by Greg Keyes
“Han Solo,” he muttered, “suckered into the most obvious pirate trap imaginable. I’ll never live it down.”
“I’ll add that to the list of other things you’ll never live down,” his wife’s voice said over the open intercom.
“Yeah, well, you’d better hope I do live this one down, sweetheart.”
“Dad?” Jacen said. “Did I ever mention this whole pirate thing was a bad idea?”
“Why no, son, you—Wow!”
His exclamation was comment on the jet of plasma the interdictor had just released. Its diameter was greater than that of the Falcon, spearing up like a solar flare. He avoided it by a turn so sharp that even with the inertial compensators at 98 percent, the g’s sent blood rushing from his head.
Behind him, he heard a loud clattering sound as C-3PO smacked into a bulkhead. Again.
“Okay,” Han muttered. “Time for a change in strategy. Threepio, quit fooling around and haul yourself up here. I need you.”
The golden droid’s head peeped around the corner. “You need me? I would be happy to be of service, Captain Solo, but I don’t see how a protocol droid could be of help. Unless you want me to transmit our surrender, which I must say seems like a bad idea, even when you consider the alternative.”
“That’s not it,” Han said, weaving through a cloud of fresh skips. “Earlier, we noticed an odd radiation signature from one of those cargo pods. Figure out what it is.”
“Sir, I really don’t see—”
“It’s that or you start working on your surrender speech.”
C-3PO moved to the sensor readout. “I’m quite sure I don’t know what I’m doing. Nevertheless, I hasten to be of service. Oh, why didn’t I stay with Master Luke?”
THIRTY-SEVEN
“This is driving me crazy,” Tahiri fussed. “Not knowing. For all we can tell, the Yuuzhan Vong have already taken over the entire system.”
“I think there are a few hundred Jedi proverbs about patience,” Corran said. “Though they all elude me just this moment. Try to follow Anakin’s example.” He paused. “I can’t believe I just said that.”
Anakin hardly paid attention to his companions. He was mostly beyond the plain, boxy room they were “guests” in, riding the Force out through the reaches of the Yag’Dhul system. He brushed the intricate, mathematical beauty of the tides of the planet and its three moons, felt the straining of Yag’Dhul’s atmosphere toward space. He heard the whispering of millions of Givin minds in the corridors of their hermetically sealed cities. He touched a billion shards of stone and ice that had never cohered into planets, biding their time until the sun finally caught them in its fiery noose.
And he felt them, the Yuuzhan Vong. Not in the Force exactly, but through the telepathic lambent incorporated in his lightsaber. The feeling was akin to a faint, staticky comm signal—but it was unmistakable.
“They’re here,” he said.
“Who?” Corran asked.
“The Yuuzhan Vong. They’re in the system. I can’t tell anything else, nothing about how many or how—” He choked off as something new, strong, and terrible struck him in the Force. He gasped, and tears welled in his eyes, spilling down his cheeks.
“What?” Tahiri said. “What’s wrong?”
“Mara,” Anakin managed. “Don’t you feel it? Aunt Mara is dying. And Uncle Luke …” He sprang up from his cross-legged position. “We have to get out of here. Now.” He drew his lightsaber.
“Anakin, we can’t,” Corran said. “The dodecian wasn’t kidding when he threatened to decompress the station. The Givin can survive in vacuum, remember?”
“We have to do something,” Anakin said hotly.
“Anakin, dying on Yag’Dhul Station won’t help Mara. We have to keep our heads.”
“I won’t just sit here and wait for them to come for us. We can’t leave it up to the Givin to decide whether we live or die.”
“I say we escape,” Tahiri said. “All we need is another ship.”
“As long as you’re wishing for the unlikely,” Corran said, “why not at least wish for vac suits first. That way we would at least stand a chance of reaching the imaginary ship we’re going to steal.”
“You used this place as a base once,” Anakin reminded him. “Don’t you know where they would keep vac suits?”
