“We’re almost there.” Han kept up the litany of small encouragements, although Leia suspected he was talking to the ship herself rather than her passengers.
They had made it past the Yuuzhan Vong fleet easily enough; in the heat of the moment, one battered old freighter feigning a death roll would never warrant too much attention. From there it was just a matter of getting under cover without displaying too many course changes.
“This is definitely one of your crazier ideas,” Droma said from behind them, clutching both their seats for safety’s sake. “If it’s at all possible, you’ve actually become more reckless since last I saw you.”
“I’m getting us through this, aren’t I?” Han said, returning his attention to the task at hand.
“This far, yes,” Droma said. He pointed to the viewport. “But that’s a whole lot of murk to be lost in.”
“We have a radar survey of the surface of the planet,” Han said calmly. “It’s not as if we’re going to run into a mountain or anything.”
“So all we have to do is find the station; is that it?”
Han looked back at the Ryn, obviously detecting his friend’s sarcasm. “Something like that, yeah.”
“Before someone sees the Falcon on their scanners and drops a bomb on us,” Droma said.
“Or we lead them to the station ourselves,” Leia added, following up on the Ryn’s point. The Millennium Falcon’s engines would stand out like a nova in the planet’s cold atmosphere.
Han dismissed their concerns with a brief snort. “Look, all we have to do is release a couple of concussion missiles along the way. Their heat signatures will confuse the readings from orbit, right? Besides, the Vong mines have already stirred things up down here. Hot air rises, remember. Get us deep enough and the upper layers will cover us quite nicely.”
“Are you sure?” Droma asked.
“I’d bet my life on it.”
“And mine.” The Ryn tooted mournfully. “That’s the problem.”
“Hey, trust me, okay?” The ship glided forward in silence for a few seconds before he added, “I know what I’m doing.”
Leia clutched her seat even tighter, having heard those words from her husband all too often in the past. Han usually did know what he was doing, but the ride was rarely an easy one.
“Now,” Han muttered, “where do you suppose we should start looking?”
Leia peered ahead and saw nothing but blackness. Through a low-light enhancement algorithm on the displays she saw a featureless orange fog. The radar map, taken on a quick pass before dropping into the soup, suggested they were crossing what resembled a vast arterial basin. But that wasn’t possible; water had never flowed on Esfandia, except within the communications base. These icy depths knew no life and, should the bubble of hospitality within the Falcon be breached, it would kill them as soon as—
Leia jumped as something loomed out of the darkness, visible only as a bright orange splotch on the enhanced display and shaped like a large, quivering flower. It was gone before she had a chance to make out exactly what it was.
“What was that?” Droma asked, sounding as startled as Leia had been.
“I don’t know,” Han said. “And I’m not about to go back to find out.” He arbitrarily set a reference grid over the barren landscape, steering the freighter across it. “There’s a series of deep channels just east of here. I’m cutting our velocity and altitude to take a closer look. When we reach the edge, Leia, I want you to send out a missile to cover our tracks, okay?”
“How many concussion missiles do we have?” Droma asked. “It could take us forever to find this thing.”
Han shrugged. “It’s a small world.”
“It’s not that small. And remember, what makes it easier for us to find them makes it easier for the Yuuzhan Vong to find us.”
“Then we’d better get started, hadn’t we?” Han said. He swung the Falcon over a steep rise, then flattened out. “Ready with that missile, sweetheart?”
Leia was. On the radar map ahead she saw a sharp drop approaching. Targeting the orange void behind her and putting the missile on a timer fuse, she let it fly just as the Falcon dipped her nose and dived deeper into the frigid atmosphere. The missile shot off into the distance, its boiling wake a gently curving arc leading nowhere.
Han hugged the canyon wall as closely as he could while they fell. Leia caught sight of two more of the odd flower-shaped objects whipping by and wondered what they might be. Pockets of gas? Crystal agglomerates? Clumps of the local equivalent of amoebas, perhaps? Whatever they were, they were exceedingly delicate. In the rear view she saw nothing but wisps left after the Falcon had passed, and the fierce burn of the freighter’s engines soon evaporated even those.
