by James Luceno
Leia came out of the council chamber a few moments later and dropped her head in her hands. There, across the hall and in a closet, hung Fyor Rodan, his collar hooked on a coatrack.
“Let me compliment you on your choice of friends,” the councilor said dryly.
“Chewie, take him down,” Leia instructed.
Chewbacca growled and shook his head.
“Councilor Triebakk will hear of this,” Fyor Rodan threatened. “You know Triebakk, don’t you?” he taunted Chewie.
Chewie closed the closet door.
“You can’t go around treating councilors like that,” Leia scolded, coming forward. But then she stopped, considering the meeting she had just walked out of, the unending squabbling over minor details, the open disdain two of the councilors had shown to her concerning her failure at Osarian-Rhommamool, the obvious posturing for political reasons.
“Let’s go,” she said, turning down the corridor, Bolpuhr gliding behind her.
“Aaaaah?” Chewie asked, and when Leia turned back, the Wookiee motioned for the door.
“With any luck, they won’t find him until after we’ve left,” Leia explained. Chewie gave an assenting howl, and off they went.
Leia’s mood improved immediately, and greatly, when they finally reached the Falcon, when she saw again that glimmer in her husband’s eye. After all these years, the fire remained between Leia and Han, a deep and honest love and respect.
“Chewie found you,” Han remarked, moving to give Leia a big hug. “Probably heard you yelling from six levels away.”
“Mara told you about Nom Anor,” Leia reasoned.
“And about Wurth Skidder,” Luke added, coming down the landing ramp.
Leia sighed and shook her head. “You’ve got to do something about that one,” she replied.
“One problem at a time,” Luke explained.
“What now?” the exasperated Leia asked.
“Well, we’re going on a little trip,” Han told her.
“Far away, I hope,” Leia added.
Han laughed. “About as far as you can get.”
“And it still won’t be far enough for me,” Leia said, turning back to glower in the general direction of the senate building. “Could anyone do enough to satisfy that group?”
Luke chuckled, knowing the answer. “No one point of view would ever satisfy so—” He paused, looking for just the right word. “—eclectic a group.”
“How diplomatically put,” Leia said. “So what’s the problem now?”
“I’ll fill you in on the way.”
“Jedi?”
Han’s chuckle told Leia that she had guessed correctly, and in light of that, she was even more eager to go. A big part of her wanted a vacation from all the turmoil, but after the incident with Wurth Skidder, Leia was beginning to take these Jedi problems personally. She hadn’t given much thought to Luke’s plans about re-forming the Jedi Council, hadn’t really considered it her problem, given all the responsibilities the formal authorities of the New Republic kept laying on her, but now she was beginning to see the whole picture, and better that image would be if Luke could put the Jedi Knights in order.
“We’ll get to see an old friend,” Han offered, and Leia looked at him curiously.
“Lando,” Han explained.
So much for any thoughts of vacation, Leia realized, for anytime Lando was involved, even peripherally, situations seemed to get very complicated, and usually dangerous. In truth, she wasn’t particularly thrilled with her husband having any dealings with Lando; the man always seems to pull Han into something on the very edge of disaster. Of course, that only strengthened her resolve to go along.
“What about Mara?” she asked Luke, working hard to keep the signs of her deep concern only minimally on her expression.
“She’s coming,” Luke replied. “She and Jaina are plotting the course even now. Assuming we can get the Falcon flying again.”
Leia looked at Han.
“Anakin,” he explained, and somehow, Leia wasn’t surprised.
“Are you sure Mara’s up to it?” Leia asked Luke.
“Try to stop her,” Luke replied.
Leia managed a smile. For all the pain and the impending threat of death, Mara was determined to live her life fully, to live without this unknown disease being the center of her existence.
That truth only made Leia even more glad to have Mara as Jaina’s mentor.
“Was there ever any doubt?” Bensin Tomri asked sarcastically when Danni announced that she would go on the Spacecaster shuttle to the frozen fourth planet of the Helska system.
“You’re not going alone,” Tee-ubo put in, and Danni didn’t disagree. In the end, they decided that three should go, including someone with a geological background and with Danni captaining the mission and piloting the rickety old ship.
A short while later, Yomin Carr answered the knock on his door to find Danni standing in the hall, her smile coy.
“You have come to ask me to volunteer,” Yomin Carr reasoned.
“I thought you should be rewarded for your diligence and hard work,” Danni replied. “You should have been the one to spot the comet.”
“So now you offer me the scientific chance of a lifetime?” Yomin Carr asked in all seriousness.
Danni nodded and smiled at him, as though he should be pleased.
“I am afraid that I must refuse,” the Yuuzhan Vong warrior went on. Inside his ear, the little tizowyrm continued its vibrations, and Yomin Carr fell into them for a moment, recognizing that it might be time for a bit of levity. “You’re asking me because no one else is crazy enough to go along on that broken-down garbage scow you call a shuttle,” he said, and forced a grin.
Now Danni was laughing, and not disagreeing.
“But that would not be proper,” Yomin Carr said a moment later, again in all seriousness. He understood the implications here. According to his instructions, under no circumstances was he to go anywhere near the base planet. On pain of death, and a dishonorable death at that, Yomin Carr was to have no physical connection to the war coordinator, and no contact at all other than the secure villiptalk. “I am not long in ExGal,” Yomin Carr elaborated. “Most of the others have been on Belkadan longer than I have been in the organization. I could not usurp their opportunity.”
