Han fired. His shot hit the attacker’s armor just under the armpit, staggering him but not penetrating.
At the same moment, Jacen hurled his lightsaber. It spun in flight, catching the attacker as he was still offbalance from Han’s shot, crossing him at knee level, and severing both legs at the joint.
Jacen put on a burst of Force-augmented speed, leaving his father behind, and kept the lightsaber spinning in the air just outside the suite’s door. There were more flashes of light from that chamber, more small-arms fire, and he took the last two steps with a sinking feeling.
He snatched the hilt of his spinning lightsaber out of the air and stepped into the doorway.
The room was on fire. No, that wasn’t quite right-three members of the Corellian security detail were on fire, their bodies burning briskly, smoke also curling up from their blasters. Oddly, the chamber’s fire alert had not activated.
There were three bodies on the ground that weren’t smoking; they were black-clad intruders. The burn marks on their heads attested to the accurate fire of the dead CorSec officers.
One of the interior doors was gone, wrenched free, the frame scorched by the power of the intruders’ blaster rifles. In the doorway stood Wedge Antilles, dressed in his shorts and ancient Rebel Alliance shirt, a blaster in his hand. He looked Jacen in the eye and shook his head, a sorrowful gesture.
Jacen entered and moved past Wedge. On the floor of the sumptuous bedchamber beyond lay Five World Prime Minister Aidel Saxan, a burned-edge hole the size of a dinner plate passing entirely through her torso, residual charring masking any expression she might have been wearing when she died.
Leia sped faster as she neared the door to the main Coruscant delegation quarters. Those doors were open, and she could hear blasterfire from beyond them. As she reached the doorway, she dropped the speed burst and stopped with the abruptness of a Toydarian junk merchant flying over a credit.
The chamber beyond, an antechamber providing access to a variety of bedchambers and function rooms, was filled with smoke and bodies. Three of the downed combatants were black-armored intruders. Several were GA security. One, on the far side of the room, sitting half upright, was an elderly man in an admiral’s uniform. His head, neck, and the top portion of his chest were missing, the edges of what remained blackened by high energy. A huge hole in the wall above, centered at the two-meter level, showed where the upper reaches of his body had been when the blast had hit.
Nearer, a fourth black-armored intruder was sprawled on the floor, his blaster rifle a meter beyond his reach; he struggled to rise, but another GA-uniformed officer straddled his body, gripping his helmet by the faceplate. As the intruder continued to struggle, the officer brought a small blaster pistol up to the back of his neck and fired down, through the spine. The attacker jerked and lay still.
The officer became aware that someone was standing behind him. He spun and aimed, and as he turned Leia recognized him as Tycho Celchu. The old pilot’s friend-or-foe recognition was still incredibly quick-he brought his aim off Leia even as she raised her blade to deflect a possible shot.
Leia looked past him to the body against the wall. “Oh, no,” she said. “Not Pellaeon.”
Tycho shook his head. “Not Pellaeon.”
“My double.” The voice came from a shadowy doorway; its door was opened, not destroyed. From it stepped the old admiral, dressed in a dark robe, a blaster rifle in his hands. He looked sorrowful as he gazed at the man who had died in his stead; even his bristly mustache seemed to droop.
Tycho asked, “Is Han-“
“He’s fine,” Leia said. “Han shot first.”
There was no more blasterfire to be heard; the loudest noises were the hum of Leia’s lightsaber and the crackling of flames from some of the bodies. Leia switched her weapon off and it was even quieter. “Let’s find out how bad the damage is,” she said.
“He looked at me,” Luke said, “foamed at the mouth, and fell dead.”
“The one Jacen crippled did the same thing,” Wedge said.
“I saw foam on the lips of several of them,” Pellaeon added.
They were crowded into a lounge near the Solo suite-representatives of both diplomatic parties, all the Jedi, and a few of Toryaz Station’s security officers.
One of them, Lieutenant Yorvin, a reed-thin woman with hair a rustier red than Mara’s, decided to straighten things out. “We need to start taking statements immediately,” she said, “as soon as we can set up our truth analyzers. I’ll be requesting a judge come up from Kuat to help with the officiating. My lord Solo”-she gestured at Han-“I’ll need you to surrender your blaster. You’re in the company of the envoys again.”