Conquest: Edge of Victory I

by Greg Keyes

“But you just said it.”

  “If you repeat it again, I will kill you.”

  Anakin drew himself taller. “You’re welcome to try,” he said softly.

  Rapuung’s muscles bunched and tensed and his mauled lips twitched. Again he seemed more like a dangerous, poisonous animal than a person. But then he rasped a sigh. “Here, I know what is best. You must learn to listen to me. How else would you have entered the perimeter of the base? But from here, the dangers we face have increased. You must make peace with my commands. Furthermore, the longer we argue, the more likely it is that we will be thwarted here and now. We’re lucky no one has yet chanced by. You have passed through the nostrils of this beast, but you will not live to find the beating heart without me.”

  That was probably true, Anakin reflected. Pride was not the way of the Jedi. Rapuung kept pricking at his pride, and he kept twitching like a Twi’lek’s lekku. He could almost hear Jacen and Uncle Luke scolding him now.

  “I apologize,” Anakin said. “You’re right. What do we do now?”

  Rapuung nodded curtly. “Now we make you a slave.”

  Anakin had thought he’d been through some hard things before; but nothing had prepared him for the ordeal of letting Vua Rapuung implant the coral growth on him. It looked exactly like the sickening, ulcerous growths he’d seen on more Yuuzhan Vong slaves than he could count. He’d watched and sensed sentient beings lose their reason, grow thin and vanish in the Force, become mindless drones for the Yuuzhan Vong, because of just such infections.

  “It is not real,” Vua Rapuung told him, “but you must respond as if it is real. You must follow certain commands.”

  How do I know this isn’t a trick? Anakin’s brain screamed at him. How do I know this wasn’t the plan all along, to march me into the shaper base and have me willingly give up my very being?

  Again he felt as if his eyes had been struck out, his tongue cut off, the nerves of his fingers numbed. He had absolutely no way of knowing what Vua Rapuung was thinking.

  But it seemed somehow unlike the mutilated warrior to play out such an elaborate charade.

  “So I have to act like a mindless drone?”

  “No. We do not use that form of restraint on most work slaves anymore. It proved too debilitating to them. What use is a slave that dies or becomes stupid? The implant merely insures you can be restrained if need be. If it tingles, pretend pain and paralysis. If it actually gives you pain, pretend to die.”

  “Got it.”

  So Anakin let the Yuuzhan Vong warrior prick the thing into his flesh, tried not to wince as it rooted. He concentrated on recognizing the first sign—any sign—that his will was being taken from him.

  When Rapuung was done, he felt violated, as if his own flesh had become a hateful thing, but he still felt in control. For the moment.

  “Where can I hide my lightsaber?” Anakin asked. Rapuung had made him shed his clothes and gear back in the jungle. The broken weapon was the only possession he retained.

  “It does not work.”

  “I know. Where can I hide it?”

  Rapuung hesitated for a moment. “Here,” he said. “In the far corner of the succession pool. It will be unnoticed in the organic material on the bottom.”

  Anakin reluctantly followed Rapuung’s advice. It was a hard thing to watch the lightsaber he had built with his own hands sink into the water. But right now, it could only get him caught.

  Moments later, Anakin was suddenly surrounded by Yuuzhan Vong, hundreds of them. They’d exited the larger compound at the same point the boat creature entered it, walking along the quay that ran parallel to the canal. The latter he could see curved off to join the river.

  Between the river and the damutek complexes was the shantytown he had observed from the ridge. Unlike the orderly compounds, the dwellings here seemed placed almost at random, a series of organic domes and hollow circles pierced by openings. Most seemed barely large enough to sleep in, and he didn’t see many people coming in or out of them. Most of the Yuuzhan Vong he saw were like the angler Rapuung had killed. They were unscarred or had very few scars. Some had malformed or festering scars like Vua Rapuung, and they wore the same sort of loincloth that Rapuung and now Anakin had donned.

  Of course it wasn’t a cloth at all, but something alive. If he pulled it away from his flesh, it slowly sealed itself there again.

