by James Luceno
Shesh said nothing.
“Whichever the case, Senator, this is most unexpected.”
Shesh’s smile was enigmatic. “Who knows, Consul, someday we might be working together. To that possible end, I think we’re off to a good start.”
FOURTEEN
In Ryn City’s dormitory, with all thirty-seven Ryn gathered around them and waiting breathlessly, the two humans—Tall and Short—appraised the completed letters of transit. The forgeries had required almost four Ruan days of clandestine work, with almost everyone contributing in one way or another. Where Gaph was skilled at line drawing, R’vanna excelled at calligraphy. Many of the females had seen to mixing and applying the colors, and even Melisma had lent a hand by proofreading the passenger names and scrutinizing the letters for imperfections.
She stood between Gaph and R’vanna now, Sapha’s infant—quiet as a skimp for a change—balanced on her hip. The stuffy air of the dormitory was so tense that when Tall finally pronounced the letters “perfect,” it was as if fireworks had gone off.
Everyone exhaled in relief and grinned broadly. Melisma handed the infant to one of the other females and gave Gaph and R’vanna tight hugs of joy.
The humans waited for the Ryn to calm down. Displaying one of the sheets of durasheet, Tall showed Gaph an appreciative look.
“I see you’ve already listed yourselves.”
Gaph puffed out his chest in theatrical pride. “That’s because we knew you would find them impeccable.”
Tall nodded and handed all the letters to Short, who placed them inside a beat-up alloy case.
“We’ll submit everything to Salliche Ag later this morning. They’ll drag the process out for a day or so. But assuming everything goes as planned, you should be prepared to leave on the day after tomorrow. How’s that sound?”
Instead of answering, Gaph raised his hands over his head, made a clicking rhythm with his tongue, and began to dance, cross-stepping and turning slowly as he moved about the room. In a moment, everyone was clapping and clicking in time and joining him in celebration.
Melisma could hardly believe their good fortune. In two days they would be headed clear around the Core to Abregado-rae!
Apparently in dire need of beauty sleep, Randa hadn’t asked for the Ryn as expected. By Skidder’s reckoning, two standard days had passed before the Hutt summoned them. Later that same day, however, Skidder was delighted to find the six Ryn already in the yammosk tank when he and the other captives were led into the hold.
Slipping into the gelatinous liquid and taking his assigned place at one of the tentacles, he gave Sapha a meaningful look but said nothing.
The session began as usual, with the captives striving to induce the yammosk—by lulling the creature into a state of tactile elation through caresses and massage—to urge the dovin basal to drive the ship to greater speeds. While those sessions had become less demanding psychologically, they were still physically exhausting, and by the time Chine-kal returned the count to normal many of the captives were bent double over the tentacles, straining for breath and trying to rub the soreness from their hands, arms, shoulders, and chests.
The important thing was that Chine-kal was pleased with their efforts, which meant that there would be no more speed work for the remainder of the session.
When the commander’s circuit on the tank rim had taken him 180 degrees from Skidder, the Jedi threw Sapha a quick glance and spoke under his breath.
“You met with Randa?”
She gave him the faintest of nods. “We just finished with him.”
“You did as I asked?”
“Against our better judgment. But, yes, we did as you asked.”
“How did he react?”
“With palpable concern. He dismissed us almost immediately, probably to confer with his bodyguards and advisers.”
Skidder’s eyes narrowed in covert pleasure.
The moment had come to talk to the yammosk. In previous sessions, Skidder had drawn on the Force only enough to grant the creature access to his surface thoughts and emotions. The ease of the bond had brought the yammosk back time and again, and on each occasion Skidder had given the creature a bit more of himself, as reinforcement. Now he had to reverse the flow and speak directly to the yammosk, as it obviously believed it had been doing with him.
He had been practicing the necessary Force technique since the Ryn had first told him of their meetings with the Hutt. With no more effort than it had taken to slip into the nutrient fluid in which the yammosk floated, Skidder went into a light trance.
