by Greg Keyes
The Wookiee moaned an agreement, then began to set course for pursuit.
Tenel Ka felt the sudden jolt of contact, heard the scrape of grappling hooks finding purchase on the irregular coral hull. The moment of capture unleashed a flood of raw, recent memory. Pain and loss and fury-all the emotions engendered by her days in Yuuzhan Vong captivity-flooded the Jedi in a torrent.
She heard a mechanical whir and realized its meaning. Small drills busily bolted the ship to the grappling arms to ensure retrieval. No Yuuzhan Vong would sully their hands with such machines.
Reassured, she removed the cognition hood and smoothed her warrior's braids into place as best she could.
Now that the burden of flying the pod was lifted from her, Tenel Ka eased the shields she'd placed between herself and the tiny living ship. Fiercely independent, she
used the Force only when necessary. To her way of thinking, maintaining some distance between herself and the Yuuzhan Vong or any of their creatures was absolutely essential.
Suddenly her unshielded mind flooded with a familiar mixture of warmth and humor, friendship and frustration.
"Jacen," she said wonderingly, recognizing the presence that meant more to her than any other.
For a moment Tenel Ka knew complete happiness, something she had deemed illusive since the day she'd realized that when Jacen looked upon her, he saw only an old friend. But happiness was a gift as fleeting as it was sweet. The light that was Jacen faltered, then blazed up into an agonizing white heat.
Tenel Ka, despite her stoic courage and superb conditioning, shrieked in rage and pain.
Her reserve shattered, and a lifetime of emotions carefully controlled and shielded erupted like a Dathomir volcano. Mindlessly she thrashed at the walls of her prison, pounding the coral with her one fist, determined to get out, to reach Jacen, to fight and die to free him.
Then the light was gone, and its absence was a blow more devastating than the first.
For a long moment Tenel Ka sat in the sudden darkness, stunned and silent. Her lip s moved, shaping words of denial that she could not force past the unfamiliar lump in her throat.
The escape pod jolted heavily against the ship. Cutting tools hummed as they dug through the coral shell. Tenel Ka wearily regarded the discarded cognition hood. If she put it back on, she could open the hull with a thought. Her emotions were so raw that she could not bear the thought of joining with the ship.
A crack fissured through the pod, and a chunk of coral
tumbled into Tenel Ka's lap. She pushed it aside and unclipped her lightsaber from her belt.
"Stand aside," she ordered, marveling at how cool and controlled her voice sounded.
A rich, glowing turquoise light leapt from Tenel Ka's lightsaber. She made short work of cutting through the hull and then rose quickly, her weapon held unthreateningly low but ready, just in case.
At least a dozen people gathered around the pod, all of them human, all of them recognizably Hapan. Tenel Ka's long-ago ancestors had been pirates who vied with each other to find and capture the most beautiful mates possible. What started as a peculiar measure of cultural status became a sort of selective breeding. In general, the people of Hapes were taller and more attractive than inhabitants of other worlds in the Hapes Cluster. All of her rescuers were tall and fair, though some looked decidedly the worse for wear.
They stood silent, perhaps from the surprise of finding a Jedi warrior instead of the expected Yuuzhan Vong. Tenel Ka's cool gray eyes swept over them.
Several of the crew wore crimson, which proclaimed them members of the royal guard. She noted several hard-knock civilians, too, all of them wearing worn or faded red clothing. Even those who sported the white uniform of the Consortium Navy had some bit of red about them, even if just an enameled pendant or a bandanna. This ersatz statement of solidarity set off warning sensors in the back of her mind.
"What is this ship?" she demanded.
One of the men, a tall blond man who bore a faint resemblance to her father, gave her a mocking bow. "Welcome to the Starsprite, Princess. You're aboard a Beta Cruiser, formerly of the Hapan navy."
Tenel Ka's eyes narrowed as she took this in. The Beta Cruiser was a small battleship, far more maneuverable
than the much-larger Hapes Nova-class cruisers. They'd been Enployed in large numbers at Fondor. Few had survived. Most likely the crew of this one was a diverse company of survivors deserters from the Battle of Fondor as well as smugglers who saw their livelihood being swallowed by the Yuuzhan Vong invasion.