The bottom of the canyon came with surprising suddenness. One moment they were diving nose-first, the next Han had swung the Falcon around level. There was little change to the forward view.
“Cutting main drive,” Han announced. His voice seemed unnecessarily loud in the almost deathly quiet of the cockpit. “Dropping back to repulsors.”
Leia kept her eyes on the sensors as the Falcon cruised through the depths, but there was little to see. The canyon floor was darker and more barren than before. The ambient temperature had risen, although it was still very cold. The surface of Esfandia was a strange and alien place that was unlikely to ever see the stars. Its stony ground could have been composed of frozen carbon dioxide, and was twisted into peculiar shapes that were so fragile that they would have probably been disturbed by a single ray of sunlight.
“Can anyone see anything out there?”
Han made a show of peering out the forward viewport, squinting as though this would somehow make the blackness outside easier to penetrate.
“Nothing,” Droma said softly. “How big is this base meant to be, anyway?”
“Fifty meters across,” Leia said, “not counting its legs.”
“So if it was here, it’d certainly stand out. We might not be able to see it, but we’d definitely get a solid ping off its hull.”
Leia nodded. “Even if it was buried, we’d spot it from up close.”
“Then I guess it’s not here.” Han scrolled through the radar map. “At least not in this canyon.” His finger indicated a much larger network south of their present position. “I propose we surface and try this one here. Unless anyone has any better ideas.”
A sense of futility welled up inside Leia. She couldn’t begin to imagine the number of possible hiding places there could be on Esfandia for something like a communications base. There were hundreds of canyons, and probably a thousand times more fissures it could have slipped into. They could search for months and not find it.
“Maybe we’ll get lucky,” she said, more for her own sake than anyone else’s.
“Hold it,” Droma said. She looked around to the Ryn, waiting for him to continue. His head was cocked in a manner suggesting that he was intently listening to some faint and far-off sound. “There’s something …”
“What is it?” Leia pressed.
“Are we scanning comm frequencies?”
“Across the dial,” Han said. “Why?”
“Turn up the gain. Listen.”
When Han did as he was instructed, a faint whistling became audible. At first Leia thought it was just random noise, but a closer inspection revealed it to be chopped up into discrete fragments, almost like a—
“That sounds like a digital transmission,” Han said, finishing the thought for her.
“Could it be the base?” Leia asked, mystified.
“I’m not sure,” Han said. “I can’t get a fix on it. The signal seems to be coming from several places at once. We must be getting echoes off the canyon walls.”
“It is a signal, though, right?” Droma asked.
Leia listened for a few seconds longer, then shrugged. “I don’t recognize the protocol. Han?”
Han shook his head. “It’s all Kubazian to me. Where’s Golden
rod? He might be able to translate.”
“He shut himself down during the trip,” Droma said. “He’s sitting there in the main hold with those Noghri bodyguards of yours. The three of them aren’t really much for conversation, are they?”
“Well, don’t just stand there jabbering,” Han said. “Make yourself useful and go wake him up. And don’t feel the need to be too gentle, either. He should know better than to be snoozing at a time like this.”
On the contrary, Leia thought. The droid knew only too well that trouble would be awaiting them when they arrived at Esfandia. It invariably was. She couldn’t blame him for wanting to opt out every now and then.
Alone for a second, she turned to Han. “Do you really think this is going to work?”
“It’s worth a try. While everyone is distracted upstairs, it might be the only chance we get. All it will take is for us to get lucky once. And if those signals are from them, then—”
He was interrupted by a tap on his shoulder. Droma leaned past Leia and Han to point at a telemetry display.
“I think you should see this,” the Ryn whistled.
