by Greg Keyes
Not too promising. “We infidels don’t normally sample the waste excretions of ill animals, so I don’t fully understand the reference,” Corran said. “I suppose that such delicacies are reserved for the Chosen.”
“It’s not possible for you to mock me,” the shaper said softly.
“Sure it is. You may be dense enough not to recognize it, but I can certainly mock you.”
“What do you want with me, infidel?”
“What’s your name?”
“I am Kotaa of the glorious Domain Zun-qin,” he replied.
“Who was designated to make contact with the fleet once this ship was in the Yag’Dhul system, Kotaa Zun-qin? What was he supposed to say?”
“He will say nothing. You killed him. The warriors are in charge of this mission, of course. And do not think I will aid you in any scheme to defraud my people, Jeedai. Our fleet is poised to strike, as you must know, and strike it will.”
Corran’s eyes narrowed—not at Kotaa’s words, but at something he had caught from the corner of his eye when the shaper had said the word Jeedai.
“I don’t suppose you want to tell me when they will strike if they don’t hear from us?”
“I would be happy to vivisect you,” the shaper offered. “So that your death might offer the Yuuzhan Vong knowledge and thus have meaning. I am inclined to do you no other favor.”
“I’ll keep that in mind,” Corran said. “I don’t get an offer like that every day. Every other day, maybe …” He turned away from the shaper and looked more closely at the others. “Anyone else care to insult me?”
“I alone am able to mutter in your tuneless language,” Kotaa Zun-qin said.
“That’s fine,” Corran said. “I have a translator.” He approached one of the Shamed Ones. This was a smallish female, her only identifying marks a trio of poorly healed puckered burns on each cheek. He cut her free of the med tape binding her to the bulkhead. The shaper yammered something at the Shamed One in Yuuzhan Vong, and she answered tersely.
Corran pulled his blaster and motioned for the Shamed One to go ahead of him. Together they went up the corridor and into the control room.
“What’s going on, Tahiri?” Corran asked.
“Not much. We’re still not noticed, so far as I can tell, and no more Yuuzhan Vong ships have jumped.”
“No news is good news. Can you talk to one of the Vong for me?”
“Yuuzhan Vong,” Tahiri corrected.
“Whatever. Can you translate?”
“Sure,” she said cheerfully, removing the control mask from her head.
When the Shamed One saw Tahiri’s scars, her eyes widened, and she gabbled something in her own language.
“What did she say?” Corran asked. He really hated having to rely on secondhand information. He hated having no information even more.
“She noticed my scars,” Tahiri explained. “She asked if I am the Jedi-who-was-shaped.”
“She’s heard of you?”
“I guess so.”
Very, very interesting, Corran thought. Unless this one was actually at Yavin—and what would the odds of that be?—word was getting around, even among the Shamed Ones. Maybe especially among the Shamed Ones.
“Ask her name,” Corran instructed.
“It’s Taan,” Tahiri said after consulting with the Yuuzhan Vong.
“Tell Taan I saw her make a strange face when the shaper called me a Jedi,” Corran said. “Ask her what that meant.”
Tahiri conversed with the Shamed One briefly, then turned her green eyes up to Corran.
“She wants to know if it’s true what they say about the Jedi.”
“What do they say?”
“That the Jedi are the salvation of the Shamed Ones.”
Corran considered that. “She thinks of you as something special, doesn’t she?”
Tahiri’s cheeks pinkened. “Apparently the story of what happened on Yavin Four is a popular one among the Shamed Ones. Or a version of the story, anyway.”
“Really. Can you get the short version from her? And be sure not to correct her if her story conflicts with the facts.”
Looking a bit puzzled, Tahiri asked the question and received a lengthy answer. She translated it for Corran verbatim, in pieces.