She wasn't surprised at his greeting. Not many Ha-pans would fail to recognize a one-armed Jedi with red-gold hair as their reluctant princess. Since they were pirates and deserters-not exactly men and women of honor-Tenel Ka assumed they planned to ransom her for the best deal they could get. But even as this thought formed, it was pushed aside by the animosity that radiated from them all.
Understanding flooded her in a quick, scalding rush. "You are Ni'Korish," she snarled, naming the faction inspired by her great-grandmother, a queen mother who hated the Jedi and had done her best to eradicate them. "I heard rumors of an attempted coup, an attack by cowards who lurk in shadows. That would be you?"
Her captor responded with a mocking bow.
"Tell me, how did the Ni'Korish fare? Is my mother yet alive?" she demanded.
"Regrettably, yes," the leader returned. "But she won't hold the throne for long."
Tenel Ka sent him a grim smile. "You do her an injustice if you think she will abdicate in exchange for my return, and you insult me if you suggest I would buy my freedom at that price."
He returned her smile, but his was even harder and held a reptilian leer. "We would never insult the queen mother or her Jedi daughter. The Yuuzhan Vong, however, are not so concerned with matters of honor and protocol."
His meaning was clear. Tenel Ka's lightsaber snapped up to guard position. "I will not be taken."
"Princess, you wound me!" he protested, placing one
hand over his heart. "We will return you to Hapes unharmed. Although we might be deserters, we are not traitors. All we require is your assistance in hunting down Jacen and Jaina Solo. If you're a true princess of Hapes, you'll gladly help us repay those who turned Centerpoint upon the Hapan fleet."
A surge of wrath boiled through Tenel Ka, but she kept her composure. "Do you know what befell a New Republic ambassador who fell into Yuuzhan Vong hands? He was slain, his bones decorated with gems and gold and sent back to his friends. I would not deliver an enemy to such a fate, and never a friend!"
His expression darkened, and he glanced at a knot of uniformed men. "Then I'm afraid we'll have to make do with you. If Jaina Solo thinks the same way you do, she might be willing to trade herself for your freedom."
"She won't get the chance."
Before any of the Hapans could draw weapons, Tenel Ka's turquoise blade leapt toward them like a proton torpedo.
For a moment everyone in the cargo hold scuttled back, intimidated by the wrath in the Jedi's gray eyes and the blazing weapon in her hand.
Then the Ni'Korish leader pulled a vibroblade from his belt, and others remembered that they, too, held weapons.
They advanced, quickly encircling Tenel Ka.
TEN
The stolen Yuuzhan Vong ship careened through space at full power, following the barely perceptible signal emitted by the escape pod. Zekk sat at the helm. Tahiri wore the navigation hood, directing him according to information flowing to her from the navibrain. The small hands gripping the control were white-knuckled, but her voice remained steady and sure.
Jaina and Lowbacca huddled together away from the others. "You and Tahiri did great, but I've got another puzzle for you," Jaina said. "Danni Quee found a way to override the yammosk communications. That's the only explanation for the Yuuzhan Vong confusion over Coruscant. Any idea how she did it?"
The Wookiee went into a lengthy explanation, most of which went over Jaina's head with a meter
to spare.
She put up a hand to halt the bewildering flow of information. "How do you know all this?"
Lowbacca hesitated, then woofed a response.
He had been recruited to work on the research team supervised by Danni Quee and Cilghal. That made sense to Jaina. The Force-sensitive scientist and the Mon Calamari healer had been spearheading one of many attempts to understand Yuuzhan Vong technology. Before coming to the Jedi academy, Lowbacca had had two passions computer science and the study of Kashyyyk's complex plant life. It had been the latter that prompted him to
too
go alone into the dangerous lower levels of his home-world's forests during his rite of passage to young adulthood, and to pit himself against the deadly syren plant. The combination of computer skills and biological knowledge-not to mention his desire to take on the impossible-made him well suited to this study.