  He also had a tizowyrm secreted in his ear, and the speech of those around him reached him in little starts and flurries. But almost no one was talking. They went about their business quietly, rarely making eye contact.

  He wasn’t the only non–Yuuzhan Vong either, he saw. There were a fair number of them, all with the coral restraining implants. Their expressions he readily recognized; they ranged from utter hopelessness to mere misery. Now and then he caught a glimmer from one that suggested he or she still hoped for escape. Like the Yuuzhan Vong, none gave him more than a glance.

  “You!” a voice called from behind. Rapuung turned toward it, and Anakin shambled around more slowly, trying to keep the expression of the humans he had seen.

  The Yuuzhan Vong who had addressed them was a warrior, the first Anakin had seen here. He struggled to keep still; up until now being this close to a warrior meant a fight to the death, and he had had more than his share of those.

  The warrior twitched when he saw Rapuung’s face, and for a brief moment he looked almost as if he were about to genuflect. Then his eyes turned to obsidian.

  “It is you. They told me at the port you had returned.”

  “I have,” Rapuung answered.

  “Many thought you had fled your shame. Many were glad not to have to look upon it.”

  “The gods know no shame is on me,” Rapuung answered.

  “Your flesh says otherwise,” the warrior answered.

  “So it may be,” Rapuung replied. “Do you have a command?”

  “No. What task has your executor given you?”

  “I go to speak to him now.”

  “The trawling schedules are filled for another four days. Perhaps you may spend that time in sacrifice and penitence begging Yun-Shuno to intercede for you. A word could be planted in your executor’s ear.”

  “That is most generous, Hul Rapuung. But I do not require favor.”

  “It is no favor to be given time to beg, even of the gods,” Hul Rapuung answered. “Go.” He turned brusquely and started to leave, then turned back. “The slave. Why does it accompany you?”

  “I found it wandering aimless. I take it to my executor for assignment.”

  “Aimless, you say? You know that in the wilderness several Jeedai skulk.”

  “This one was here before I was lost. He has always been of a forgetful nature.”

  Hul Rapuung lifted his chin. “Is it so?” His voice lowered. “There is a story—a rumor, really, that one of these Jeedai is not a Jeedai at all, but a Yuuzhan Vong, driven mad somehow by their powers.”

  “I know nothing of such rumors.”

  “No. They began only a short time ago.” He spat. “Go to your executor.”

  “I go,” Vua Rapuung said.

  “Vua Rapuung. You are a Shamed One,” Anakin said, as soon as the warrior was out of earshot. He kept his head down and tried not to move his lips too much.

  Rapuung looked briefly around, grabbed Anakin’s arm, and propelled him into the nearest structure. Inside, it was cozy, but smelled sour like an unwashed Bothan.

  “Did I tell you to hold your tongue?” Rapuung snapped.

  “You should have told me,” Anakin replied. “If you want me to keep quiet, then make it so I’m not surprised every ten seconds.”

  Rapuung clenched and unclenched his fists several times. He gnashed his teeth.

  “I must act the part of a Shamed One. I am not.”

  “First of all, what is a Shamed One? And don’t give me that ‘they aren’t worth speaking of’ fodder.”

  “They aren’t—” Rapuung began, then stopped. He closed his
eyes. “Shamed Ones are cursed by the gods. Their bodies reject proper scarring. They do not heal well. The implants of utility and rank that set us apart as castes and individuals are rejected by their feeble bodies. They are useless.”

  “Your scars. Your sores. Your implants have rotted out.”

  “I was a great warrior,” Rapuung said. “A commander. None doubted my ability. And then one day, my body betrayed me.” He started pacing suddenly, slamming his palms on the coral, cutting them. “But it was not the gods. I know who did it. I know why. And she shall pay.”

  “The female whose name you told me not to repeat again.”

  “Yes.”

  “And she’s the one you want to kill.”

  “Kill?” Rapuung’s eyes widened, then he spat. “Infidel. You think death, which comes to all, is punishment in itself. My revenge will be to force her to admit what she has done, so everyone will know that Vua Rapuung was never shamed! So the Yuuzhan Vong will know her crime. My revenge will be to know that when she does die, however she dies, it will be in ignominy. But kill her? I would not give her the honor.”

