"It's not the same as watching your home dying.
Not the same as if they'd descended on Corellia.
But seeing orbital platforms drop onto the city,
knowing that millions were dying with every impact,
and that the few who were streaming into space
on private vessels and leaving their homes behind
were the lucky ones…Coruscant is dying, Wedge.
I don't know if I can describe the misery of it."
―Iella Wessiri Antilles
Not the same as if they'd descended on Corellia.
But seeing orbital platforms drop onto the city,
knowing that millions were dying with every impact,
and that the few who were streaming into space
on private vessels and leaving their homes behind
were the lucky ones…Coruscant is dying, Wedge.
I don't know if I can describe the misery of it."
―Iella Wessiri Antilles
"It's just a droid, keep shooting!" someone had shouted. Vigil could recall it plain as day. The whistle of slugs flying narrowly overhead, and the intense heat of a blaster bolt striking him in the back. It did little but cause him to falter in his step and cry out in pain. He remembered whirling around to put a slug through the mans cranium who had shot him, but he reminded himself who the enemy was. To everyone else, he was 'just a droid.'
Though in all fairness, as he recalled, he was in the way. He was not the only 'droid' out there, either. There were half a dozen of them in the thick of Coruscant's jungle. With towering ziggerauts and cloudcutters, they were truly dwarfed. They felt small in a galaxy so big, unable to change the events that would unfold. Albeit their sense of futility, they pushed on. They called themselves The Lost.
Great towers were cleaved in half, toppling down into the darkest pits of Coruscants floor. Screams were cut short by the deafening blow of a mighty impact. Entire shield grids had collapsed, and the Yuuzhan Vong poured in. Coruscant's skyline had become sodden with crashing vessels, and plasma fire rained down from the battle above the planet. Orbital defense positions were crippled and fell towards the planets surface.
Waves of Yuuzhan Vong were landing, and the Republic soldiers at the frontlines were struggling to hold their ground. Swarms of the Force-Dead Vong collided with the rainbow of aliens. Vigil was among the most intense of fighting near the Imperial Palace. Working in conjunction with others of his own species, they were tireless machines of war. Where soldiers began to waver, they stood steadfast.
But they were too few. Towering over the Yuuzhan Vong, they appeared indomitable, but there was strength in numbers, and the Vong were countless. Vigil could recall the terror that wracked his body as he struggled in melee with a Vong warrior. Then intense white light that consumed everything, and disappeared as soon as it had come. It left him in confusion and blinded his receptors. He felt his entire body be scorched, and the shock wave sent him hurling to the ground.
The Imperial Palace was gone, destroyed by a proton bomb activated by the death of the New Republic Chief of State, and taking with him twenty-five thousand Vong. Forcefully evacuated, Vigil left Coruscant with one of the last refugee ships to leave the planet. On the ship was Lima-17.