The goal was to convey through images that Randa Besadii Diori was plotting against Commander Chine-kal. Skidder had run through the deceit so often in the past two days that the images unreeled before him like some HoloNet drama. Immediately the tentacle draped almost tenderly across his shoulders began to twitch, then tremble.
Then all at once the appendage tightened its hold on him. At the same time, and throughout the tank, the tentacles fastened to other captives dropped away, slapping the fluid with enough force to send nutrient slopping over the rim and onto the floor of the hold.
Several captives screamed in alarm as the yammosk’s convoluted body stiffened. Skidder instantly broke mental contact and ducked out from under the tentacle’s grip. But that only prompted the creature to twist toward him, as if to fix him in its gaze. Skidder, Roa, Sapha, and some of the others had the foresight to submerge themselves in the nutrient, but a dozen others were hurled clear out of the tank by the yammosk’s counterclockwise whirl. Fasgo was among the latter group, and he was hurled farther than the rest, his already weakened body slammed with bone-breaking force into the yorik coral bulkhead, where it stuck fast for a moment, then began a slow tumble down the scabrous surface to the floor.
Some of the longer tentacles made a sudden grab for Skidder as he resurfaced, but he back-somersaulted out of the liquid and onto the rim walkway. Frustrated, the yammosk reared up, then flattened itself, extending its reach to the edge of the tank. The tentacles flailed and slapped against the coral grating, but Skidder deftly avoided them by hopping from foot to foot and executing flips that sent him over their slimy top sides.
Elsewhere in the hold, Chine-kal and the guards had been thrown into utter confusion. They raced around the tank, making futile attempts to calm the creature, convinced for the moment that Skidder was the victim rather than the instigator.
The Jedi front-flipped to the deck, landing on his feet, but the guards weren’t about to cut him too much slack. He could have avoided or defeated the ones who rushed him from all sides, but with nowhere to run he quickly decided that his purposes would best be served by playing the panicked captive, fearful for his life.
He pretended to struggle, throwing some of the guards aside with the strength that panic affords. Ultimately, though, he let them get the better of him, and sank to the deck under their hold, shrieking, wailing, and gesticulating to the yammosk.
“It tried to kill me! It wants to kill me!”
Having lost its fury, the war coordinator was bobbing on the waves its own actions had stirred. Many captives were pressed to the rim of the tank. Most of those flung outside by the creature’s abrupt spin were picking themselves up from the deck, dazed but not seriously hurt. Except for Fasgo, who was sprawled lifelessly in an expanding pool of blood.
Even Chine-kal seemed wary as he approached the yammosk. Skidder had to believe that not all the creatures developed as planned, and that despite the bioengineering that went into them, some could be flawed, as was sometimes the case with skips and other examples of Yuuzhan Vong organic technology.
Seeing or perhaps sensing the commander’s approach, the yammosk extended two tentacles to him, then a third, which the yammosk curled around Chine-kal’s neck. The commander’s eyes rolled up in his head, and he might have collapsed except for the support of the tentacles. Then, blinking back to consciousness, he turned and stared wide-eyed at Skidder.
Skidde
r couldn’t begin to guess what the yammosk had related about Randa, or about Skidder himself. But the words that flew from Chine-kal were the last thing he expected to hear.
“A Jedi!” The commander eased out of the yammosk’s embrace and approached Skidder. “A Jedi!”
Out of the corner of his eye, Skidder saw Roa and Sapha hang their heads in defeat.
Chine-kal stood before Skidder, shaking his head in both disbelief and wonderment. “A valiant effort, Jedi. Truly inspired. But what you failed to realize is that yammosks are not grown but spawned. Each passes the sum total of its learning on to the next.” He glanced at the creature. “This one’s progenitors have had experience with Jedi.”
Chine-kal turned back to Skidder and rested his hands on Skidder’s shoulders. “But be proud, Jedi, for you have pleased me greatly. In fact, you will be my gift to Warmaster Tsavong Lah, who will one day arrive to govern Coruscant.”
FIFTEEN
The tempo of the rousing march that welcomed Supreme Commander Nas Choka aboard the Yuuzhan Vong warship Yammka was kept by warriors with drums, but the theme itself was supplied by a menagerie of bioengineered insects and avians, droning, trumpeting, and whistling from within cages and atop perches situated throughout the great hold.
