by Greg Keyes
“Uldir,” Dacholder asked suddenly.
“Uh-huh?”
“Do you think we can beat them? The Vong?”
“That’s a crazy question,” Uldir replied. “Of course we can. They just got a jump on us, that’s all. You’ll see. Once the military gets its act together and brings the Jedi into the equation, the Yuuzhan Vong will be on the run soon enough.”
Dacholder was silent for a moment, watching the ship grow larger.
“I don’t think we can beat them,” he said softly. “I don’t think we ought to be fighting them in the first place.”
“What do you mean?”
“Look, they’ve kicked our butts right from the start. If they make another push, they’ll have Coruscant before you can blink.”
“That’s pretty defeatist.”
“It’s pretty realistic.”
“Then what?” Uldir asked, a little heatedly. “You think we ought to surrender?”
“We don’t have to do that, either. Look, there aren’t that many Vong. They already have as many planets as they need, they’ve said so themselves. They haven’t made a move since Duro, and they won’t—”
The console got Uldir’s attention, so he didn’t hear the rest of what Dacholder was saying. “Hold that thought,” he snapped, “and hail that ship.”
“Why?”
“Because she’s playing dead, that’s why. All her systems just came on, and she’s trying for a tractor lock.” He quickly began evasive maneuvers.
“Let her have us, Uldir,” Dacholder said. “Don’t make me use this.”
To Uldir’s astonishment, this was a blaster his copilot had pointed at his head.
“Doc? What are you doing?”
“Sorry, lad. I like you, I really do. I hate doing this like drinking acid, but it has to be done.”
“What has to be done?”
“The Yuuzhan Vong warmaster was very specific. He wants all of the Jedi.”
“Doc, you fool, I’m not a Jedi.”
“There’s a list, Uldir, and you’re on it.”
“List? What list? Whose list? Not a Yuuzhan Vong list, because they couldn’t possibly know who went to the academy and who didn’t.”
“That’s right. Some of us are in high places.”
Uldir narrowed his eyes. “Us? You’re Peace Brigade, Doc?”
“Yes.”
“Of all the—” Uldir stopped. “And that ship. That’s what’s going to take me to the Yuuzhan Vong, isn’t it?”
“It wasn’t my idea, lad. I’m just following orders. Now, slow her down like a good boy, and let them have their lock.”
“I’m not a Jedi,” Uldir repeated.
“No? I always thought your hunches were a little too good. You seem to see things before they come.”
“Right. Like this, you mean?”
“Doesn’t matter anyway. What matters is they think you’re Jedi. And I’ll bet you know things they would be interested in.”
“Don’t do this, Doc, I’m begging you. You know what the Yuuzhan Vong do to their victims. How can you even think of making deals with them? They destroyed Ithor, for space’s sake!”
“The way I hear it, a Jedi named Corran Horn was responsible for that.”
“Bantha fodder.”
Dacholder sighed. “I’m giving you a three-count, Uldir.”
“Don’t, Doc.”
“One.”
“I won’t go with them.”
“Two.”
“Please.”
“Thr—”
He never got it out. By the time he got to the end of the word, Dacholder was in vacuum, twenty meters away and still accelerating. Uldir sealed the cockpit back up, ears popping and face tingling from his brief brush with nothingness. He glanced at the missing acceleration couch.
“I’m sorry, Doc,” he said. “You didn’t leave me much of a choice. I guess it’s just as well I never told you about all of my modifications.”
He opened the throttle, gaining quick ground on the yacht. By the time they overcame their inertia and started to gain, Uldir had punched into lightspeed and was gone.
To where, he didn’t know. If he survived the hyperspace jump, would he be safe?
And if he wasn’t safe, what about the real Jedi? His friends from the academy?
He couldn’t hide from this. Master Skywalker had to know what was happening. He could think about himself after that was done.
Swilja Fenn tried to stay on her feet. Such a basic thing, standing. One rarely gave it a thought. But the long pursuit on Cujicor, copious blood loss, and a foul, cramped incarceration on a Peace Brigade ship rendered even such basic things a struggle. She drew on the Force for her strength and lashed her lekku in helplessness.