“The Jedi have powers that no Yuuzhan Vong has. We know the warriors, the shapers, and the intendants are jealous of these powers. Some even fear them. At first we feared the Jedi, too, for they were infidels and dangerous foes. But on Yavin Four, two Jedi came. They came to redeem Vua Rapuung, once a mighty warrior who was marked with Shame by the shaper Mezhan Kwaad. One of the Jedi had been captured by this same shaper, and another became the comrade of Vua Rapuung. Together, side by side, the Shamed One and the Jedi defeated the shaper and redeemed Vua Rapuung. He died as no other warrior has died, saluting an infidel. The gods not only permitted this, they must have aided it. Now many say that perhaps the high castes do not know the will of the gods as well as they say, or perhaps they are hiding our redemption from us. Perhaps Shamed Ones are not shamed because it was ordained. Perhaps the Shamed Ones are not shamed because the gods hate them. Perhaps instead, our status is imposed on us by the high castes so they will have hands to do the least and most onerous of tasks, so they may live lives of glory and not debase themselves with the mundane. Perhaps the Jedi are our salvation. The legend of Vua Rapuung and the Jedi suggests it, and is often told.”
“Wow,” Corran said, when the recitation was done. “Are you sure you got all of that right?”
“Pretty sure,” Tahiri said. “I might have used a different word here and there, but it still comes out to the same thing.”
“Ask her if she believes this.”
Again, his query was translated and asked.
“She wasn’t sure. Now that she sees our might, she thinks it may be so.”
“Ask her if she is willing to work with us, as Vua Rapuung did.”
More unintelligible chatter; then Tahiri grinned. “She says she will help us, if there is anything someone as humble as she can do.”
“There is something we can try, at least,” Corran said. “It may not work, but it should be better than nothing.”
Anakin returned to the helm, lugging the communication device he had patched together from the beacon and his comlink. He found Corran and Tahiri with a Yuuzhan Vong of the Shamed caste. The Shamed One was talking to a villip. The villip had modeled itself to the massively scarred visage of a warrior.
“What—” he began, but Corran cut him off with a severe look and a finger held to his lip. Anakin took the hint—the villip might pick up his extraneous sound and transmit it, as well. He chewed his lips restlessly. The face on the villip scowled and barked, hissed, and finally, more calmly, seemed to give a series of instructions. Then the villip relaxed into its normal, neutral form.
Corran glanced at Tahiri. “Well?” he demanded.
“I think it went pretty well,” she said.
“What went pretty well?” Anakin asked.
“Our friend here just spun off quite a tale,” Corran told him, nodding at the Yuuzhan Vong. “She told the commander of the fleet that when they came out of hyperspace, something went wrong. She didn’t know what, because she is merely a Shamed One. She was tending the grutchin larvae, located near the primary dovin basal, and felt a weird jolt. When she didn’t receive any orders for a time, she went to see what was needed of her and found the whole crew dead, in fact, hardly recognizable, pasted all over the bulkheads.”
Anakin pursed his lips and then chopped his head forward. “I like it,” he said. “That leaves a couple of possibilities for the commander to think about. Either she’s lying, and there’s been a revolt on board the ship, or she’s telling the truth. If she’s telling the truth, they’ll know that what she described was the result of a complete failure of the dovin basal’s ability to negate inertia—except right at the base of the basal. After that, they have to decide if the Stalking Moon ran into s
omething natural—I dunno, a quantum black hole that made the basal recoil, something like that—or some superweapon the Givin have in place to wreck unwanted ships.”
Corran nodded. “Glad you approve,” he said sarcastically. But beneath his tone Anakin sensed a cool admiration that made him feel suddenly self-conscious.
“You ever consider a career in covert security?” the older Jedi asked. “Anyway, yes, that’s basically what I was thinking. Even if they think option one is the case—”
“Revolt?” Tahiri said doubtfully. “I don’t think so. Even if they could conceive of Shamed Ones killing warriors and shapers, they wouldn’t want to admit it. Do you know what would happen to the commander who let something like that happen on his watch?”
“As I was saying,” Corran went on, a little testily, “even if they consider one, they have to consider the others before they bring a whole fleet here or even a second ship. They’re trying to explain to Taan how to relay the telemetry of the sensing nodules, and she’s pretending to cooperate. So. Let’s hope they’re for real and we have a bit of time. Anakin, you were successful?”
“Yes. The signal isn’t that strong, so it may take a few moments to tune.”
“Get started, then.”
