"As the Yuuzhan Vong's spectacular conquests continue unchecked, Luke Skywalker, Han and Leia Solo, and Wedge Antilles are forced to destroy what they have risked their lives to create. . . . Scattering like rats before the Yuuzhan Vong's invasion of Coruscant, the panic-stricken members of the New Republic Advisory's Council pause just long enough to set up a mock defense on nearby Borleias--a transparent attempt to buy time that fools no one, least of all the Jedi. Leia and Han Solo trek from world to world to foment rebellion against the New Republic's disastrous appeasement policies. But Luke Skywalker has chosen the most dangerous assignment of all: to sneak into the Yuuzhan Vong's stronghold on Coruscant. His outrageous scheme to gain entry is either brilliant or suicidal, depending on the outcome. And bearing down swiftly on Borleias is a Vong invasion fleet, determined to destroy the galaxy's remaining defenders. . . .

Aaron Allston was the New York Times bestselling author of thirteen Star Wars novels as well as the Doc Sidhe novels, which combine 1930s-style hero-pulp fiction with Celtic myth. In addition to being a writer, he was a game designer, and in 2006 he was inducted into the Academy of Adventure Gaming Arts and Design Hall of Fame. Allston died in 2014.

One Month Ago, Pyria System: Borleias Occupation, Day 1

“A god cannot die,” Charat Kraal said. “Therefore it can have no fear of death. So who is braver, a god or a mortal?”

Charat Kraal was a pilot of the Yuuzhan Vong—humanoid, a little over two meters in height. His skin, where it was not covered by geometric tattoos, was pale, marked everywhere by the white, slightly reflective lines of old scars. Some years-ago mishap had eaten away the center of his face, eliminating even the diminutive nose common to the Yuuzhan Vong, leaving behind brown-crusted cartilage and horizontal holes into his sinus passages. His forehead angled back less dramatically than many of the Yuuzhan Vong and looked a trifle more like the forehead of a human, for which two warriors had taunted him, for which he had killed them. He disguised the trait as much as he could by yanking out the last of the hair on his head and adding skulltop tattoos that drew the eye up and back, away from the offending forehead. One day he would earn an implant that would further mask his deformity and end his problem.

He wore an ooglith cloaker, the transparent environment suit of Yuuzhan Vong pilots, over a simple warrior’s loincloth. Both garments were living creatures, engineered and bred to perform only the tasks demanded of them, to aid the Yuuzhan Vong in their pursuit of glory.

He sat in the cockpit of his coralskipper, the irregular rocklike space fighter of his kind, but he did not wear his cognition hood at the moment; the masklike creature that kept him in mental contact with his craft, that allowed him to sense with its senses and pilot it with the agility of thought rather than muscle and reaction, was set to the side while his coralskipper cruised on routine patrol.

He and his mission partner, Penzak Kraal, were in distant orbit above the world Borleias. The planet had been recently seized from the infidels native to this galaxy so that it could be used as a staging area for the Yuuzhan Vong assault on the galactic throneworld of Coru- scant. Borleias was an agreeably green world, not overgrown with the dead, crusty dwellings of the infidels, not strewn with their unnatural implements of technology; only a military base, now smashed, had affronted the Yuuzhan Vong with evidence of infidel occupation.

The voice of Penzak Kraal emerged from the small, head-shaped villip mounted on the cockpit wall just beneath the canopy. Though most coralskippers were not equipped with villips, relying instead on the telepathic signals of yammosk war coordinators for all their communications, long-distance patrol craft did call for a means for direct communications. “Don’t be an idiot. If a god is the god of bravery, then by definition he must be braver than any Yuuzhan Vong, than anything living.”

“I wonder. Let us say then that you could become immortal as the gods, and never die, but remain one of the Yuuzhan Vong. You would never face death. Could you then be as brave as the Yuuzhan Vong? You could kill forever but never truly risk death, defy death, choose your time and place of death. Which is better, to be brave for a lifetime or to kill forever?”

“Who cares? The choice is not ours. But if I were to choose, I think I would choose immortality. Live long enough, and you might learn how to be brave as a Yuu- zhan Vong again. Kill long enough, and you could perhaps learn to kill a star.”

Charat Kraal sobered. “I have heard . . .”

“What?”

“That the infidels did that. Learned to kill a star.”

He heard Penzak Kraal hiss in irritation; in the villip he saw his partner’s lopsided features go even more off center as his mouth pulled down in an expression of contempt. “So what if they did? They killed it the wrong way, with their wrong minds and their wrong devices. And, lik

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Excerpted from Enemy Lines 1: Rebel Dream by Aaron Allston
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