by Troy Denning
Danni opened a channel to the Lady Luck. “Gambler, can you send your droids into the cruiser now? I’d like to know if there’s anything left of our yammosk.”
After Lando acknowledged, Saba said to Danni, “The yammosk will be there, you may be sure, Danni Quee—flash frozen and ready to pack.” She slapped her knee and, sissing for some reason only a Barabel would understand, turned to watch as Wonetun fell in behind the Luck and the Falcon. “The Force is with us today.”
TWENTY-NINE
Tsavong Lah was not a rare sight in the Sunulok’s High Chew—as the ship’s officers affectionately called their mess—so he knew the ripple of stunned silence sweeping across the tables behind him had less to do with his presence than that of the person approaching. He did not turn to see who it was; that would have implied curiosity, and he was not curious. The warmaster continued to study the basin of yanskacs before him, his eye fixed on a juicy fellow with an eight-centimeter fence of dorsal spines. The thing seemed to realize it was being watched and kept its tail poised, but it made no move to bury itself beneath the others as wise old yanskacs often did. This one seemed worthy, a true creature of Yun-Yammka.
The voices close behind Tsavong Lah murmured into quiet, and a pair of feet scuffed the floor. He raised an arm, signaling whoever it was to wait, then darted a hand into the basin and grabbed the yanskac beneath its tail barb. Instead of struggling to escape, the creature reared back, driving its dorsal fence into the warmaster’s fingers. Two spines struck bone and another lodged in a knuckle, pumping poison directly into the joint. A cord of white heat shot up Tsavong Lah’s arm into his shoulder. The pain was exquisite.
With the spines still embedded in his fingers, the warmaster stepped to the dressing table and braved the yanskac’s clacking chelipeds to eviscerate it alive, then tossed it onto the brazier, still thrashing, to cook in its scales. The entrails he flung to the floor for the kaastoag cleaning scavengers, who began to fight over them stinger and tentacle. Such were the gifts the gods gave to their strong: battle, pain, life, death. Tsavong Lah cleaned his coufee in a vat of venogel and drew the edge across his own palm to sanctify the blade, then turned to see who had come.
“Yes?” To his surprise, he found himself facing not a messenger, but a striking young communications attendant with black honor bars burned across her cheeks. “You may speak, Seef.”
Seef raised a fist to the opposite shoulder in salute. “News from Talfaglio, Warmaster.”
Instead of continuing, she cast a nervous glance around at the other officers in the High Chew.
“I take it the Jeedai have shown themselves.” The crack of rupturing cheliped told Tsavong Lah that his yanskac had finished cooking. He snatched his meal out of the flames with his bare hands—no officer in the High Chew would dream of using the bone tongs provided for the purpose—then peeled the tail down, pulling the scaly skin off with it. “How many refugees did they save?”
“All of them, my leader, or nearly so.” Seef’s gaze dropped. “The blockade was defeated, as was our fleet.”
“Defeated?” Tsavong Lah grasped the yanskac by its dorsal spines and took a bite. The flesh was firm and tangy, designed by the shapers to be savory as well as nutritious. “You’re certain?”
Seef drew her coufee and offered the hilt. “It shames me to bear this news, but the sentinels’ view was clear. They attacked with a fleet many times larger than our spies claim they have, and they employed weapons our shapers are still struggling to analyze.” She lowered her gaze, not wishing to offend the great warmaster by looking upon him as she delivered the last line of particularly disgracing news. “Their Star Destroyers were even able to capture one of our capital vessels, the Lowca.”
“Intact?”
“More than not, I fear,” Seef answered.
“Interesting. I want to go see this for myself.”
“Memory chilabs are on their way from the sentinels now, Warmaster.”
“And that won’t be necessary.” Tsavong Lah pushed the coufee aside. “We have been awaiting this.”
“We have?” Seef looked more puzzled than relieved.
“The Jeedai have finally let their emotions lead them astray.”
Though he had been working toward this moment since the fall of Duro, he felt strangely disappointed in his enemies. He had thought them better foes than this, not so easily manipulated. “Seef, you will ask the readers to discover if the gods favor two bold attacks, one to take Borleias, the other to take Reecee.”
