by Greg Keyes
said, and memory suddenly jolted through him with the force of vision. He
saw himself with Leia in the cockpit of the Falcon the day they'd met, right
after escaping the Death Star. "I ain't in this for your revolution," he'd
told her. Not much later he'd told Luke much the same thing, dodging out of
the fight against the Death Star for what seemed all of the right reasons,
not the least of which that it was hopeless. That Han Solo had had a pretty
weak grip on the idea of a worthy cause.
Somehow, things had gotten turned around. Not front to back, but in a
weirder way. Ultimately it was because he just didn't understand the kid,
and the kid hadn't a clue about Han.
Anakin he could understand. He used the Force in exactly the way Han
would, if he had the ability. Jacen had always been more like Leia, and in
the last year or so the resemblance had only grown stronger.
But here, suddenly, in the least flattering way he could imagine, the
Solo genes were finally showing.
"Don't go, son," Han murmured, but there was no one to hear him but the
sleeping weapons.
TWENTY-ONE
Corran flicked on his lightsaber and began helping Ana-kin cut into the
ridge on the Yuuzhan Vong ship. Tahiri got the idea and joined them.
Together, they sawed a hole deep into the ridge before Anakin's knees began
to buckle from his rapidly increasing mass.
Suddenly a chunk of the ship broke free and fell inward, pushed by the
same acceleration that was about to kill the three Jedi. Atmosphere blew
out, curtains of ice crystals sparkling in the starlight as Corran leapt
through the gap, pulling Tahiri with him. Anakin followed.
Normal weight returned instantly as they entered the ship, probably due
to the same gravity-bending dovin basals that drove the craft.
Anakin looked around him to see where they were.
In the mingled glow of their lightsabers, Anakin made out a dark
grotto, walls haphazardly patched with luminescence. Even as he watched,
however, the light faded as the bitter cold and vacuum that slunk in with
the Jedi killed whatever plant or creature manufactured it. The chamber's
function was difficult to determine. The roof was very low, no more than a
meter and a half, and it rambled on for a considerable distance. Black
columns or tubes ran from floor to ceiling every two meters or so. The
columns bulged in the middle, and Anakin thought they were pulsing faintly.
Corran gestured for the two younger Jedi to touch helmets with him.
"Someone will show up to check the hull breach soon," he told them. "We
need to be ready."
"I'm ready," Tahiri said. "Really ready. This is a lot better than
sitting on some old rock, waiting for them to find us."
Anakin sensed a bit of annoyance from the older Jedi as Corran went on
with his analysis. "I'm guessing this section, whatever it is, is sealed
off, else there would still be air whistling through. We need to find the
lock."
"Too late for that," Anakin said as his lambent lisped a faint warning.
"We've already got company coming. Close."
"How can you tell ?"
"I feel them."
Corran nodded. "May the Force be with you," he told them. Then he moved
off to crouch near one of the pillars.
Light appeared toward the far end of the chamber: six lambents like the
one in Anakin's sword. In their light he saw six shadowed bipeds stepping
through a typical Yuu-zhan Vong dilating lock. He took deep breaths,
relaxing his muscles one by one, preparing for the fight.
Closer, he saw they wore rust-colored formfitting suits- creatures
really, of course, probably some vacuum-hardy variant of the ooglith
cloaker. Their faces were visible, however, through transparent masks. To
Anakin's surprise, only two of them revealed the facial scars of warriors.
Two others had the more delicate tattoos he had come to associate with
shapers. Indeed, their cloakers bulged conspicuously around their heads,
doubtless due to the tendril-bearing creatures they wore as headdresses. The
remaining pair had the look of workers or perhaps slaves.
The two warriors set themselves in guard stances while the shapers
examined the hole.
Anakin felt rather than saw Corran creep forward, not toward the group
of Yuuzhan Vong, but toward the door they had entered through.
Moving carefully but as quickly as he could, Anakin followed, tapping
Tahiri on the shoulder to get her attention.
Come on, he suggested in the Force, hoping she got the sense of it.
She did. The three crept through the darkness behind the repair party.
In the vacuum, their feet made no sound at all.
They had almost reached the lock when Anakin felt the tingle of
approach behind him. He turned in time to see a warrior loom up silently,
amphistaff arcing toward Anakin's head.
Anakin leapt back at the last instant, nearly letting the weapon graze
him. He flicked his lightsaber on, and it blazed to life. The warrior's eyes
went wide with surprise.
He didn't know what he was facing, Anakin guessed.
Whatever his feelings, the warrior didn't hesitate long. He renewed his
attack, spearing with the sharp end of the weapon. When Anakin caught the
attack in a circular parry and pressed to bind, the staff suddenly went
limp, escaping his net of light. It came flicking in an arc toward his face,
now semirigid.