Anakin nodded and set to work. “Why Yag’Dhul, do you think?” he asked Corran, as he fiddled with the gain, focusing on the distant hum of hyperwave noise from farther insystem. “I mean, if they want Coruscant, they already have Duro to stage from.”
“They’re closing their back door. Yag’Dhul sits on the intersection of the Rimma Trade Route and the Corellian Trade Spine. It also gives them a clean shot at Thyferra.”
“Oh!” Tahiri said. “Bacta!”
“Right. If they control bacta production, they control the health of everyone in the galaxy. Or maybe it’s a ruse—the New Republic puts a lot of ships and matériel at Thyferra, and the Yuuzhan Vong try to take Fondor again or push on to a less-defended Coruscant from Duro. Either way, holding Yag’Dhul gives them a lot more options.”
Anakin had a steady feedback response. “All right,” he said. “We’re ready.”
“Hail the planetary defense force,” Corran said. He closed his eyes, concentrating. “Try …” He reeled off a quadratic equation, then smiled wearily. “It might not be right, but it ought to get their attention.”
“Hailing, Captain,” Anakin said.
Five minutes later, there was still no response. Anakin modulated the wave form, sharpened the gain, and repeated.
“It ought to be working,” Anakin muttered. “Unless they’re deaf.”
“Or unless their attention is focused elsewhere,” Corran mused.
“What do you mean?” Anakin asked. “Why wouldn’t they be watching their borders?”
“You don’t see any ships or even probes in this region, do you? The Yuuzhan Vong have softened up other worlds with internal conflict and other methods of espionage. They may already have agents here.”
“Or maybe they’ve already poisoned Yag’Dhul, like they did Belkadan.”
“Too slow. Word would get out,” Corran said.
“Unless they use something we haven’t seen yet,” Tahiri pointed out. “That’s what shapers do, you know, come up with new things.”
Corran nodded. “They do seem to keep condensing weapons out of nebular gas,” he allowed. “But—”
Their speculation was cut off by a whine and sputter from Anakin’s rewired comm unit. Behind a sleet of gravitic interference, the naturally armored figure of a Givin glowered at them with empty eyes. More than anything his—her?—face resembled a large human skull that had been melted, allowed to sag, and re-form.
“Yag’Dhul primary bastion to unidentified ship,” the Givin said. “You have used an outdated and illegal hail code. However, your ship conforms to the configuration of a Yuuzhan Vong reconnaissance vessel.” Then the mouth slit clattered something unidentifiable.
To Anakin, anyway. Tahiri gave a little gasp of horror.
“What did he say?” Corran demanded.
Tahiri turned her aventurine gaze on the other two Jedi.
“It’s Yuuzhan Vong. He said, ‘Welcome. We’ve been expecting you.’ ”
TWENTY-SIX
Wedge Antilles pinched his face in a scowl. Unlike some other things about him, time had only made his glare more impressive. Jaina felt it brush her and shivered, though she knew she wasn’t its intended target. That would be Kyp, seated between her and Gavin at the roughly finished wooden table.
“General Antilles—” she began, but then the full weight of his anger did fall on her, stopping her cold.
“You should have told us he would be here, Lieutenant Solo,” Wedge said, his voice as soft and tense as the wire on Tionne’s lute. “It was less than honest, and far less than I expect of you.”
Beyond the rustic stone walls of the hilltop garden and its topiary canopy, the sun jeweled the Silver Sea with noontime light, and the fields that rolled up to the shore breathed of bristing blooms and balmgrass. A herd of stumpy, gracile-necked fecklen whirred and boomed their displeasure at a family of hopping squalls. The sky was blue, with no hint of vapor. After the cramped quarters of an X-wing, a ranch on Chandrila was the best meeting place Jaina could have imagined. More practically, it was also a place where it was easy to see one’s enemy coming and speak freely, with only minimal fear that unwanted ears might hear. That was especially true because the estate was owned by a trusted relative of Gavin Darklighter’s wife, Sera.
But that lovely world all but vanished for Jaina, replaced by Wedge’s eyes, those verdant polished spheres that had seen so much combat and tragedy, that had looked kindly on her as a child. Wedge, who had fought alongside her father and mother and her uncle Luke from the very beginning. To have him glare at her like this was … very difficult.