“Reecee?” This from a master tactician standing in line behind him. “You will bypass the Bilbringi Shipyards?”
“For now.” Tsavong Lah placed a hand on Seef’s back and pushed her gently toward the exit, then tore the chelipeds off his yanskac. Splaying them open, he raised his arm high enough for everyone in the High Chew to see. “The time has come to prepare our pincers, my warriors.”
He brought the claws together. “We are ready for Battle Plan Coruscant.”
THIRTY
Gaunt and thin-lipped, with a much-broken nose and a black-pithed plaeryin bol glaring out of a restructured ocular orbit, Nom Anor was the most recognizable Yuuzhan Vong in the galaxy—at least to a Jedi Knight. The feathery creature hopping along beside him was another matter. Standing a little over waist-high on reverse-jointed knees, it had willowy ears, corkscrew antennae, and delicate whiskers fringing a broad simian mouth. Jacen had never seen a creature quite like this one, and yet he had the uncanny feeling he should know it.
Halfway to its destination—the ramp where Ganner had inadvertently insulted the Yuuzhan Vong at the rescue ship—the thing stopped and turned its head in his direction. Though it was gazing through two layers of window membrane and across a hundred meters of landing pit, it looked straight at him. It let its gaze linger long enough to send a cold shiver down his spine, then smiled slyly and fluttered forward to rejoin Nom Anor.
Beside Jacen, Ganner whispered, “It couldn’t have seen us!” Despite his assertion, he retreated deeper into the shadows. “It glanced over by chance.”
“It felt us,” Jacen said, lowering the electrobinoculars. “More than that, it felt our apprehension.”
He did not add that the creature had done so through the Force. The shock radiating from Ganner suggested he had already reached the same conclusion.
“What’s wrong with you two?” Jaina asked, joining them in the archway. “You feel like you’ve been hearing the Emperor’s voice! Don’t tell me you’re afraid of a few Yuuzhan Vong.”
“There are more than a few.” Jacen passed the electrobinoculars to his sister. Her emotions felt oddly disconnected, as they often did when combat was imminent, but he could not criticize her performance. When the thud bugs started flying, she was always the steadiest, most levelheaded Jedi on the strike team. Ignoring the company of Yuuzhan Vong warriors forming up outside Nom Anor’s shuttle, he pointed at the bird thing. “But it’s Nom Anor’s pet that bothers me. I think it touched me with the Force.”
Jaina studied the little creature. “You’re sure?”
“Not sure,” Jacen clarified. “But convinced.”
“Me, too,” Ganner agreed. “That smile …”
“Hmm.” Jaina frowned in thought. “Does Feathers there remind you of anybody?”
“I keep thinking it should,” Jacen said. “But I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Sorry, I forget that New Republic Intelligence isn’t sharing with Uncle Luke these days,” Jaina said. “We’ve seen some interesting holograms in Rogue Squadron. That’s Vergere.”
“Vergere?” Jacen gasped.
Vergere had been involved in one of the Yuuzhan Vong’s first efforts to assassinate the Jedi, but she had also been the one who had given their father the healing tears that had first put Mara’s illness into remission. To this day, there remained disagreement over whether Vergere was a friend or foe of the Jedi, a mere pet of the assassin or an agent in her own right.
“I
t’s either Vergere, or another creature like her,” Jaina said. “And if she touched you through the Force, we can assume she was more than the assassin’s pet ‘familiar.’ ”
Ganner nodded. “She was there to point us out to the killer.”
“I’m not so sure,” Jacen said. “If she was part of the plot, why did she save Mara’s life? Why hasn’t she sounded the alarm about us yet?”
“Maybe we were wrong,” Ganner suggested. “Maybe she didn’t feel us.”
“I felt her,” Jacen insisted.
Their discussion was interrupted by the arrival of Anakin and the rest of the strike team. The two Dark Jedi, Lomi and Welk, were with them, now clothed in their own dark armor and swaddled in Tekli’s bacta bandages. Jacen was ashamed to find himself wishing the group had known the pair’s identity before his brother decided to rescue them; he felt certain they would still have made the attempt, but after killing the voxyn queen.