The display contained an image of the flickering, furious web of the space battle above, followed as much as was possible from the Falcon’s viewpoint. The view showed two wedge-shaped fighter groups darting in different directions away from the Yuuzhan Vong fleet. Imperial forces engaged with one of them, but couldn’t prevent them from reaching the atmosphere. Both groups of Yuuzhan Vong fighters dipped under the fog and disappeared.
“Looks like we’ve got company,” Han said.
Leia wasn’t surprised. It was only a matter of time before the Yuuzhan Vong tried the same tactic as they had.
“Why can’t things ever be easy, Leia? Just for once it would be nice if things went the way they’re supposed to.”
Leia smiled. “Even if they did, Han, I’m sure it would just make you all the more suspicious.”
Everything around Saba burned with a bright, potent vitality. With each lungful of air she took, she could feel the life force of the planet diffuse into her blood and spread to all the cells in her body. The cycle of life and death was in constant play in the tampasi all around her. Iridescent insects glided from branch to branch overhead, seeking pollen from the giant drooping flowers that grew there. Every now and then she would see gangly, six-legged creatures leap out from the cover of the fat leaves to snatch at these insects with unnaturally long and glistening tongues. These in turn were eaten by translucent, long-feathered birds that appeared and disappeared in bright flashes among the boras, their shrill calls echoing throughout the tampasi whenever they successfully managed to catch one of their prey.
She couldn’t get enough of it, no matter how deeply she inhaled. She wanted to ingest the whole world and become one with it. Soron Hegerty walked alongside her, talking about the Ssither, a saurian race the biologist had studied many years ago, but Saba barely heard a word. Only as a strange darkness fell over them did she stir from her reverent daze.
She looked up, expecting to see another airship passing overhead, but even as she did so she knew that this couldn’t be the explanation. This darkness was too complete—as though night had abruptly fallen across the world.
“What iz it?” Saba asked. The others were all gazing up in obvious concern.
“It’s Mobus,” Soron Hegerty said. “We’ve fallen into its shadow.”
Saba understood. She didn’t need to see the gas giant in the sky above to know that the sun had slipped behind it as Zonama Sekot continued on its orbit around the giant world. The animal life on the living world, however, didn’t know the difference between sunset and eclipse.
“We call it Sanctuary,” Rowel said. His gold-black gaze was on Luke, glittering in the sudden twilight.
Again Saba nodded, understanding the Ferroan’s misgivings. The people of Zonama Sekot had searched long and hard for somewhere to feel safe. They had found it, finally, and now it had been invaded again. How would that feel?
They walked on through the tampasi, chilled by the unnatural darkness, as hushed as the world around them. Despite the gloom, their progress wasn’t impeded in any way. The lower branches of the boras sprang to life with a million flickering lights cast by insects nesting there. The greenish bioluminescence illuminated the tampasi floor with a soft, pale light that allowed them to see where they were going. New creatures stirred as ones accustomed to daylight retired for the duration of the eclipse. Saba held her breath as an entirely new ecosystem woke around her.
The sun returned as the ground party approached a Ferroan village an hour later. Voices rose around her, and it was with no small sense of sadness that Saba realized that they had reached the end of their journey through the tampasi.
“It’s hard to imagine that boras could grow as tall as they have in such a short time,” Jacen was saying to one of their Ferroan guides as they entered the village. “Where I come from, trees like this would take thousands of years to grow.”
Rowel glanced at him, his brow pressed down in confusion. “Why would your world take so long to yield its treasures?” he asked. “What is the point in holding back from your inhabitants if it means that most would never get the chance to appreciate your beauty?”
Jacen smiled at this, and Saba sissed softly to herself. To Rowel, worlds were thinking, living things, not just places to live. What most people would consider normal might seem odd to him.
Darak led them to a ring of brown, mushroomlike habitats clustered around the base of a nearby boras. Each habitat had a central pillar that rose two stories high, and was capped with a roof that bulged out and then down until it touched ground. The texture of the walls was rough and flexible, almost rubbery, and the doorways and windows were rounded as though grown rather than cut.