“Well, I’ve considered that, of course, but I don’t see any reason the Givin would still have those around. Or that they would be in the same place they were twenty years ago.”
“We could use the Force, make one of the guards take us to them,” Tahiri said.
“Absolutely not,” Corran said with a frown. “You’re not going to the dark side on my watch. Do it on Luke’s.”
“What, then?” Anakin asked.
“Consider also that the odds this room is being monitored are extraordinarily high,” Corran said.
“Since when did a Corellian ever care about odds?” Anakin muttered.
“Fine. No odds. They are listening to us. Count on it.”
Anakin knotted his fingers in frustration. “Then I hope they hear me when I point out how ridiculous this is. We came here to warn them, and this is how they repay us?”
“Anakin, look at it from their point of view. We came here in a Yuuzhan Vong vessel and acted as if we were going to attack their station. Now we claim a huge fleet is on the way to conquer their planet, and further we accuse them of having at least one faction collaborating with the Yuuzhan Vong. It would be hard for me to swallow.”
“Well, they have their proof by now.”
“There is that,” Corran admitted. “You can’t tell how close the Yuuzhan Vong are?”
Anakin shook his head. “No. It’s not like that.”
As if on cue, a deep tremor ran through the station.
“But if I had to guess,” Anakin went on, “I would say they were really, really close.”
“Right,” Corran said. “We have to get out of here.”
“Haven’t we just been saying that?” Tahiri complained.
“The difference is, now I’m saying it,” Corran replied. Unhitching his lightsaber, he went to the door.
It wasn’t locked, and there were no guards outside.
“Interesting,” Corran said, as the station trembled again.
Struck by a sudden suspicion, Anakin reached out in the Force once more, this time narrowing his focus to the station itself. To his relief, his suspicions were not confirmed. The Givin hadn’t abandoned the station and them with it.
In fact, at that moment, two Givin carrying blaster rifles entered through the hatch at the end of the hallway.
“Jedi,” one said, in clipped Basic. “You will come with us.”
“We can take them,” Anakin said, very low.
“Probably,” Corran acknowledged. “But we aren’t going to. Not yet, anyway.” He smiled at the Givin. “Lead on,” he said.
They passed several more Givin in the hallways, all in a rush, none seeming inclined to notice them. When they reached the command center they found it in a flurry of activity and eerily silent. The viewscreen depicted several large Yuuzhan Vong ships firing globs of plasma.
Dodecian Illiet glanced up at them as they entered.
“It would appear you were correct,” he said tightly. “Congratulations.”
“It would have been nice to hear that a few hours ago,” Corran said.
“No doubt. You three will want vacuum suits. When the Yuuzhan Vong board, we will empty the station of air.”
“Aren’t you fighting back?”
“We are, but this station has limited firepower. Our shields will not hold much longer, and our fleet is assembling to protect Yag’Dhul. We can expect no help from them. The Yuuzhan Vong force is indeed quite formidable. I expect we have very little chance of victory.”
“Don’t be so hopelessly optimistic,” Corran said.
“Perhaps I misphrased, somehow,” the Givin said. “I did not mean to imply optimism on my par
t.”
“I was being sarcastic,” Corran said. “Never mind. Where are the vac suits?”
The dodecian gestured at another Givin. “In the old storage lockers at what you may remember as designated ring one-C of the docking area. My subordinate will take you to them in case your memory fails. I regret your position in all of this. I regret further that an attempt was made to bargain with your lives.”
“They didn’t bite?”
“On the contrary,” Illiet said. “I reached a settlement with them. They promised to spare our station if you were turned over to them.”
“Then why …?”
“I did not believe their promise,” the dodecian said. “Go. There is a small ship at docking port twelve, berth thirteen, if it has not already been destroyed. I grant you use of it. The rest of our vessels were used to evacuate unnecessary personnel before the attack commenced.”
“Thank you,” Corran said.