Ganner passed the electrobinoculars to Anakin at about the same time that Nom Anor and Vergere reached their destination. The unarmored Yuuzhan Vong who had challenged the strike team earlier appeared on the ramp and began to speak with Nom Anor. When Vergere intruded with a harsh comment, he stiffened and brought his fist to his shoulder in salute, then began to include her in the conversation.
Anakin turned the electrobinoculars toward the troops in front of Nom Anor’s shuttle. “How many—”
“Too many to fight,” Jacen answered.
Anakin ignored him and looked to Ganner. More disappointed by the slight than irritated by it, Jacen swallowed his pride and remained silent. After all, his brother had asked for information, not recommendations.
Ganner said, “I counted a hundred and four warriors—probably three platoons and an overseeing officer.”
Anakin’s expression did not change, but Jacen felt a rare surge of anxiety in his brother. Their first plan had already failed, and now their second was coming apart. He did his best to mute Anakin’s apprehension and prevent it from affecting the others through the battle meld.
Lomi stepped to Anakin’s side. “We can escape into the training course. There’s an exit into the laboratory complex.”
Jacen saw Welk’s face pale—and felt his terror through the Force.
“What’s the training course?” Jacen asked.
“It’s where the Yuuzhan Vong teach voxyn to hunt us,” Lomi explained. She narrowed her eyes, clearly resentful at being questioned. “It will be dangerous—but less so than the spaceport.”
“And we know the terrain better than the trainers do,” Welk said. Despite his fear, he was eager to support his master—perhaps because she frightened him more than the voxyn did. “The voxyn won’t be a problem, not for so many of us.”
“Unless Skywalker’s students do not live up to their reputations?” Lomi taunted Anakin with a sneer. “The choice is yours, young Solo.”
“We deserve our reputations,” Anakin said.
The unarmored Yuuzhan Vong with Nom Anor pointed down the colonnade toward the detention warren where the group was hiding.
“I don’t think he’s telling them how to find the refresher,” Ganner said. “Things are getting dangerous.”
“Not dangerous, just interesting,” Anakin replied. He backed out of the archway, then waved Lomi deeper into the detention warren. “Lead on.”
Zekk started after him. “Anakin, what are you doing?”
Jacen did his best to dampen the alarm and indignation pouring into the battle meld, but Zekk’s feelings were too powerful. They cascaded through the group, evoking enmity and resentment from Raynar and Eryl, and something more deadly from the Barabels.
Anakin glanced back at the landing pit, where Nom Anor and Vergere were waving to their troops. “We’ll never make it around the spaceport. We need to follow Lomi through the training area.”
“She’s a Nightsister!” Zekk continued. “You can’t trust her—you can’t even bring her.”
“Zekk, we don’t have any choice,” Jacen said. He was glad to have an opportunity to support his brother—maybe that would convince Anakin to forgive him for his mistake aboard the Exquisite Death. “Abandoning them would be the same as killing them.”
“Worse,” Lomi said, leading the way past the detention cells. “I doubt you have any spare lightsabers, but perhaps a blaster—”
“I said we need you, not trust you,” Anakin said.
Lomi smiled guilefully. “As you wish.”
She turned down a corridor lined so thickly with ysalamiri trees that Jacen felt as though he were traveling through the jungle floor back on Yavin 4. The battle meld broke briefly as they entered a deep region where the ysalamiri had not smelled the pheromone capsule, then the corridor entered a throat of yorik coral so narrow that even Tekli had to turn sideways. Had the walls not been covered with a slippery blanket of mildew, Lowbacca would not have been able to squeeze through at all.
On the other side, the passage opened into a sparse forest of bitter-smelling trees with drooping crowns and knife-shaped leaves. Through the spindly foliage, Jacen saw that they had entered a canyonlike passage perhaps a hundred meters wide and half that in depth, with a “sky” of brightly glowing lichen clinging to the ceiling above the treetops.
Lomi paused there. “Keep your weapons at hand. The trainers were working a pack when you arrived, and they pulled us out in a hurry. The voxyn could be anywhere by now.”
Jacen looked back through the narrow throat of yorik coral. “Why not the detention warren?”