The Peace Brigade goons had dumped her, bound and half senseless, on some nameless moon and hauled gravity out of there. Not much later, the Yuuzhan Vong had shown up. They had cut away her bonds and then replaced them with a living, jellylike substance, all the while spitting at her in a language that seemed made entirely of curses.
After that, more travel in dark places and finally here, barely able to keep her feet under her, in a vast chamber that looked as if it had been carved inside of a chunk of raw meat. Smelled that way, too.
Swilja squinted at someone approaching from the murk and shadows at the far end of the room.
“What do you lylek-dung-grubbers want with me?” she snarled, momentarily forgetting her Jedi training.
The lapse got her a cuff in the face hard enough to knock her off her feet.
When she rose, he was standing over her.
The Yuuzhan Vong liked to scar themselves. They liked cut-up faces and tattoos, severed fingers and toes. The higher up the food chain they were, it seemed the less there was of them. Or at least, what had started as them, because they liked implants, too.
The Yuuzhan Vong standing above her must have been way up the food chain, because he looked like he had fallen into a bin of vibroblades. Scales the color of dried blood covered most of his body, and some sort of cloak hung from his shoulders. The latter twitched, slowly.
And like the other Yuuzhan Vong, he wasn’t there. If he had been Twi’lek or human or Rodian, she might have stopped his heart with the Force or snapped his neck against the ceiling. Dark side or not, she would have done it and rid the galaxy of him forever.
She tried to do the next best thing—hurl herself at him and claw his eyes out. He was only a meter away; surely she could take just one of these gravel-maggots with her.
Unfortunately, the next best thing was exponentially less effective than the best. The same guard who had struck her a moment before lashed out faster than lightning, grabbing her by the lekku and yanking her back. He held her up to the monster confronting her.
“I know you,” Swilja said, spitting out teeth and blood. “You’re the one who called for our heads. Tsavong Lah.”
“I am Warmaster Tsavong Lah,” the monster confirmed.
She spat at him. The spittle struck his hand, but he ignored it, denying her even the minor victory of irritating him.
“I congratulate you on proving yourself worthy of honored sacrifice,” Tsavong Lah said. “You are far more admirable than the cowering scum who delivered you to us. They will merely perish, when their time comes. We will not mock the gods by offering them in sacrifice.” He suddenly showed more of the inside of his mouth than Swilja ever wanted to see. It might have been a grin or a sneer.
“If you know who I am,” Tsavong Lah said, “you know what I want. You know who I want.”
“I have no idea what you want. Given what I know of you it would probably make even a Hutt sick.”
Tsavong Lah licked his lip and twisted his neck slightly. His eyes drilled at her.
“Help me find Jacen Solo,” he said. “With your help, I will find him.”
“Eat poodoo.”
Tsavong Lah shredded a laugh through his teeth.
“It is not my job to
convince you,” he said. “I have specialists for that. And if you still cannot be convinced, there are others, many others. One day you will all embrace the truth—or death.” With that he seemed to forget she existed. His eyes emptied of any sign that he saw her or had ever seen her, and he walked slowly away.
“You’re wrong!” she screamed, as they dragged her from the chamber. “The Force is stronger than you. The Jedi will be your end, Tsavong Lah!”
But the warmaster didn’t turn. His stride never broke.
An hour later, even Swilja didn’t believe her brave words. She didn’t even remember them. Nothing existed for her but pain, and eventually, not even that.
PART ONE
PRAXEUM
CHAPTER ONE
Luke Skywalker stood steady and straight before the gathered Jedi, his face composed and stronger than durasteel. The set of his shoulders, his precise gestures, the weight and timbre of each word he spoke all confirmed his confidence and control.
But Anakin Solo knew it was a lie. Anger and fear filled the chamber like a hundred atmospheres of pressure, and beneath that weight something in Master Skywalker crumpled. It felt like hope breaking. Anakin thought it was the worst thing he had ever felt, and he had felt some very bad things in his sixteen years.