She felt a sudden, comforting presence, and for a minute accepted it, grasped for it even. She needed every reassurance she could get. Then she recognized it as Kyp’s touch. That was the last thing in the universe she needed right now, comforting or not.
Get back, Kyp.
She swallowed and addressed Wedge again. “General, I apologize, but I didn’t think you would meet with me if you knew Kyp was involved. Neither did Colonel Darklighter.”
Antilles now turned his ire toward Gavin. “You were in on this too, Gavin?”
“She could have hidden Durron’s connection from both of us, Wedge, simply by not bringing him along when she met with me. She didn’t. She was up front with me. I advised her to do things this way because I know you and—more to the point—I thought there was every possibility that my call to you was monitored. There are plenty of people who would love to make a present of Kyp Durron to the Yuuzhan Vong. You want to blame someone, blame me.”
General Antilles chewed at that, didn’t seem to like it, and swallowed it anyway. He glanced back up at Kyp. “Durron, I don’t like you,” he said. “The very best thing you are is a murderer. The very worst—”
“Wait a moment, General,” Kyp interrupted. “You know what I was going through back then. Han Solo and Master Skywalker forgave me and brought me back into the fold. I had hoped that you could, too.”
“You don’t deserve their forgiveness,” Wedge shot back. “Look how you’ve repaid them. Luke you denounce and deride, and as for Han, you’ve roped his daughter into a politically precarious position, if not something far worse.”
“General,” Kyp said quietly, “I’m sorry about Qwi Xux. I’ve told you that before. At the time I thought what I did was for the best. She had information in her head that could have brought the New Republic to its knees.”
“You leave her out of this,” Antilles warned. “You don’t even so much as speak her name, or I’ll blast you where you stand.”
“General,” Jaina said desperately, “please. Whatever you may think of Kyp, he’s discovered something important. Something that threatens us all.”
“Fine,” Anti
lles said, sitting back and brusquely waving his hand. “You have evidence of this danger? Let me see it. The sooner this is over with, the sooner I can find some clean air to breathe.”
The four of them watched in silence as Kyp replayed the holo Jaina had seen last beneath the frozen surface of an unnamed world. When it was over, the silence continued for some time. It was Wedge who broke it.
“Emperor’s black bones,” he muttered.
“That was my reaction,” Gavin replied. “Now you understand why I thought you should see this.”
“Yes. I suppose I do.” Wedge straightened and knitted his hands together. He looked at Jaina. “You’ve seen this for yourself?”
“No,” Jaina admitted. “I’ve seen this same holo. But it’s pretty clear what it is.”
Wedge rubbed his forehead. “No,” he said, “it’s not unambiguous. It could be a fueling device, for instance.”
Kyp cleared his throat. “General Antilles, may I speak?”
“Go ahead,” Wedge said, grimacing.
“It may be a fueling device, of course. That doesn’t mean it isn’t a weapon. If that ship can manipulate gravity at that scale, only fools wouldn’t understand its military implications. Whatever you might say about the Yuuzhan Vong, they aren’t fools.”
“No,” Wedge said. “No, they aren’t. But until we see it used militarily—”
“It would be too late then, General,” Kyp burst out, leaping to his feet.
“Shut up and sit down,” Wedge snapped. “Let me finish what I was saying.”
Kyp’s lips remained pressed tight, and for an instant Jaina caught a glimpse of something she didn’t understand. It passed quickly.
Kyp sat down.
“You’re done, Durron? Good. What I was saying was, until we have real evidence that this is a military weapon, we can’t go to the senate with this. Maybe not even then.”
“Why?” Jaina asked.
“Because they won’t do anything,” Wedge replied. “At least not right away. And senate security is leakier than a gas siever. The Yuuzhan Vong would know within hours that we’re aware of their superweapon. Hours after that, their officials would assure Borsk Fey’lya that it’s either harmless, or something meant only to be used in their own defense. They’ll reiterate that they have no designs on the rest of our systems so long as we comply with their demands.”