“Dive! Collision alert! Dive! Collision alert!” This time the autopilot was trying to pitch her downward to let her craft slip below the enemy. She fought the controls, trying to keep her machine on target.
“Dive! Dive!”
The pinging from astern beat faster than Mara’s heart. Mara felt her sub shudder at the contradictory commands given the control surfaces, sensed the mass and speed of the torpedo approaching. And then she took her hands off the controls and let the autopilot take over.
The damaged dive plane screwed the sub around to port as it dived beneath the swollen shadow of the enemy craft. Mara saw the looming shadow of the Yuuzhan Vong sub’s rudder dead ahead, cutting toward her cockpit like a huge knife, but the drag from the damaged dive plane pulled her out of the way with millimeters to spare. The torpedo was so close that Mara could hear its hiss as it shot through the water.
And then the torpedo hit the Yuuzhan Vong craft dead astern as Mara’s boat slid beneath, and a great watery hand took Mara’s sub and flung it spinning through the sea. Her hands and feet worked the controls as she tried to stabilize her craft, as she tried to gain her bearings in the giant white boil of the explosion.
Mara managed finally to bring her craft to a hover. She was hanging upside down in the cockpit, one of her legs clamped hard on her seat and the other braced under the instrument panel. With careful squirts of her maneuvering jets, she managed to roll her sub upright.
To one side, she could see the wreckage of the shattered Yuuzhan Vong craft spin downward into the blue depths below. The great mass of the floating city, on her other side, seemed intact. Triebakk and Cal were gone from the viewport, and through the roiling sea she could barely make out the apartment’s front door, ajar—the two had fled.
Finally figured out what those fast pings meant, eh? she thought.
Well. Better late than never.
Luke, alerted once Mara got to the surface, stashed Cal Omas in their own apartment, which, with Jacen still there, was getting a little crowded, but was at least above water and in a part of the city with better security. Lando shipped down a pair of YVH droids for safety’s sake—and, out of the presumed goodness of his heart, offered security droids to the other candidates as well.
Ayddar Nylykerka managed to get Mara out of the trouble she was in for stealing a submersible and getting it damaged during the course of an underwater dogfight.
Mara arrived at her apartment late in the evening to discover why Cal Omas and Triebakk had been celebrating. On a vote held earlier that day, Cal had jumped into the lead with 46 percent, followed by Fyor Rodan with 24 and Ta’laam Ranth with 20. Pwoe had actually gained a vote, for a total of four.
“Suddenly Ta’laam’s twenty percent isn’t worth as much to him,” Cal told Mara. “I don’t have to promise him much, because his supporters are going to defect in droves in the hope that I’ll be grateful later.” He looked puzzled. “What I can’t work out is how Fyor’s supporters turned out so wobbly.” He glanced at Luke. “You didn’t somehow arrange this, did you?”
“No,” Luke said.
Cal grinned. “I didn’t think Jedi mind control worked as well as that. I guess Fyor’s supporters found out something about him that might be embarrassing if it got out, and decided to jump ship while they could.”
“I didn’t arrange it,” Luke said, “but I think I know who did.” Mara gave him a sharp look. I’m not the only one who’s been having adventures, she thought.
Cal’s grin faded. “Should I know about this?” he asked.
“Absolutely not,” Luke said. “But I wouldn’t count on Fyor’s defectors for anything more than getting you into office. My guess is they’re good for one vote only. If I were you, I’d court Ta’laam Ranth and as many of his people as you can, because you’re going to need them later.”
Cal rubbed his chin. “I’m not going to ask any more questions.”
“You’re an intelligent man,” Luke said. “You’ll work it out without my help.”
By that point Mara had worked it out herself.
The next day Ta’laam Ranth released his followers to vote for Cal Omas, and Cal was elected with almost 85 percent of the vote. Fyor Rodan and a few diehards refused to make the vote unanimous, and three loyalists still voted for Pwoe. Cal moved off Mara’s sofa and to the suite reserved for the new Chief of State at Heurkea’s poshest hotel, where he was ably guarded by a platoon of YVH droids.