  “Oh,” Anakin said. That was all he could think of. Despite Rapuung’s secrecy, Anakin had at least thought he knew what the Yuuzhan Vong meant by revenge. In two quick reversals, everything he knew about Rapuung fell apart.

  “Is that enough of my blood in your ears for the moment?” Rapuung asked in a low, strange voice.

  “One more question. The warrior we just met. Part of your name is the same as his.”

  “As it should be. He is a sibling of my crèche.”

  “Your brother?”

  Rapuung inclined his head slightly in the affirmative. “We go to the executor now. I will suggest you once worked clearing fields for growing lambents. Those slaves live the longest. We will meet when I can manage it without suspicion. Play your part. Do not falter. Use your powers to locate the nearest point where the other Jeedai is. I will see you in seven days or so. Until then we will not speak another word. Watch the other slaves. Speak as they speak or not at all. Now, come.”

  He glanced outside, then walked out, towing Anakin by the arm. No one seemed to notice. Together, they walked toward the largest building, unnoticeable among the other slaves and Shamed Ones.

  Or so Anakin hoped.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  A spike of pain drove through Anakin’s forehead, so unexpected and strange that his legs buckled and he fell to his knees on the black jungle soil, grasping for the wound in his forehead. It felt as if it had been gashed from his hairline to the bridge of his nose. The blood stung his eyes and brimmed his nostrils.

  But when he brought his hands down, they were clean. Chapped, blistered, and friction-burned from days of pulling tough weeds from the soil, but not bloody.

  Cautiously he felt his head again. The pain still throbbed, but now he felt only unbroken flesh.

  “You! Slave!” the tizowyrm chittered in his ear, apparently translating the brutal shout from one of the guards. The coral growth on his neck gave him a faint shock, and he knew he was being given the force of command. He went rigid and fell to the ground, jerking spasmodically. It was easy, given the agony already creeping into his head.

  When he thought he’d played that role long enough, he climbed back to his knees and went back to work, knotting his chapped, raw hands around plants and uprooting them.

  The Yuuzhan Vong did not care for machines even as complicated as a lever. They had biotic methods of clearing fields other than slaves, but they seemed determined to go through the slaves they had, first.

  Grab weed, wriggle, pull. For the ten billionth time.

  The pain reverberated behind his eyes, fading a bit, and he began to pick out details through the static.

  Not his forehead, not his blood, not his senses. It was Tahiri who had been cut. Scarred like a Yuuzhan Vong.

  It was almost too much. He had been feeling her pain sporadically since her capture. Sometimes it was like an itch, sometimes like burning methanol poured down his nerves. But this time it was somehow real, intimate. He could smell her breath and taste her tears. It was like holding her, in that last moment of peace they had had together.

  Except she was bleeding, and here he was pulling weeds. If his lightsaber was working …

  But that was the problem, wasn’t it? Or one of them. And it was days before he would see Rapuung again.

  “Slave.” An amphistaff lashed lightly across his back, and it took everything in him not to leap up into the guard’s face, take his amphistaff, and kill every Yuuzhan Vong in sight.

  What are they doing to you, Tahiri?

  But he didn’t. Instead he stood compliant, arms at his side.

  “Go with this Shamed One,” the guard told him.

  He then turned to the person indicated, a young female with no obvious scars. She had a deeply worn look to her, but her eyes had a certain brightness many of the other Shamed Ones’ did not. “Go to the third lambent field, nearest the perimeter. Show him how to harvest.”

  “I will need more than one faltering slave to make my quota,” she said.

  “You feel it is your place to argue with me?” the warrior snapped.

  “No,” she replied. “I think it is a prefect’s place to assign workers.”

  “The prefect is busy today. Would you rather make your quota alone?”

  She maintained an expression of defiance for another beat, then grudgingly hung her head. “No. Why are you doing this to me?”

  “I treat you as I treat everyone.”