Enormous villip-choir transparencies broke the obsidian monotony of the starboard bulkhead, providing a star-strewn panorama of the anchored fleet, as well as a distant view of the Hutt space world known as Runaway Prince, remade for the sowing of yorik coral, villip shrubs, and other necessities of war. To the ships that resembled asteroids, marine behemoths, and tumbled and faceted cabochons had been added an even more massive and sinister specimen: a flattened lapidary orb of glossy black, from the dense center of which spiraled half a dozen arms, as if in dark imitation of the galaxy the Yuuzhan Vong were determined to conquer.
Supreme Commander Choka, along with his commanders and foremost subalterns, moved on levitated dovin basal cushions in tiered heights above the deck. In advance of them floated four smaller cushions, their diminutive riders screened by flutters—living creatures that resembled squares of patterned cloth. Arrayed on either side of the arriving group stood five thousand warriors dressed in battle tunics and armed with amphistaffs and coufees.
Confined to a small space among the starboard-side group cowered two hundred prisoners taken from Gyndine and already purified for sacrifice. Bony growths affixed to voice boxes and jaws prevented them from giving voice to their fear.
Behind Choka marched troops of his own command, their precision footfalls crushing an ankle-deep carpet of maroon flowers, whose aroma—wafted about by the rhythmic beating of wings—had aroused the insects to song. Their stridulations intensifying and diminishing, the insects sustained notes lifted from an otherworldly scale. One moment the march was fiery and inspiring; the next it was a somber dirge.
Opposite the arrival bay, at the far end of the cloyingly perfumed parade corridor, waited Commander Malik Carr and his chief subalterns, a coven of priests, and off to one side, Executor Nom Anor, all revealed in tattooed and modified splendor.
As the train of elite warriors neared the dais, the drumbeats and insect voices ceased and Malik Carr stepped to the lip of the raised platform.
“Welcome, Supreme Commander Choka,” he crowed, his augmented voice resounding from the arching ceiling and tympanic bulkheads. “The Yammka and all here gathered are yours to command.”
A wrathful droning filled the hold. Simultaneously, ten thousand fists snapped crisply to their opposite shoulders in salute.
Supreme Commander Choka, military commander of the recently arrived spiral-arm worldship, transferred himself from the dovin basal cushion to an elevated seat at the center of the dais. While the four trailing hover cushions lined up behind him, priests, shapers, and others arranged themselves on the floor to both sides. Only when they were seated did Malik Carr and his contingent follow suit. On the deck the warriors bade their amphistaffs to coil around their bare right arms and dropped ceremoniously to one knee, heads bowed in deference.
The drumming and stridulations resumed, playing to the body as well as the ear. With five loud fanfares, some of the insects rested; but heroic bursts were immediately loosed by other insects, as if in reply. The counterpoint continued for some moments. Then, as Choka raised an ophidiform baton of command, the hold fell preternaturally silent.
“I bring salutations from Warmaster Tsavong Lah,” he intoned. “He commends you on the work you have done in preparing the way, and he looks forward to the time when he may join you in battle.”
Choka’s modest stature did not lessen his power. Narrow-hipped but braced by thick, muscular legs, he sat rigidly on the provided chair of carved and polished coral like a statue himself, while black-feathered avians cooled the air around him with their great wings. Facial tattoos, flattened nose, and decurved eyes—above large bluish sacs—afforded him a regal demeanor. His unadorned tunic was offset by a bloodred command cloak that fell from the tops of his shoulders, and rings of gaudy variety grew from his fingers and banded his wrists and upper arms. Black throughout, his long, fine hair was combed straight back from a sloping forehead and reached nearly to his waist.
“I, too, congratulate you on your successful harvest,” he went on after a moment. “You have acquitted yourselves well. Your captives from Obroa-skai, Ord Mantell, and Gyndine will bloody your nomination. But before we enact the sacrifice of the captives or learn from Commander Malik Carr the status of the invasion, we will use this moment to reward some of you for the measure of your commitment.”