He began working on the acceptance speech he would have to give the Senate the next day. But before he began, he signed the order creating the new Jedi Council, with Luke at its head.
EIGHTEEN
“Your candidate has been elected,” Vergere said over breakfast.
“Yes,” Luke answered.
“Congratulations.”
Luke looked toward Mara, who was busy with the apartment’s comm unit. “It was more Mara’s doing than mine. She kept Cal alive long enough to give his acceptance speech.”
“Still,” Vergere said, “you played a public role in his campaign.”
“True.”
“You realize that you and the Jedi will have to pay later for this political involvement.”
Luke nodded. “I know.”
“Just so you are prepared.”
Luke tasted his glass of blue milk with a wistful yearning for the fresh, more richly flavored variety he’d enjoyed on his uncle Owen Lars’s moisture farm. Mara rose from the comm unit, came to the table, and laid out several holos that had been transmitted from the hidden Jedi installation in the Maw.
“New images of Ben!”
Luke gazed at the holos with his usual mixture of delight and longing. Infants developed so rapidly at Ben’s age that Luke could plainly see how the boy had grown and changed in the short time since he’d been sent to safety in the Maw. He was walking now, with greater and greater confidence. He was speaking, too, though at the moment his vocabulary seemed to consist mainly of the word knee.
At such moments Luke’s misery at Ben’s absence outweighed his thankfulness that Ben was in a place of safety.
Luke and Mara showed the holos to Vergere, who looked at them with quizzical eyes. “A handsome human child,” she said. “As best as I understand these things.”
“And strong in the Force,” Mara said. “That’s been clear from the beginning.”
Vergere’s crest sleeked back. “Perhaps that is misfortune,” she said.
Luke stared at her in surprise. “Vergere?” he said.
“You permit Jedi to marry,” Vergere said. “And permit not only marriage, but children. By your example, Luke Skywalker.”
Luke tried to contain his surprise. “In your day,” he said, “Jedi were chosen as infants. They were raised knowing they wouldn’t marry. But I had to recruit Jedi who were already grown—who had already established relationships.”
“It is very dangerous,” Vergere said. “What if Jedi were forced to choose between their duty and their family?”
Luke had made that choice more than once and was comfortable with the necessity. “Family makes a Jedi more of a whole person,” he said.
“It makes them less than Jedi!” Vergere said. Her head swung toward Mara on the end of its long neck. “And your child is strong in the Force—that is worse!”
Mara’s green eyes glittered dangerously. “And how is that, Vergere?” she asked.
“Your Ben is heir to more than your husband’s name—he is Darth Vader’s grandchild,” Vergere said. “Three generations now of Skywalkers, all strong in the Force! This is a Jedi dynasty!”
Vergere’s head swung back toward Luke. “Can’t you see how governments will view this as a threat? Once it is possible for Jedi to leave their power to their children, the balance that exists between government and Jedi falls.”
Luke held up one of the holos of Ben. “This is a threat? In a universe with the Yuuzhan Vong in it?”
Vergere’s crest sleeked back again, and she made a hissing no
ise that raised the hairs on the back of Luke’s neck. He almost wanted to snatch the holo of Ben from the danger.
The door chime sounded. Through a gentle Force projection coming from the other side Luke knew that the visitor was Cilghal, come to collect Vergere for another healing tutorial. When Vergere wasn’t being debriefed by Fleet Intelligence—a process still ongoing—she had been perfectly amenable to spending time with Cilghal, teaching the Mon Calamari healer the art of making herself small. Perhaps Cilghal, too, would learn to heal with her tears, and then the two could pass the knowledge on to others.
At the sound of the chime, Vergere gazed stonily at Luke for a moment, then hopped off her chair. “I must go,” she said. “But I beg you, young Master, to think of this.”
She padded to the door and let herself out.
Luke looked at Mara. “What do we think?” he asked.
Mara reached for a knife. She began cutting up dried bofa fruit and adding it to a dried, crunchy form of Mon Calamari seaweed eaten by the locals.
“Maybe she’s embittered over fifty years of loneliness,” Mara said, “but I call that an overreaction.”
“Yes.”