“The fungus,” Lomi explained. “It prevents them from clinging to the walls, and the passage is too narrow for them to pass through otherwise.”
They paused long enough for Lowbacca and Ganner to plant a pair of detonite trip-mines in the corridor, then continued down the trail. Jacen reestablished the battle meld and was struck by the discord in the group. With events turning against them and everyone nervous about a voxyn ambush, emotions were running raw.
Lomi guided the strike team down the trail, then turned down an intersecting passage at a convergence Jacen had not even seen. The trees grew instantly darker and denser, their branches draped with long beards of quivering moss. They had traveled no more than fifty paces through this area when a muted crack sounded behind them, followed by the muffled roar of falling stone.
“Mine detonation confirmed,” 2-4S reported. “Casualty count unavailable.”
“Tell us something we don’t know,” Tahiri said.
Lomi led the way around several more corners, Tahiri’s comments growing more frequent as the forest grew steadily thicker and darker. A pair of coralskippers flew over, then wheeled around just beneath the ceiling and dived toward the treetops.
“Presence detected,” 2-4S warned.
Lomi rushed the team down a swampy side rift with scaly trunked trees rising out of green water.
“Two-Four-S, secure the intersection,” Anakin ordered. “Affirmative,” the droid responded.
They were barely a hundred splashes into the swamp when the whumpf-whumpf of the droid’s blaster cannon reverberated down the canyon.
“Lead ship destroyed,” 2-4S reported over their comlinks.
The fire continued another second before it was joined by the roaring sizzle of a plasma volcano. Through the treetops, Jacen glimpsed the dark disk of a coralskipper swinging toward the canyon mouth, a fan of dark mist pouring from its belly.
“Breath masks!” he shouted.
Most members of the strike team were already pulling the masks over their faces, but the two Dark Jedi could only glance helplessly at the others. Lomi turned to Anakin with an outstretched hand.
“I need a mask.”
“Hold your breath,” Zekk said nastily.
“And who will guide us if she falls?” Alema demanded.
The Twi’lek tossed her breath mask across the swamp, using the Force to propel it into Lomi’s hands, then the roar of 2-4S’s propulsion rockets sounded from the i
ntersection. Jacen glanced back to see the droid rising out of the swamp on a column of yellow flame, all weapon systems pouring fire into the nose of the coralskipper. The enemy pilot countered with a pair of plasma balls to the chest. YVH 2-4S vanished inside a ball of white flame, but still managed to steer himself into the oncoming coralskipper and trigger his self-destruct charges.
Coralskipper and droid vanished together in a brilliant flash. Jacen’s vision spotted, then the shock wave sent him stumbling backward through the water. He was caught by Tenel Ka’s strong hand. After steadying him, she said something he could not hear over the ringing in his ears, but the sentiment of which he recognized through the battle meld: His breath mask would do him no good dangling from his hand.
Jacen pulled the straps over his head, more than a little distressed by 2-4S’s annihilation. Not only had the droid been a valuable and respected comrade, but with both him and 2-1S destroyed, the entire strike team felt far more exposed, as though their protector had vanished and left them to fend for themselves.
When the spots cleared from his eyes, Jacen saw a cloud of oily smoke drifting down the canyon toward them. Beneath it hung the same dark mist that the coralskipper had been releasing when 2-4S destroyed it. He turned to warn the others and found Anakin already motioning the team forward—then he felt the familiar agitation of a voxyn somewhere ahead.
“Sith blood!” Tahiri put her lightsaber in one hand and her blaster in the other. “When does something go right?”
A forest of lightsabers snapped to life, and Anakin ordered, “Keep going—let’s stay ahead of that mist until it disperses.”
The Barabels inserted their earplugs, then dropped to their bellies and glided out across the water, their thick tails propelling them quietly forward. The rest of the strike team put in their own earplugs and waded after the hatchmates, some with blaster weapons in hand, others with lightsabers, some with both.
They advanced no more than twenty meters before a loud purling rippled through the trees ahead, and Jacen felt an outpouring of surprise from Bela. He pointed toward her side of the gorge and started to shout the alarm, but the rest of the team was already splashing in her direction.