The high priest who accompanied Choka rose to his feet and spoke.
“We thank the gods for delivering us into this promised domain. May the blood you shed purify and cleanse it for the coming of Supreme Overlord Shimrra. We honor the gods with the nurturing sap that flows within us, so that they might thrive and grant that we might continue to caretake their creations. All we do, we do in emulation and in veneration of them.”
The priest turned to the cushions that hovered behind Choka and motioned with his hand. The flutters lifted off, exposing four meter-high religious statues. The first represented Yun-Yuuzhan, the Cosmic Lord, absent those parts of himself he had sacrificed to create the lesser gods and the Yuuzhan Vong. The second and third statues represented Yun-Yammka, the Slayer, and Yun-Harla, the Cloaked Goddess. The fourth, and undeniably the most grotesque, was Yun-Shuno, the many-eyed patron deity of the “shamed ones”—those whose bodies had rejected the living implants, due either to a lack of preparation or to ambitious overreaching on the part of the candidate.
Choka’s subordinate commander now rose.
“Subaltern Doshao,” he began, “for his actions at the world called Dantooine. Subaltern Sata’ak, for his actions at the world called Ithor. Subaltern Harmae, for his actions at the world called Obroa-skai. And Subaltern Tugorn, both for his work in sowing the world called Belkadan and his actions at the world called Gyndine.” He paused briefly, then added, “Step forward and be escalated.”
As the four lesser-grade officers were ascending the dais, a quartet of implanters scuttled from recesses in the throne. When the candidates had arranged themselves in a line facing the supreme commander, the implanters took up positions behind each of them.
A variation on the creature responsible for outfitting captives with crippling growths, the implanters were small, gray, and six-legged. Like their cousins they were equipped with botryoidal optical organs and a quartet of appendages efficient for slicing through flesh and tucking surge-coral into open wounds. But where the calcificator made use of bits of itself, the implanter carried whatever enhancements were necessary for the ritual escalation. Each of the four that began slow climbs up the naked backs of the subalterns bore two finger-length horns of coral, whose pointed tips were slightly hooked.
The implanters didn’t begin their work until they had secured themselves to the back of the subalterns’ necks, from where they could reach
to both shoulders. Employing the sharper of their appendages, they made deep cuts through the tops of the shoulder muscles, clear down to the bones that formed part of the ball-and-socket joints. When the incisions were complete and acolytes had collected the flowing blood in bowls, the implanters inserted the hooked horns into the cut, employing a resinous exudate they produced to weld the horns to the shoulder bones and to seal the wounds around them. At the same time, a sluglike ngdin wove a helix trail through the candidates’ feet, sopping up whatever blood the acolytes failed to capture.
Though perspiration ran freely and legs trembled, not one of the junior officers cried out in pain or so much as grimaced. Pleased with their sangfroid, Choka gestured to four of his aides, who hurried forward with neatly folded and differently colored command cloaks.
By then the acolytes had conveyed the blood-filled bowls to the high priest, and while he dribbled the contents of the bowls over the idols, Choka’s aides unfolded the cloaks and hung them from the newly implanted hooked protrusions.
The drummers beat out a short tattoo, then stopped.
“You are escalated and remade,” Choka pronounced. “And now that you wear the cloak of command, you will be given your own ships, made sector chiefs, and tasked with overseeing and reeducating the populace of those worlds that constitute your domain.”
“For the glory of the gods!” warriors and officers alike shouted.
Choka watched the promoted warriors step down from the dais, then turned slightly in the direction of Malik Carr. “One more matter before we proceed, Commander.” He looked past Malik Carr to where Nom Anor was seated. “Come forward, Executor.”
More flamboyantly attired than anyone in the hold, Nom Anor rose and walked slowly across the platform. Opposite Nas Choka he inclined his head in a nod. As a member of the intendant caste—though of the lowest rank—he was not obliged to offer salute.
“Since you and I do not hail from the same order, I am not entitled to escalate you. But know this, Executor: Were I so entitled, I would be more inclined to demote than promote you.”