“Vergere is too smart. Too perceptive. Too enigmatic.” Her green eyes flashed. “Too willing to torture young humans to get what she wants. I don’t want her ever to get near Ben.”
“Agreed,” Luke said. “I’ve checked the Jedi Holocron. There was a Jedi named Vergere fifty years ago, a former apprentice of a Master Thracia Cho Leem.”
Mara’s knife made neat little paring motions. “There would be, wouldn’t there? If she was an infiltrator.”
“It’s awfully roundabout to infiltrate the Jedi by way of the Yuuzhan Vong.”
Mara put down her knife. “Maybe she was a Jedi. The question is, after fifty years with the Vong, what is she now?”
Luke had no answer. “She doesn’t feel dark,” he said.
“She doesn’t feel anything. She’s practically invisible. We only sense what she wants us to sense.”
“Are you going to play spy today?”
“Nylykerka can handle the enemy networks on his own today if you have another idea. Do you?”
“I have a Jedi Council to put together,” Luke said. “I thought you might help me.”
Mara smiled. “We get to spend the day gossiping about our colleagues and calling it work? I’m willing.”
He leaned over and kissed her cheek. “I knew I could count on you,” he said.
Ruined. Ruined.
Warmaster Tsavong Lah gazed in revulsion over the Square of Sacrifice, where the great formations of Yuuzhan Vong, each in formal robes, had been assembled to witness the painful, extended death of more than a hundred captives, all for the glory of Yun-Yuuzhan, whose great temple was being dedicated on this day.
Many of the captives were of high rank, military officers or Senators captured in the battle for Yuuzhan’tar. Their lives had been carefully preserved just for this moment. They had been strapped to their execution beds, and the priests stood by with their flesh-eating beetles, and their flaying knives. The symphony of the captives’ screams would have risen for many hours to the delighted ears of the god.
But instead it was ruined. While Supreme Overlord Shimrra stood on the steps of the temple, the high priest of Yun-Yuuzhan had gone into his extended blessing, hands raised over the thousands assembled to watch the work. And then a pestilential odor swept over the assembly, and the squares of formed Yuuzhan Vong began to eddy as something crept among them.
The square was being flooded by a noxious liquid, something spewed up from beneath ground level. The muck spread through the crowd, but the Yuuzhan Vong were disciplined, and remained in their ranks, plucking up the hems of their cloaks to keep them out of the ooze.
The rank fluid was composed of every kind of waste. Below ground level lived the maw luur who digested the sewage produced by the growing city, but apparently something had upset their omnivorous stomachs, and they were regurgitating onto the square.
The high priest’s voice hesitated, resumed, hesitated again. He wheezed as a gust of wind brought a wave of stench to his nostrils. The high priest managed to renew his prayers, but Shimrra’s booming voice cut him short.
“The sacrifice is spoiled! Dismiss the onlookers, and kill the captives!”
The high priest turned to face the Supreme Overlord. “Are you certain, Dread One?”
Shimrra gave a savage laugh. “Unless you think that sewage is deep enough to drown our victims in.”
The high priest looked out over the flooded square. “I don’t believe so, Supreme One.”
“Then order your people to kill the captives.” Shimrra turned on his heel to enter the temple. “The rest of you, follow me.”
Tsavong Lah followed his Overlord into the shadowed green-and-purple depths of the temple, where the air smelled properly of heavy organics. Shimrra seemed more thoughtful than angry, which Tsavong Lah thought was not a good sign—it might mean the rage would burst out later, and in an unpredictable direction. At least the Dread One wasn’t accompanied today by his shadow Onimi, as the presence of a Shamed One at a sacrifice this grand would have been an insult to the gods.
“Another failure,” Shimrra growled. “Another public failure, witnessed again by thousands of our people—and by our chief god.”
“Treachery, Supreme One!” someone called. “Sabotage by this so-called underground!”
“Or by heretics!” said a priest, loyal to his leader Jakan.
“I have six remaining voxyn, Dread Lord,” Tsavong Lah said. “Let me take one or two out, and if there are Jeedai involved in this business, the voxyn will find them and tear them!”
Shimrra looked left and right. His burning eyes turned yellow, then red as they settled on Nom Anor. “You have received no reports of underground activity?” he demanded.