  She narrowed her eyes, but did not reply. Instead she beckoned Anakin. “Come along, slave. We have a long walk.”

  He followed her, trying to reestablish contact with Tahiri. She was still alive, he could get that much, but more distant than the stars.

  Almost as if she was fighting contact.

  “What’s your name, slave?” the woman asked. It so shocked Anakin that his step actually faltered. “Well?”

  “Begging your pardon, but when did any Yuuzhan Vong care to dirty her ears with the name of a slave?”

  “Where did a slave get the idea that insolence would go unpunished?” she responded.

  “My name is Bail Lars,” he replied.

  “What’s wrong with you, Bail Lars? I saw you nearly collapse. So did that filth-bather, Vasi. That’s why he sent you with me, so I’ll fail to meet my quota.”

  “He has something against you, personally?”

  “Puul. It’s what he couldn’t get against me that bothers him.”

  “Really? I would think—” He suddenly thought better of what he was saying and didn’t finish the sentence.

  The female did, however. “Would think what? That I wouldn’t refuse a warrior?”

  “No, that’s not it,” Anakin said. “I suppose I thought they—the rest of the Yuuzhan Vong, I mean—were … well, that they didn’t think Shamed Ones were, you know, desirable.”

  “We aren’t, not by normal people. Not even by each other. But Vasi is not normal. He likes sick things. He can command a Shamed One to do things that no true caste would ever do, or want to do, or want done.”

  “But he commanded you and you didn’t?”

  “He knows if he commands me, I will make him kill me. So he didn’t command me. He wants me to come to him.” She stopped and dropped her eyeridges angrily. “And this is not your business. Never forget—what I am to them, you are to me. One day Yun-Shuno will grant me redemption, and my body will take the scars and implants. I will become true caste, while you will forever be nothing.”

  “Do you really believe that?” Anakin asked. “I don’t think you do.”

  She slapped him then, hard. When he did not react to the pain, she nodded thoughtfully. “Stronger than I thought. Maybe we can meet my quota,” she said. “If you help me do it, I will find some reward for you.”

  “I would do it for no other reason than to disappoint Vasi,” Anakin replied. “Though I may feel different
ly if you keep slapping me.”

  “You say filthy things, and don’t expect to be punished?”

  “I didn’t know it was filthy.”

  “I have heard you slaves are infidels, but even infidels must know the gods and their truths.”

  “I would think that not knowing that is exactly what makes me an infidel,” Anakin said.

  “I suppose. It makes no sense, and I’ve never spoken to an infidel before, not like this.” She hesitated. “It is … interesting. Perhaps as we work, we can pass the time. You can tell me of your planet. But restrain yourself—Shamed I may be, but I have not abandoned myself to shame.”

  “It’s a deal,” Anakin said. “Will you tell me your name?”

  “My name is Uunu.” She pointed ahead, to a low coral wall. “We’re nearly to the lambent field now. They are just past there.”

  “What is a lambent?”

  “Another moment, and you shall see. Or, rather, you shall hear them.”

  “Hear?”

  But suddenly he did, a faint, buzzing rattle, like the voices of small animals.

  And yet this didn’t come from the Force, not exactly. It didn’t have the familiar touch, the depth. It was more like having a staticky comlink in his head.

  They rounded the wall. Beyond was a field tilled into concentric circular ridges. On them, spaced perhaps a meter apart, grew plants that resembled a nest of short, thick, green knives. From the central clump two, three, or four short stalks grew, and at the end of each of these was a sort of hairy, bloodred bloom. The blooms were roughly the size of his fist, and it was from these that the telepathic murmur seemed to come.

  “What are they?”

  “Start working now. I’ll explain what they are later, if it looks as if we are approaching our quota.”

  “What do I do?”

  “You will follow me. I will stroke the down from the blossoms—like so.” Almost tenderly she rubbed away the red, hairlike petals until all that remained was a yellowish bulb. “This attunes it. Once that is done, you must harvest it. That is more difficult. Hold still, please.” She withdrew something curved and black from a pouch in her garment.