Anakin launched himself forward and under the attack. As he passed by
the warrior's right side, he lifted his weapon parallel to the floor in a
cut across his opponent's face. The energy blade sliced through the mask,
and the warrior fell back, flailing, air and blood mingling and freezing in
a mass around the cut.
The other warrior was battling Corran, while Tahiri tried to work the
lock.
Corran's dual-phase weapon moved in tightly controlled arcs, always
where it needed to be. That fight was nearing its end, too. Corran had
stripped a long patch of cloaker from his enemy's arm. It was already
healing, but vacuum and frostbite had done their damage; the arm hung
uselessly. Corran parried a flurry of increasingly wilder and more desperate
attacks. Taking the last in a parry that pushed his opponent's staff high
above their heads, he then turned his point down and drove it into the
warrior's exposed armpit. The blade sank deep, hut the warrior still brought
his weapon down, cracking solidly against Corran's head. Both men fell away,
Corran with his hands to his helmet, the Yuuzhan Vong writhing in death
throes.
Anakin spun to face their remaining enemies, but none was moving toward
them. Not warriors, he thought. But still dangerous, he amended, remembering
the deadly tools
on the shaper Mezhan Kwaad's hands. Still, he ought to feel them
approaching, if they tried.
Anakin knelt by Corran. The amphistaff had dented the helmet of the vac
suit, but worse, a crack had formed between the metal and the
transparisteel-he could tell by the rime of frost forming on it. Corran was
already struggling for consciousness.
Tahiri was still working at the lock. Anakin pressed his gloved hand
over the crack, wishing he had a patch, but those were in the emergency
pack, on the other side of the room past the Yuuzhan Vong. By the time he
went there and got back-assuming he didn't have to stop and fight- Corran
would be dead.
He increased the feed of Corran's oxygen in hopes of keeping the
pressure high enough to prevent his blood boiling.
Pale light fell across them, and he looked up to see that Tahiri had
finally cycled the lock. He dragged Corran through, and within seconds the
smaller chamber beyond was pressurized. They passed through the inner lock
more easily and into another corridor, this one still illuminated by the
phosphorescent fungi.
Anakin quickly worked Corran's helmet off. The older man was red-faced
and had a nasty bump on his head, but otherwise seemed to be in pretty good
shape. Within a minute he was standing, albeit shakily.
"Thanks, Anakin, Tahiri. I owe you both." His head jerked this way and
that. "We need to keep moving," he said. "A ship this size could have a
hundred warriors on it."
"I've never been so glad to be wrong," Corran admitted later. In under
an hour they had defeated the remaining five warriors on the ship and
rounded up and incarcerated the rest of the less military Yuuzhan Vong. Now
the three Jedi sat in the control room, or what passed for it.
The ship-if by ship one meant the available living space-was actually
quite small. The bulk of the vessel was the concealing stone of the asteroid
and vast caverns of
greenware that none of them could even guess the function of.
"We were lucky," Corran said. "If we'd been most places on the surface,
we would have had to cut through fifty meters of rock. As it was, we were on
the cooling fin-at least that's my guess as to what it was."
"This must be some sort of scout ship," Anakin guessed.
"Or a surveillance craft," Corran said. "At the moment, that's not the
most important question. We need to know three things, fast." He ticked them
off on his fingers. "One; does the rest of the fleet know we've captured it?
Two: where is it going? Three: can we fly it?"
"Tahiri?" Anakin said.
Tahiri had settled into the chair facing what Anakin knew from
experience to be a bank of indicators-embedded lumens, several villips,
patches of varying texture and color that were probably manual controls. The
real key to flying the craft rested in the loose cap Tahiri held in her lap.
Called a cognition hood, it established a telepathic link between pilot and
ship.
"I can fly it," she said softly.
Corran grimaced. "Why not let me try it? We still don't know what
hidden dangers using that thing might have."
"I've flown one before," Tahiri said, "On Yavin Four."
"It has to be her," Anakin said. "She speaks and thinks in the
language, for one thing. Since the scientists have my tizowyrm, she's the
only one of us who can. And . . ." He trailed off.
"They changed my brain," Tahiri said bluntly. "I can fly it. You can't,
Captain Horn."
Corran sighed. "I don't like it, but you might as well give it a try.
At this point I have to admit you two have a lot more practical knowledge
than I do when it comes to Yuu-zhan Vong technology."
Tahiri nodded and placed the cap over her short golden hair. It writhed
and contracted to fit. Her eyes clouded, and sweat started on her brow. Her
breath chopped raggedly.
"Take it off," Corran said.
"No, wait," Tahiri said. "It was just a little different that
time. I can handle it. I'm adjusting." Her brow furrowed in
concentration. "The ship's name is Stalking Moon. A hyper-drive jump has
been laid in. It's coming up in about five minutes."
Two organisms suddenly waggled to life, and between them appeared a
hologram, showing something that might have been a map, complete with
unfamiliar icons. One, shaped like a three-pointed star, was highlighted in
red and moving rapidly. A few of the others were moving as well.
