Kor Chokk Grand Cruiser Yammka’s Sword
Freefall, Koros-Strohna Worldship Baanu Amnan, Tingel Arm, Wild Space

Throughout the behemoth grand cruiser, giant maggots swallowed Vong whole as they surged into escape ships, a yellowy sea of writhing worms erupting from the ship’s surface. Amphistaffs hissed and snapped together, fanged mouths lashing against each other as Yammka Vong fought Yuuzhan Vong, battling over the remaining yorik-trema as they peeled off from the grand cruiser’s surface, others piling into black tombstones of yorik coral, spiralling off into space in yorik-ta escape pods.

Balls of superheated plasma continued to stream between the warring ships of the two domains, the Children of War of Domain Shai oblivious to the death of their Warmaster, or else beyond carrying. A servant of the God of War did not run. The Children of War did not hide. The Yammka Vong would readily give their lives for the Great Sacrifice and the cleansing of the Promised Land.

All heretics would die.

The Yammka continued to fall downward on its doomed collision course with the nearest relic of the shattered worldship, from which the mighty grand cruiser herself had been grown. Fire still lanced as the warship spiralled, belching lava and yanking incoming kamikaze coralskippers to their dooms, dark singularities flashing all across her surface where dovin basals fought to devour the ongoing turbolaser strikes from the burning Peace Brigade ships still remaining.

The Final Way and her small escort broke away, taking the Sith and Krath and Dark Jedi to safety...

The stench from the half-dissolved body by his feet scorched William’s nostrils, and he was sure he could feel a drop of blood running from where the vapours burned through his nose as if it were acid. He reminded himself: it probably was acid. He snorted involuntarily, then kicked the skinless skull next to him hard enough that Vasi's head ripped free of its spine with a wet slurp and slid across the floor more like a formless sponge than bone and cartilage.

Hurried footsteps still echoed in the distance, accompanied by battle cries as Vong fought Vong. The Hall of Confluence itself was now abandoned, only the dead still left to keep him company.

How fitting . . . Will thought, his hand still gripping hold of the loose hose of the violator gas bomb.

His free hand still hovered over the manual trigger on the side of the bomb—webs of yorik coral interlaced between his fingers, imbedded between the bones, some delicately tracing his veins along the underside of his arm.

He lifted his gaze back to the bomb itself. In the uneven light from the glow lichen on the walls, he could just make out his reflection in the metallic surface—his skinless, skull-like face, staring back at him; his blue eyes drained of any warmth, only a cold, grey darkness looking back from the depths.

He could hear voices in the not-so-far distance. Harsh and guttural, more coughs and snarls than words. Vong. A pair of heavily armoured hunters entered the elaborately decorated hall. Both their amphistaffs’ tongues flicked out, sampling the air, then their heads shot to look at him.

The Vong’s eyes widened at the sight of the Warmaster’s mangled body in the middle of the hall.

One of the pair screamed in Will’s direction.

‘Brenzlits!’ the supreme commander cried, ripping his cognition hood off his face. ‘The Sseeth flee!’

Romm Shai shot to his feet and slammed a fist through the swarm of red blaze bugs representing the Sith Star Destroyer and her escort squadrons. His head snapped round to one of the battle tacticians, the Yammka Vong’s bulging eyes now eying his captain fearfully.

Romm snarled and with the back of his hand smacked the staring face aside.

A voice from another crewmember arose behind Romm, ‘The Warmaster . . .’

The subaltern did not finish.

Romm spun round again. ‘What?!’

‘He . . . he has fallen.’

Romm’s eyes went as wide as the tactician’s who had been gawping at him. ‘No! The Khattazz al’Yammka cannot fall! He is the Avatar of the Slayer!’ The subaltern did not argue—he couldn’t; Romm’s already bloodstained coufee had shot right through the other Yammka Vong’s throat.

Romm suddenly heard scratches and hammering somewhere behind him.

‘FOR THE EXTOLLED!’

The clenched sphincter tore apart beneath the frenzied thrashing of coufees and sharpened debris and clawed implants as the horde of Shamed Ones knifed at the gateway to the Yammka’s bridge, ripping through the muscle before surging inside like a bloodthirsty fero xyn swarm.

Ushk Karsh charged inside first, swinging the bone club he had ripped from a warrior’s arm socket. The other Shamed Ones—the other Extolled—poured into the bridge behind him, their makeshift weapons and lifeless amphistaffs-turned-plain whips thrashing about as they took the warriors by surprise, severing arteries, crushing skulls, slitting throats.

At the head of the bridge, Romm Shai turned to face them—his body silhouetted against the rapidly nearing mountain ranges that were fast growing outside the central viewport. The long moustache-flaps of skin dangling from the supreme commander’s nose reared up as his lipless mouth snarled.