Tsavong Lah rejoiced at Shimrra turning to Nom Anor with this question. After Nom Anor’s attempt to brand him with the catastrophe of Vergere, any discomfort in Nom Anor could only be to Tsavong Lah’s delight.
“No reports, Supreme One,” Nom Anor said.
Nom Anor almost wilted beneath the fierce glare of Shimrra’s mqaaq’it implants. But Shimrra again chose to withhold his anger, and his savage look again turned thoughtful.
“We know the World Brain has been contaminated by that fool Ch’Gang Hool,” Shimrra said. “Could this be another manifestation of the shapers’ incompetence?”
No one dared to either confirm or deny this supposition. “It’s almost as if the World Brain has developed a nasty sense of humor,” Shimrra said thoughtfully. “Onimi won’t care for that—he much prefers being the only one permitted to make jokes.”
No one commented on that, either.
The Supreme Overlord turned to one of his assistants. “Find a shaper to die for this.”
“I will, Supreme One.”
Nom Anor seemed to sag with relief once he realized that the shaper class was going to get the blame for the botched sacrifice. Tsavong Lah snarled at him. Next time, filth, he thought.
Shimrra’s glowing, restless eyes swept again over the company, then settled on Tsavong Lah. The warmaster straightened, then bowed from the waist, keeping his back rigid.
“Dread Lord?” he said.
“Your forces eliminated an enemy cruiser at small cost to themselves. Vengeance for Komm Karsh, though a small one.”
Tsavong Lah took a grip on his courage. “With your permission, Supreme One, I will exact vengeance in full. Give me permission to take the fleet and—”
“No, Warmaster.”
“Give me a decisive battle, Supreme One! Let the infidels’ blood fill the spaces between the stars!” The words sprayed from the warmaster’s slashed lips.
“Be silent!”
Tsavong Lah threw himself to the ground before the Supreme Overlord’s feet. “I obey,” he said.
There was a moment of awful emptiness in which Tsavong Lah contem
plated his own immediate death.
Then the silence was broken by an unexpected voice. “With respect, Supreme One,” Nom Anor said, “I agree that a decisive battle must be fought, and soon.”
Astonishment filled Tsavong Lah’s soul, followed immediately by suspicion. Nom Anor couldn’t be agreeing with Tsavong Lah out of sympathy for his position. This had to be some plot, some devious scheme by the executor to discredit him.
To Tsavong Lah’s surprise, Shimrra restrained his anger. “Your reasons, Executor?” he asked.
“We aren’t growing any stronger, Supreme One,” Nom Anor said. “As soon as our auxiliaries are in place and the fleet is at full strength, we must seek to bring about a decisive engagement that will win the war.”
Mockery entered Shimrra’s tones. “I thought the Battle of Yuuzhan’tar was supposed to be ‘the decisive engagement that would win the war.’ ”
Nom Anor hesitated. “The infidels have proved more adaptable than we suspected.”
Tsavong Lah stepped in. “We shouldn’t waste our strength on an offensive for its own sake. If we choose the right moment, however, the right target … if we can catch their forces at a disadvantage, then we can smash them beyond recovery.”
The mockery continued. “How can we choose such a time, such a target?”
“We must depend on accurate intelligence of the enemy, Supreme One,” Nom Anor said.
Shimrra laughed. “On you, then. All hail Nom Anor! This victory depends on you, who has just lost a pair of valuable agents in a bungled assassination.”
Nom Anor wisely chose not to rise to the mockery. “Assassination is always a risky business, Supreme One. Agents may be risked in this way, but no chances should be taken with the fleet.”
“Very well then.” Shimrra hesitated. “Rise, Warmaster.”
Tsavong Lah got to his feet, his clawed vua’sa foot scrabbling for traction on the chitinous temple floor. He looked at Nom Anor and tried to mask his resentment.
Shimrra looked from one to the other. “Warmaster, you will have your decisive battle, after the fleet is ready. But you will not launch the battle blindly; you will wait for Nom Anor’s spies to report that the time is ripe. And my own permission will be required. Do you understand?”
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