"That's the fleet," she said. "The fast-moving thing is us." Her head
turned toward them, though her eyes were hidden by the hood. "I don't think
anyone is following us."
"Can you tell where the jump is taking us?"
Tahiri shook her head. "There's a designation. It translates to
something like 'next prey to feel our talons and glory.'
"Yag'Dhul?" Anakin speculated.
"We'll see soon enough," Corran replied. "If so, this ship may have
been sent ahead to make tactical maps or something. We may be the first of
the fleet to arrive. Anakin, you may get your chance to warn Yag'Dhul."
"True," Anakin said. "If the-who lives at Yag'Dhul, anyway?"
"The Givin," Corran said.
"The Givin don't blow us out of the sky. We are, after all, in a
Yuuzhan Vong ship."
"Well, there is that," Corran said. "But we have a better chance there
than staying here. If Yag'Dhul is where we're going. We're headed back to a
Yuuzhan Vong base, for all we know."
"You want me to try and stop the jump?" Tahiri asked.
Anakin watched Corran consider that. Then the older Jedi shook his head
in the negative.
"No," he said. "We're in this deep. Might as well see what the bottom
looks like."
TWENTY-TWO
It was hard to read a Mon Calamarian. With their bulging, fishlike eyes
and wide lips, they looked, to the untrained human eye, perpetually
surprised or amused. They lacked the same complex facial muscles that humans
had evolved for nonverbal communication, their species being possessed of
another set of semiotic tools for that purpose.
Nonetheless, Mara somehow saw the horror on Cilghai's face when the
healer entered the medical chamber Booster had allowed her to set up.
"Oh, no," Cilghal murmured. Her partially webbed digits fluttered in
agitation. "Please, Mara, recline." She indicated an adjustable medical bed.
"No problem," Mara said. Her knees had gone flimsy on the short walk
over from her quarters. Her mental image of herself had morphed into a huge
bloated thing balanced on ridiculous, straw-thin legs.
What she saw in Cilghai's clinical mirror fit no image of herself at
all, past or present. Her eyes were sunken into gray pits, their emerald
color faded to a sickly yellow. Her cheeks were hollow, as if she hadn't
eaten in days. Her skin was so pale the vessels stood out like topographic
maps of a river delta on Dagobah.
What a beauty, Mara thought. I could dance in Jabba's palace again, if
I could dance. Of course, I'd attract a different type of admirer than I did
last time. . .
Waitll Luke sees this. He's going to have a meltdown. Unwilling to run
the risk that some slicer could trace a HoloNet communication back to the
Errant Venture, Luke had taken his X-wing out to contact several eminent
physicians and transmit Mara's latest test results. He'd been gone three
days.
"I need to know what it means, Cilghal."
"How do you feel?"
"Hot, cold. Nauseate
d. As if nanoprobes are trying to carve my eyes out
from behind with microscopic vibroblades."
The healer nodded and placed her webbed hands so gently on Mara's
abdomen that it might have been sheets of flimsiplast that floated there.
"Three days ago, when you went into meditation, how did you feel?"
Cilghal asked.
"Sick. I already knew it was coming back. I thought if I was alone, in
total concentration and without distraction, I might be able to control it
like I did before."
"This is not like before," Cilghal said. "Not at all. The rate of
molecular mutation has increased fivefold. It's much worse than before you
began taking the tears. It might be because so many of your body's resources
are tied up in the pregnancy; it might be because the serum weakened your
ability to fight without it." She closed her eyes, and Mara felt the Force
in motion, within and about her. "It's like dark ink, staining your cells.
Spreading."
"The baby," Mara demanded. "Tell me about my son."
"The Force burns bright in him. The darkness hasn't reached there.
Something keeps it at bay."
"Yes!" Mara whispered, clenching her fists.
Cilghai's eyes wobbled together so her gaze met Mara's. "It's you,
isn't it?" the healer said. "You're putting everything into keeping the
disease from entering your womb."
"I can't let it," Mara said. "I can't."
"Mara," the healer said, "you are declining at a terrifying rate."
"I only have to last until the birth," Mara pointed out. "Then I can
start taking the tears again."
"At this rate, I'm not sure you will survive the birth," Cilghal told
her. "Even if we induce it, or do it surgically. You're already that weak."
"I don't lose," Mara told her ferociously. "I'll be strong
enough when the time comes. It can't be much longer, can it?"
"You aren't listening to me," Cilghal said. "You could die."
"I am listening to you," Mara replied. "It's just that what you're
telling me doesn't change anything. I'm going to have this baby, and he's
going to be healthy. I'm not going back on the serum. I've come through
tougher things than this, Cilghal."
"Then let me help you. Let me lend you some of my strength."
Mara hesitated. "I'll report every day for monitoring and whatever
healing you can accomplish. Is there anything else I can do?"