“Thank you for your efforts on our behalf,” the Givin replied. He looked back at the tactical readouts. “You should hurry.” He didn’t look back up.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Nen Yim bathed in a sea of knowledge. Protocols glistened and swirled in the depths, revealing the foundations and endless permutations of life in intimate and splendid detail. Beneath the cognition hood her expression was one of awe and wonder, and for the moment she was the eager, maze-eyed young woman she had been only a few cycles before, loving and in love with the art of shaping, with knowledge itself.
She had long since passed the fifth cortex into the realm of the masters. Here were the living designs for the dovin basals, the thought-seeds of yorik coral, and yes, the protocols governing the creation of master hands. These she passed, navigating the shoals and depths with her questions, steering with her determination.
She found the germ of the worldships and swam through its thick skin. Parts she had seen before, of course—the outline of the recham forteps, the pattern of the osmotic membranes of the endocrine cloisters—but these were only components. She had never seen the profound logic of the vessels laid out holistically. Her grasp of the organic relationships between organs had been based mostly on deduction, and she found it instructive to observe where she had been right and where wrong.
At the center of it, at the outer limits of the seventh and final cortex, she found, at last, the brain. Its making uncoiled for her. She opened herself in turn and absorbed the information, let it fill the places her vaa-tumor had burned a place for. Strands of amino acid sequences flowed by like twisting rivers, pooling in her enhanced memory. Neurons divided, splitting and scrolling into million-branched ganglia that further folded into cortical coils. Subsystems nomic and autonomic explained themselves as the developmental process continued, finally settling into stability, maintenance, reorganization, stasis.
And in the end, when it had all come and gone, when her own brain strained at the rush of knowing, she understood at last.
The ship was doomed. The rikyam would die, and there was no protocol to stop it. Wonder dimmed in her, and the vast living library around her suddenly stood revealed to her not so much as a storehouse, but as a prison. Or a mausoleum, for though it created the impression of being alive, everything in the great Qang qahsa was desiccated, sterile, unchanging. There was nothing new here. If the protocols truly came from the gods, the gods had not seen fit to add anything to the sum of Yuuzhan Vong knowledge in a thousand years.
But that was impossible. Since the invasion of the infidel galaxy, new protocols had been handed down from the gods to Supreme Overlord Shimrra and thence to the shapers. The gods had been generous, especially in doling out weapons. Where had that knowledge gone?
That thought stirred something in the Qang qahsa, as if it had been waiting for someone to think it. The seventh cortex faded from her consciousness, leaving her adrift in peace and dark, more confused than ever.
There is nothing beyond the seventh cortex, she thought. I have moved to a place the gods have not yet filled.
If there were gods. Mezhan Kwaad had denied them. Perhaps …
But even as she renewed her doubt, something changed in the void. Like a light in the distance, or a tunnel opening.
And then she beheld something that could not be there.
An eighth cortex.
With renewed hope she moved toward it.
The membrane resisted her, filling her with pain that etched along her every nerve ending.
This place is forbidden, even to masters, the qahsa told her. It was the first time it had spoken to her in something resembling language, the first time she felt its ancient sentience notice her. She recoiled. Who may come here if not master shapers?
Return, the voice said.
I cannot, she answered. Breathing hard, Nen Yim ignored the voice of the qahsa and pushed forward with her mind, accepting the pain, making it a part of herself. The agony grew, burning away her thought, but she held to her purpose, made it an animal thing that pain only fed and could never quiet.
Her heart beat unevenly, and her breath chopped. She tasted blood. Beyond the cognition hood, she was distantly aware that her body was arching in tendon-ripping spasms.
Open! she shrieked. Open to me, Nen Yim! Open or kill me!
And suddenly, like waters parting before swimming hands, the eighth cortex opened.
She looked within, and all hope vanished. She collapsed into her grief and was lost.
Light filtering through her open eyes woke her. A sour smell cloyed in her nostrils, and she realized that it was her own congealed blood. She tried to move and found her body almost paralyzed with pain.
