters hit nothing, others ricocheted into the air after touching armor, but most stabbed through reptoids, killing them instantly.

She pulled up, trying to climb her X-wing above the sensation of life-forms dying, but their pain and despair clung to her like mud to a boot. She detested having to slaughter so many individuals, but she also knew she had no choice. These reptoids were coming on in good order, and from the chaos that marked the