‘HERETICS!’ the warleader roared and leapt from the head of the bridge into the swarm of outcasts.

The two hunters, both nearly twice the size of an ordinary human, glowered at William from across the other end of the Hall of Confluence. If looks could kill, the sheer murderous glare in their eyes would have done so a dozen times over. The Vong both seemed momentarily frozen, speaking urgently into the leathery balls perched on each their shoulders, not taking their eyes off him.

The skin around Will’s hand was starting to burn; when he glanced down, he could already see the flesh around his fingers peeling off where some of the gas was still escaping. He fought down the pain and looked back at the two Vong. According to the tizowyrm that had been forcefully inserted in his ear, they were still apparently deliberating what to do.

Vong truly were useless without their gods.

A few moments later, the villips on their shoulders folded away again, then they turned back to him.

Will closed his eyes and let out a deep sigh.

‘There is no peace; there is anger,’ he whispered to himself.

‘There is no fear; there is power.
There is no death; there is immortality.
There is no weakness; there is the Dark Side.
I shall render unconditional obedience to my Clan.’

The two Vong were still coming, the gleam in their eyes as hot as the core of a star.

Will grinned at them, snorting at their confused expressions, then continued speaking ever louder.

‘I shall defend with my life the sacred body of the Brotherhood.
I shall never reveal its secrets to those uninitiated in its ways.
I shall hunt down and destroy all those who would cause it harm.
I shall submit to the will of those appointed over me so long as doing so causes the Brotherhood no harm.
I shall seek an end to the cursed light, and bring darkness to all whom I conquer.’

The two Vong were but a few more rows of stools from the throne on which the bomb now sat.

‘BEFORE THIS BODY AND IN SHADOWED SECRECY DO I SWEAR THIS CREED.
SO BE IT, UNTIL THERE IS NO LIGHT, BUT A RESURRECTION OF THE EMPIRE OF DARKNESS!’

Will let go of the hose when the hunters were within ten meters of him. He screamed, the gas bursting over his wrist as his skin started to dissolve, as the yorik coral along his arm began to bubble and crumble apart, as the heat seared into his flesh toward his own bone.

‘Phahg, Jeedai,’ one of the two Vong cursed and went to strike before Will could kill himself—

The Dark Jedi Knight had just enough time to smile at the Vong and shout, ‘See you in hell!’, then jabbed his forefinger into the trigger.

The shockwave flung Romm to the floor, tumbling across the other Yammka Vong and Shamed Ones until he landed atop Ushk, whose face now seemed to be melting. Romm flinched back and pressed himself off the Shamed One’s body, stumbling back in the zero gravity as the Yammka neared terminal velocity—the surface of the Baanu Amnan looming directly outside the viewport.

Romm staggered backward into one of the banks of villips that made up the villip choir. He felt himself fall right through them, his arms passing through normally hard balls like sponge mould. When he looked down, his eyes went wide in shock—

His arm was missing halfway down his radius.

He looked up again and saw the rest of his arm—hand still attached—back atop Ushk, the bone jutting out of the Shamed One’s body. He cringed. Pain was shooting through his face as if it had been plunged in firejelly. He reached up with his remaining hand to brush it aside—

Only to brush half his nose off his face.

Romm finally noticed the sound of others doing exactly the same thing, their voices screaming, seeing the mangled bodies of all the other Yuuzhan Vong throughout the bridge falling apart, their skin dissolving, their bones bending, their eyes dripping out of their sockets—

Suddenly, everything went black, and Romm screamed.

The last thing he felt was his body be hurled across the room before fire engulfed him.

Lucrehulk-class Battlesphere Patriot’s Fist
Tingel Arm, Wild Space

The Fist was pulling away from the Yammka as fast as her battered engines could move it. Warning sirens continued to blare and hazard lights flashed, bathing the bridge in a bright red glow, painting the walls red as if they were smothered in blood. Admiral Yashais dei Izvoshra continued to stare out at the grand cruiser as it finally entered the atmosphere of the nearest chunk of the Baanu Amnan.

Yashais did not see what happened next.

Without warning, the Yammka’s Sword was replaced with something brighter than the distant stars. For a few seconds, the eternal night became day. No one, not even the mindless Chazrach slaves, dared look directly into the heart of the newborn inferno. Not even the transparisteel windows set on full polarisation combined with multiple shields could dim the crucible of a new star.

Then space filled temporarily with trillions of microscopic metal coral fragments, propelled past the retreating Dlarit and Synergy Corporation ships by the nuclear birth of the artificial sun.

But the Fist was too slow to outrun the blast wave. The last thing Yashais saw was the shining brilliance eclipse his eyes when something large and burning crashed through the forward viewport.