Standing over her, grinning, was Kae Kwaad.
“What did you see, little Nen Tsup?” he asked gently. “Did you see it all? Are you satisfied, now?”
“You knew,” she said.
“Of course I knew.”
She looked groggily around. They were in the shaper laboratory.
“Mezhan,” she said.
Nothing happened, except that Kae Kwaad grinned more broadly. “I suspect that word was supposed to trigger something. The grutchin you altered, perhaps? I took the precaution of destroying it.”
Something about Master Kwaad’s speech seemed very different. Wrong.
“Clean yourself up, Adept,” the master said softly. “We have a journey before us, you and I.”
“Where?” she managed to ask, through lips her own teeth must have gnashed and torn.
“Why to see him, of course. Supreme Overlord Shimrra. He is waiting for you.”
THIRTY-NINE
“Eleven, you’ve got two on your tail.”
“Thanks, Ten,” Jaina answered, “but tell me something I don’t already know.” She jiggled the etheric rudder, watching the trails of superhot gases whip soundlessly past. Off to starboard, she caught a glimpse of the battle at Wampa, but the flashing lasers and long plumes of incandescence didn’t tell her anything except that someone was still trying to cook the rock.
She took a hit. The starfield tumbled crazily, and her cockpit was suddenly hotter than the midday double suns on Tatooine. Sparks crackled across her console, and every hair on her body stood at attention.
My engines are gone, she thought. I’m dead.
Interestingly, the thought did nothing to frighten her. Her only regret was that she wouldn’t get to see the big show at the end.
“Captain Solo, the Yuuzhan Vong ship is hailing us,” C-3PO shouted excitedly. “They must have a modified villip on board.”
“You tell them I’m a little too busy shooting down their ships to answer them,” Han replied, flipping the Millennium Falcon ninety degrees to squeeze thinwise through a tightly formed wedge of skips.
“They seem quite eager to communicate,” C-3PO persisted.
“Well, tell them we’ll call back.” He’d been forced away from the interdictor by seemingly endless swarms of coralskippers. Now the monstrous ship was following them, trying to establish the dovin
basal equivalent of a tractor lock. In desperation, Han drove for the freighters, figuring he could at least use them as shields.
He hadn’t had time to check on Karrde lately, though the barked commands over the open channel told him the information broker was still alive, at least.
He made the largest of the freighters, dodging its insignificant defensive lasers with ease, and once there looped around to face his pursuit, a determined snarl on his face.
He blinked. There was nothing there. Not a single coralskipper had followed him.
“Sir,” C-3PO said, “the commander of the Yuuzhan Vong warship Sunulok has called his ships back. If we do not answer his hail, he will commence hostilities in sixty seconds.”
Han checked his sensor display. The coralskippers had retreated to the vicinity of the interdictor, which was now at a stop relative to the Falcon. He estimated he was outside of the Sunulok’s tractor range—barely.
He eased back half a klick, to see what would happen. The ships didn’t budge, though he noticed Karrde hadn’t had any such reprieve. Off to his port, that battle raged on. It looked like Karrde was losing.
“Better let me talk to ’em, Threepio,” Han said. “I don’t think letting them speak to a droid is going to make them any happier.”
“Indubitably, sir.”
Keeping a careful eye on both the viewport and sensor displays, Han keyed on the comm.
“Sunulok, this is Princess of Blood. You ready to surrender, yet?”
The Yuuzhan Vong were not.
“This is Warmaster Tsavong Lah. You waste my time with nonsense,” the warmaster grated.
“Hey, you called me. What do you want?”
“You deny me visual, skulking coward,” he said. “But it avails you nothing. You are Han Solo, and your vessel is the Millennium Falcon.”
Well, I wonder who he bought that information from? Han thought. So much for the anonymity of piracy. “You’re callin’ me a coward?” Han exploded. “You’re the scum who had his underlings cut my wife.”
“She was not worthy to fight me. Neither was your Jeedai son.”