Lowbacca let loose a few sharp woofs.
"They had you taking apart captured ships? No wonder you knew how to mess with the worldship," Jaina murmured, remembering a prank he had played with a small neural center. "So you know how Danni Quee scrambled the yammosk."
The Wookiee shook his head and gave a mournful moan. He hadn't been there for Danni's breakthrough.
"Given your background, could you duplicate the results?"
Lowbacca considered, then woofed an affirmative.
"But can you go one step farther?"
The Wookiee listened with growing fascination as Jaina described her plan. His furry shoulders shook with laughter as he made his way toward the dovin basal.
Jaina watched, puzzled. Lowbacca returned in moments, coming at a lope and carrying a familiar-looking object in his paws.
He handed a small globe to Jaina with a string of grumbled instructions. A slow, sly grin crept over her face as she understood what he'd found. She reached up and ruffled the fur on his head affectionately, and then went back to work.
"Is that what I think it is?" Ganner demanded, eyeing the villip with disgust.
She grinned at the older Jedi and turned to Zekk. "Let me have your seat."
He yielded the pilot's chair, and Jaina settled down, pulled on the hood, and began to stroke the oddly shaped globe.
"Are you sure that's a good idea?" Zekk ventured. "Can you talk and fly at the same time?"
Her only response was a derisive sniff.
"We don't know who will answer," he persisted.
"True, but chances are, that'll be something worth knowing. The more we can learn about this ship, the better our chances for survival."
The outer layer of the villip peeled back, and the tissue within began to reshape itself into the likeness of the Yuuzhan Vong who had been "attuned" to this villip. In moments Jaina held in her hands a horrific face, one marked by fringed lips and a tangle of scars.
She knew that face. Everyone in the galaxy with access to the HoloNet knew it. This was the warmaster Tsavong Lah. Not long ago, he'd sent a communication throughout the galaxy calling for the destruction of the Jedi, and demanding Jacen Solo. Jaina had seen that holovid replayed many times, but her blood boiled anew with each viewing.
"The sacrifice has been completed?" the warmaster demanded.
Jaina held the villip closer to her face and sent her brother's enemy a knife-edged smile. "Not yet."
The villip crinkled into an ominous frown. "You were to contact me when your duty was complete, Nom Anor, and not before. Pray you are not contacting me to report another failure."
She glanced at her friends, her brown eyes sparkling with something resembling her old spirit.
"Oh, this is too good," she marveled. "This is Nom Anor's ship! The villip must not be attuned to him, though, or you'd think Tsavong Lah would notice the difference."
Ganner threw up both hands. "I don't know, Jaina. You've definitely looked better."
"And you still look like a holovid hero. Where's the
justice in that?" she shot back good-naturedly. "Anyway, Lowbacca thinks this villip is a way for a ship's pilot, whoever that might be, to report to a fleet admiral. When you think about it, that makes sense. I don't have a complete handle on how villips work, but from what I hear they seem to allow one specific person to talk to one other specific person. But what happens if that villip connection is broken? They've got to have some way of communicating with a ship, not just a person. Lowbacca found this thing onboard, living in a hydroponic vat. Maybe the ship itself attunes the villip, and the pilot's connection with the ship allows communication."
"Who is this?" the warmaster demanded.
Jaina turned her attention back to the globe. "Let's put it this way I'm contacting you to report another failure," she said, turning his earlier words back upon him.
Tsavong Lah's cruel eyes narrowed. "This is not Nom Anor. You are not even Yuuzhan Vong-the villip is translating." His face twisted with fury as the logical answer presented itself. "The Jeedai!"
"Got it in one," she mocked.
For a long moment, the image of Tsavong Lah merely glared at her. Then his frayed lips twisted in a sneer. "And this, I suppose, is where you offer yourself in your brother's place."
"Why bother? I know you won't let Jacen go."
"That is true enough, but are you so sure of your motivation?" he taunted her. "You are the lesser twin, the one who would fall in sacrifice. Perhaps it suits your purposes to keep your brother's sword far from your throat."
Jaina began to understand what this "sacrifice" entailed. "We would fight each other?"