The perception didn’t last long. Nothing was broken, only bent, and whatever it was straightened, and Master Skywalker was again as strong and confident in the Force as to the eye. Anakin didn’t think anyone else had noticed it.
But he had. The unshakable had shaken. It was something Anakin would never forget, another of the many things that had seemed eternal to him suddenly gone, another speeder zooming out from underneath his feet, leaving him flat on his back wondering what had happened. Hadn’t he learned yet?
He forced himself to focus his ice-blue eyes on Master Skywalker, on that familiar age- and scar-roughened face. Beyond him, through a huge transparisteel window, flowed the never-ending light and life of Coruscant. Against those cyclopean buildings and streaming trails of light, the Master seemed somehow frail or distracted.
Anakin distanced himself from his heartsickness by concentrating on his uncle’s words.
“Kyp,” Master Skywalker was saying, “I understand how you feel.”
Kyp Durron was more honest than Master Skywalker, in some ways. The anger in his heart was no stranger to the expression on his face. If the Jedi were a planet, Master Skywalker stood at one pole, radiating calm. Kyp Durron stood at the other, fists clenched in fury.
Somewhere near the equator the planet was starting to pull apart.
Kyp took a step forward, running his hand through dark hair shot with silver. “Master Skywalker,” he said, “I submit that you do not know how I feel. If you did, I would sense it in the Force. We all could. Instead, you hide your feelings from us.”
“I never said I felt as you do,” Luke said gently, “only that I understand.”
“Ah.” Kyp nodded, raising one finger and shaking it at Skywalker as if suddenly comprehending his point. “You mean you understand intellectually, but not with your heart! The Jedi you trained and inspired are hunted and killed throughout the galaxy, and you ‘understand’ it the way you might an equation? Your blood doesn’t burn to do something about it?”
“Of course I want to do something about it,” Luke said. “That’s why I’ve called this meeting. But anger is not the answer. Attack is not the answer, and retribution most certainly is not. We are Jedi. We defend, we support.”
“Defend who? Support what? Defend those beings you rescued from the atrocities of Palpatine? Support the New Republic and its good people? Shield the ones we have all shed blood for, time and again in the cause of peace and the greater good? These same cowardly beings who now defame us, deride us, and sacrifice us to their new Yuuzhan Vong masters? No one wants our help. They want us dead and forgotten. I say it’s time we defend ourselves. Jedi for the Jedi!”
Applause smacked around the chamber—not deafening, but not trivial either. Anakin had to admit, Kyp made a certain amount of sense. Who could the Jedi trust now? Only other Jedi, it seemed.
“What would you have us do, then, Kyp?” Luke asked mildly.
“I told you. Defend ourselves. Fight evil, in whatever guise it takes. And we don’t let the fight come to us, to catch us in our homes, asleep, with our children. We go out and find the enemy. Offense against evil is defense.”
“In other words, you would have us all emulate what you and your dozen have been doing.”
“I would have us emulate you, Master Skywalker—when you were battling the Empire.”
Luke sighed. “I was young, then,” he pointed out. “There was much I did not understand. Aggression is the way of the dark side.”
Kyp rubbed his jaw, then smiled briefly. “And who should know better, Master Skywalker, than one who did turn to the dark side.”
“Exactly,” Luke replied. “I fell, though I knew better. Like you, Kyp. We both, in our own way, thought we were wise enough and nimble enough to walk on the laser beam and not get burned. We were both wrong.”
“And yet we returned.”
“Barely. With much help and love.”
“Granted. But there were others. Kam Solusar, for instance, not to forget your own father—”
“What are you saying, Kyp? That it is easy to return from the dark side, and that justifies the risk?”
Kyp shrugged. “I’m saying the line between dark and light isn’t as sharp as you’re trying to make it, or exactly where you want to put it.” He steepled his fingers beneath his chin, then shook them with an air of contemplation. “Master Skywalker, if a man attacks me with a lightsaber, may I defend with my own blade, that he not take my head off? Is that too aggressive?”
“Of course you may.”