Republic-class Star Destroyer Final Way
Tingel Arm, Wild Space

The Star Destroyer’s bridge shuddered as the ripple quaked through it as it continued to pull away to escape the detonation. It all lasted less than ten seconds. Then the wave receded and the flare collapsed, the lingering residue continuing to consume itself—as it would for several days until it finally burned itself out once it used up what remained of the Yammka and the last of the worldship that should have died three years ago at Telos.

Araic Simonetti opened his eyes a few moments later once he was certain the blast was finished.

Looking out across the enemy fleets, he could no longer see the Yammka’s Sword or the planetoid fragment it had crashed into. The other large Yuuzhan Vong warships were simultaneously falling out of orbit of the other planetoids they too were anchored over, venting bodies out of massive breaches that had now penetrated every single major ship in the Vong fleet, their green and yellow organic innards spilling into the cold vacuum like alien pus and blood.

The fleet admiral fell back into his chair and shut his eyes.

By his order, Operation Rancor had just silenced thousands, maybe tens of thousands, of lives.

The turbolift doors at the rear of the bridge chimed open and he opened his eyes again to see the alchemist he had long condemned as a madman stroll inside. Araic could not help but smirk.

Outside Courtyard
Sadow Palace, Sepros Jungle, Orian System

It had been a little over two weeks since the initial attack and much of the palace was still in need of repair, but the hard work of special operations teams under the watch of Colonel Septka—with help from a small droid army, as well as slaves shipped across from the baradium mines, even a team of the warrior Ewoks from Kangaras had been flown in to help with the repair work—had gone a long way to clearing the wreckage left outside, and getting rid of the numerous giant maggot drop ships.

The wing of the Simus Institute remained in ruins and many younglings and apprentices were still in need of rehousing, but it was safe, and the war was at an end. With the Yuuzhan Vong Empire long having fallen, and the surviving Vong warlords now slain, with no more attacks on supply lines along the Orian Pipeline, they could at last rebuild and begin the much needed reconstruction work, and start sending home some of the refugees who had been taken in during the Yuuzhan Vong War.

But all that was in the future.

In the sky above, the outline of the Nebula-class Star Destroyer Dark Star hung beneath the cloud cover, the Overlord himself having hurried home with reinforcements from the Navy of the Iron Throne as soon as Antei had got word of the attack. Thankfully, the Clan had managed on its own.

‘I would like everyone to take a moment to remember William Darkfire for his courage,’ the Overlord was saying. ‘A true knight of Sadow, he gave his life so that all of us may be here today.’ Astronicus raised his cup. ‘To William!’

‘To William!’ the disciples of Sadow all cheered.

Remulus Sadow cooed in Sakura Haruno’s arms. Robert Daragon glanced over and did his best to smile—his face still carried the marks of his days in Yuuzhan Vong captivity. He had been rescued eventually, having been carted off in secret to Sif on the far side of the galaxy, but two full days in a bacta tank had still yet to fully heal his wounds.

The Overlord looked over at his son. ‘It would appear you all now know of Prince Remulus as well,’ he said as his face copied Bob’s smile, then looked back up at the assembled Clan. ‘It is thanks to all of you that the Sadow dynasty continues. To the Disciples of Sadow!’

‘The Disciples of Sadow!’

Tron stood up and tapped his glass for silence.

The Overlord’s smile faded when he continued, ‘As you all also know, my good friend and the first of my disciples, Bob, was gravely injured in the attack. Thanks to your efforts he is able to be with us today, but his injuries will take some time to recover. It is for that reason I have chosen to appoint Manji Sadow as the new emissary to the Dark Council.’ Tron looked across at the Keibatsu, seated between Dyrra and Fremoc.

‘Rise, Consul.’

‘For Manji!’ cried Sai, sounding slightly worse for wear, and was joined by several other equally inebriated cries as everyone welcomed the new Consul.

Yorik-ta escape pod
Wild Space

The shaper in the other chair squirmed as the yorik-ta shot through hyperspace into the unknown, the snakes in his headdress copying his actions by writhing against the low ceiling.

‘I’m not going to kill you,’ the Zabrak growled. ‘If I’d wanted you dead I’d have left you there.’

The Yuuzhan Vong studied the heavily tattooed face and narrowed his eyes. ‘You . . . should not be.’

Tslotha Garnath frowned at the shaper then laughed. ‘Nor should you,’ he muttered. ‘It appears we have something in common. The Force didn’t want me either.’

Yorik-vec transport
Unknown Regions

The starlines shifted back into stars as the escape pod dropped out of hyperspace.

The lone Yammka Vong stood up and stretched his arms as he looked outside. There was no star nearby, just the endless void of deep space, the one lone asteroid tumbling through the emptiness.

Tsaak Shai let out a long sigh.

He had promised the Warmaster he would keep the legacy of the Yammka Vong alive.

And that was just what he was going to do.

‘Long live the Children of War,’ whispered the new Supreme Overlord.