"Of course! That is how it is done."
An image flashed into Jaina's mind from the time she and Jacen had been held captive at the Shadow Academy,
forced into dark-side training. They'd been made to fight with lightsabers, long before they were ready for such weapons, and to fight for their lives against a foe cloaked in a hologram. They'd pitted her against Darth Vader-a symbol of her past, and a portent of her future. Jacen, however, faced the same apparent foe. Neither of them had realized until the hologram cloaking devices were shut off how near they'd come to killing each other.
Despite all she'd been through before and since, the horror of that moment still visited Jaina in dreams.
Her mind raced as she tried to improvise a plan. It occurred to her that it might be best to play into the war-master's perceptions.
"That's how it's always done," she agreed, letting the memory of the Shadow Academy imbue her words with dread. "Jacen and I are twins. This is our destiny."
"You understand this much, yet you run from destiny?"
She inclined her head in a bow. A look of surprise flickered over the villip-reflected face, indicating that her gesture of respect had somehow been translated.
"You are right, Warmaster. Nom Anor's ship is disabled. I can run no farther."
"What is your position?" he demanded. "Obviously you are wearing the pilot's hood. Ask the ship."
"A moment, please." She put the villip down carefully, then looked at Ganner and mouthed the words, Get Lowbacca.
The big Jedi nodded and sprinted off in search of the Wookiee. A few moments later a big, hairy fist thrust out into the central corridor and gave her a thumbs-up.
"Here goes," Jaina muttered, and turned back to the villip.
"I can't get an answer from the ship," she said, her tone defensive and edged with a bit of a whine. "Is there some way the ship could be traced through the yammosk that controls it?"
"Nom Anor is an independent agent. His ship answers to no yammosk. But sometimes a yammosk can pick up a stranded ship; the dovin basals are strongly inclined to link."
"This dovin basal is ailing," Jaina said eagerly. "Linking might keep it alive long enough for me to ..."
She let her words trail off. A sneer crossed Tsavong Lah's reflected face as he read the meaning Jaina intended to portray. Obviously, he thought she was stalling for time, gaining needed repairs in hope of fleeing capture.
"I have sent agents to oversee th
e sacrifice. No doubt they are in close pursuit. You will be meeting them shortly."
Before Jaina could respond, the villip shifted back to its formless state.
"What now?" Ganner demanded.
Jaina's smile was thin and feral. "They'll come to us."
The warmaster set aside the offending villip and bellowed an order. A subordinate came at a near run, bearing a second, larger villip.
Tsavong Lah stroked the globe. No response. "Your other hand, Warmaster," the aide suggested.
He quickly did so, ignoring this latest reminder of how tenuous his new implant was. A villip, duly attuned, did not recognize the touch of his transplanted limb!
The globe shifted to reveal a face similar to his own in shape and expression. The reflected warrior was younger, his flesh taut and clear, but not less scarred. Elaborate black tattoos covered an angular gray face. A small horn protruded from a high, broad forehead.
"Warmaster," Khalee Lah proclaimed, inclining his head in respect.
"I have found the female," the warmaster said without
preamble. "She has offered to surrender-a ploy^ of course, a pitiful attempt to buy time to escape. You will persuade the yammosk aboard the priestship to link with the frigate and accept this additional ship in its communication faaaily."
"Of course, Warmaster."
"Inform Harrar that he may contact the jeedai directly through the Ksstarr's ship's villip."
An expression of surprise crossed the young warrior's face. "He possesses a commander's villip?"
"He holds it in trust," Tsavong Lah corrected. "When the Jeedai sacrifice is completed, he will pass it to you, along with the rank and honors that attend it. See to it that this day comes soon."
His son inclined his head in a deep bow. "I am honored, Warmaster, but I would do so regardless of reward. My personal advancement is a pale thing compared to the service due our gods."
The warmaster received this pious speech in silence. "Go, and do."
Again the young warrior bowed, and the villip quickly inverted. Tsavong Lah's lip curled as he regarded the villip. "Harrar seems to be failing," he said softly, "in more ways than one."