“And after I defend, may I press my attack? May I return the blow? If not, why are we Jedi taught lightsaber battle techniques? Why don’t we learn only how to defend, and back off until the enemy has us in a corner and our arms grow tired, until an attack finally slips through our guard? Master Skywalker, sometimes the only defense is an attack. You know this as well as anyone.”
“That’s true, Kyp. I do.”
“But you back down from the fight, Master Skywalker. You block and defend and never return the blow. Meanwhile the blades directed against you multiply. And you have begun to lose, Master Skywalker. One opportunity lost! And there lies Daeshara’cor, dead. Another slip in your defense, and Corran Horn is slandered as the destroyer of Ithor and driven to seclusion. Again an attack is neglected, and Wurth Skidder joins Daeshara’cor in death. And now a flurry of failures as a million blades swing at you, and there go Dorsk 82, and Seyyerin Itoklo, and Swilja Fenn, and who can count those we do not know of yet, or who will die tomorrow? When will you attack, Master Skywalker?”
“This is ridiculous!” a female voice exploded half a meter from Anakin’s ear. It was his sister, Jaina, her face gone red with internal heat. “Maybe you don’t hear all the news, running around playing hero with your squadron, Kyp. Maybe you’ve started feeling so self-important that you think your way is the only way. While you’ve been out there blazing your guns, Master Skywalker has been working quietly and hard to make sure things don’t fall apart.”
“Yes, and see how well that’s gone,” Kyp said. “Duro, for instance. How many Jedi were involved there? Five? Six? And yet not one of you—Master Skywalker included—smelled the rank treachery of the situation until it was too late. Why didn’t the Force guide you?” He paused and then smacked a fist into his palm for emphasis. “Because you were acting like nursemaids, not Jedi warriors! I’ve heard one of you even refused to use the Force.” He looked significantly at Jaina’s twin, who sat stone-faced halfway around the hall.
“You leave Jacen out of this,” Jaina snarled.
“At least your brother was honest in his refusal to use his power,” Kyp said. “Wrong, but honest, and in the end when he had to use it, he did.
The rest of this group has no excuse for its ambivalence. If saving our galaxy from the Yuuzhan Vong is not a good enough cause to flex our true might, let self-preservation be!”
“Jedi for Jedi!” Octa Ramis shouted, still in the clutches of renewed grief over losing Daeshara’cor.
“It’s both ourselves and the galaxy I’m trying to preserve,” Luke said. “If we win the fight against the Yuuzhan Vong at the price of using dark-side powers, it will be no victory.”
Kyp rolled his eyes and crossed his arms. “I knew it was a mistake to come here,” he said. “Every second I waste talking with you is a torpedo I might be firing at the Yuuzhan Vong.”
“If you knew that, why did you come?”
“Because I thought even you must see the pattern on the Huj mat by now, Master Skywalker. After months of doing nothing, of watching our numbers dwindle, of listening to the lies circulating about the Jedi from the Rim to the Core, I thought now, at last, you had decided it was time to act. I came, Master Skywalker, to hear you say enough is enough, to lead the Jedi, united, in a just cause. Instead I hear only the same vacillating I’ve grown tired of.”
“On the contrary, Kyp. I called this meeting to make some real decisions about how we should face this crisis.”
“This isn’t a crisis,” Kyp sputtered. “It’s a massacre. And I already know what to do. I’ve been doing it.”
“The people are frightened, Kyp. They’re living in a nightmare, just as we are. They only want to wake up.”
“Yes. And in hopes of waking up, they feed the dream monsters whatever they ask for. Droids. Cities. Planets. Refugees. Now Jedi. By refusing to act against this treachery, Master Skywalker, you come dangerously near condoning it.”
“Bantha fodder!” Jacen snapped, finally breaking his silence. “Master Skywalker hasn’t been complacent. None of us has. But the sort of naked aggression you condone is—”
“Effective?” Kyp sneered.
“Is it?” Jacen challenged. “What have you and your squadron really accomplished? Harried a few Yuuzhan Vong supply ships? Meanwhile we’ve saved tens of thousands—”