Grown, Saba thought, with the faintest of misgivings. After so long dealing with the organic technology of the Yuuzhan Vong, anything that worked on a similar principle automatically triggered a negative reaction.
Darak led them to the largest habitat and waved them inside.
“We will meet in one hour,” she said. “At sunset.”
Without another word, Darak and Rowel withdrew, leaving the visitors to make themselves at home.
The ground floor contained a number of seating mats scattered about in casual orderliness, along with several tables containing bowls and plates piled high with foodstuffs. The second floor grew out of the central stalk and was accessible by a spiny spiral staircase.
“Fascinating,” Hegerty said, marveling at the habitat’s architecture.
Saba’s stomach growled; she stepped over to one of the tables and dipped a claw into a bowl of an off-white paste. She cautiously sniffed at it before tasting.
“Well?” Danni asked, coming up beside her. “What’s it like?”
“Not obviously poizoned,” she said.
“I think if any harm was intended for us,” Mara said, “then it would have happened before now.”
“Mara’s right,” Luke said. “They could have killed us while we slept on Jade Shadow if they’d wanted to.”
Danni reached into another bowl, this one containing green nutlike pellets. She tasted one, nodding with surprised satisfaction to the others.
“It’s good,” she said, trying some of the other foods.
Jacen, Mara, and Hegerty joined them at the table. Only Luke stood to one side, looking out the window.
“It’s clear that things have changed since Vergere was last here,” the Jedi Master said after a moment. “We’ll need to be on our toes. I suggest we use this time to prepare ourselves for the meeting.”
While she agreed with Luke, Saba found it difficult to emulate the Jedi Master’s calm. They were on Zonama Sekot! How could she just push that fact to the back of her mind and ignore it? She could feel the living world around her; incomprehensible thoughts washed over her like ocean currents. They had reached the place Vergere had sent them to find, a planet that could well
prove to be the key to ending the war with the Yuuzhan Vong.
That the Yuuzhan Vong had also located the living planet, however, didn’t bode well. They had successfully achieved their goal—only to find not solace from their concerns, but rather more problems. At least, she thought, they weren’t prisoners. The door hung invitingly open, and there were no guards outside. This seemed strangely at odds with the distrust the Ferroans had displayed since the Jedi Knights had arrived. Then again, perhaps security wasn’t that much of an issue when you were on a planet that could keep a watch on everything for you …
Jacen was about to try some more of the food when he noticed three childlike faces with wide eyes peering around the entrance to the habitat at him. They disappeared with a giggle as soon as they saw him looking back at them.
“Nice to see that not all of the Ferroans hold us in contempt,” Mara said at his shoulder.
He was about to agree with her when Saba uttered a low, perplexed growl. She was standing off to one side, staring out of one of the windows.
“Saba?” Mara said. “What is it?”
The Barabel shook her head uncertainly. “This one feels Sekot not just on the surface of this world, but beneath it, too.”
“I’ve been wondering about that also,” Jacen said. “I’m sensing life below us as well as around and above us.”
“You mean in subterranean chambers?” Mara asked.
Jacen shook his head. “In the rock itself.”
“That’s not as crazy as it might sound,” Danni said around a mouthful of berries. “Some species of bacteria can survive a long way underground—kilometers, even. If Sekot arises out of the biological matrix covering the planet, then it seems reasonable that the life inside it contributes, too.”
“Which might explain the planetary defense systems we saw in action,” Jacen said.
“How, exactly?” Hegerty asked.
“Well, Vergere talked about biological factories making spaceships and other things,” he said. “Sekot clearly found ways to use the technology the Ferroans brought with them when they colonized this world, before it became conscious. Since then, it’s gone even farther. If life has spread down into the crust, and perhaps even deeper, then Sekot could conceivably manipulate the planet on a grand scale.”
Reunion: Force Heretic III Page 10