“You already said it,” Danni replied. “Most of the others don’t even want to go.”
“Ah, but they do,” Yomin Carr assured her. “They are afraid of the craft, as am I, and as you should be, but in truth, any scientist would be eager for this opportunity.”
“Any scientist other than Yomin Carr,” Danni said sarcastically.
“I believe in propriety,” Yomin Carr answered, and he took some satisfaction in the fact that Danni, based on all of his actions since he had arrived on Belkadan, could not dispute the claim. Yomin Carr was always on time for his shift. Yomin Carr stayed true to his post, hour after hour, day after day, week after week, while all of the others—including, to a lesser extent, Danni—had eased around the edges of their responsibilities.
“Find your crew among those who have better earned the right,” Yomin Carr said.
They were both all smiles when Danni left him, accepting his polite refusal, but as soon as she had gone, as soon as he had closed the door of his private room, Yomin Carr’s expression turned to a concerned scowl. He wondered then if he should just kill them all in their sleep and end the potential threat of discovery. He fell to his knees and bent over quickly, smacking his forehead against the floor, calling out to Yun-Harla, the Cloaked Goddess, and Yun-Yammka, the Slayer, for guidance. His fingers whitened from the press he put on the floor, playing out his warrior urges against the unyielding surface.
And then Yomin Carr was calm once more and in control of his thoughts. He had to weigh the threat against the potential disaster and to help the scales balance. He went and retrieved the small coffer, for the tizowyrm had been in too long and was getting dangerously clo
se to exhaustion. If the creature was left in too long, it would literally vibrate itself to death.
The warrior went out from his room soon after, again in the dark of night, stealthily to the small Spacecaster.
Truly this was the most distasteful part of Yomin Carr’s extensive training, this working with machines, abandoning the living tools his own people employed. He reminded himself of the importance to the greater good, stoically accepting his role, as he had during those years of training, and indeed, he did take some pride in the fact that, among the entire force of Praetorite Vong, Yomin Carr was probably the finest technician.
He set up shop openly—too many were about for him to hope to accomplish his tasks without discovery—hanging lights and making no effort to conceal the clanking of metallic tools.
Sure enough, Danni Quee came out to him within the hour, to find him hard at work on the Spacecaster’s inertial compensator.
“The gasket on the pressure pump had wriggled out of place,” Yomin Carr honestly explained, and indeed, the Yuuzhan Vong warrior was working to the benefit of the shuttle at that time. Had Danni come out here earlier, when Yomin Carr had been disconnecting the final signal initiator on the communications port, she might have figured that something was amiss.
“I’m leaving in three hours,” she informed him.
“Just checking the vital systems,” Yomin Carr replied. “The hyperdrive is not up to standards, but it will get you there, though it will not be a fast journey. The ion drive is running efficiently.”
Danni nodded, for she had just done the same checks.
“What about that compensator?” she asked.
“It was only the gasket,” Yomin Carr replied, and he ran a laser sealer along the outside of the ring and pronounced the problem solved.
Danni came over and inspected the work, then nodded her approval. “You’re sure you don’t want to come along?” she asked. “I’ve got Bensin Tomri and Cho Badeleg coming, but we’ll make room for you.”
“Excellent choices,” Yomin Carr said. “But, no, putting another in the Spacecaster would jeopardize the success of the mission. You will desire some time at the planet for close study, but you will not have enough supplies to take four out there and back, especially if that hyperdrive is not performing well.”
“I smell a Baldavian pocket hare,” Danni replied, referring to the skittish creature that was often held up as a symbol of cowardice.
Yomin Carr merely laughed, understanding that she had just kiddingly insulted him, but not getting the reference at all. “Go get your sleep,” he instructed, and he turned back to his controls.
Danni put her hand on his shoulder. “I appreciate this,” she said.
Yomin Carr nodded and kept his smile in check. If she only understood the irony of that statement!
A short time later, Yomin Carr clicked on the distance communicator and gave a call to the nearby ExGal-4 station. All the signals on his screens offered confirmation that the signal had been sent, but of course, thanks to Yomin Carr’s efforts, it had not.
They would go out into space properly muted.
That only half satisfied the cautious Yuuzhan Vong agent, though, for what dangers might occur if Danni and the others happened upon another vehicle on their way to the war coordinator’s base? There wasn’t much traffic out here, but it was possible, especially since others might have tracked the incoming worldship.
With that in mind, Yomin Carr went straight to his villips when he returned to his room, and lifted the blanket on the connection to Prefect Da’Gara.
When Da’Gara’s villip inverted, Yomin Carr recognized the gnullith attached to the prefect’s face, their symbiosis so complete that the villip considered it a part of its host and appropriately reflected it in its imaging.
“Let them come to us,” Da’Gara answered after Yomin Carr informed him of the mission. “And you did well to quiet them.”
“Take heed of the woman called Danni Quee,” Yomin Carr explained. “She is formidable.”
A smile erupted on the face of the prefect-impersonating villip, one so wide that the edges of the prefect’s lips showed around the gnullith. “One to convert?”
Yomin Carr considered that possibility for a long moment. Truly Danni would make a good Yuuzhan Vong warrior, but that very trait likely damned her, for he doubted that her strong will could be so bent against her own people. His expression, reflected perfectly by his villip before Prefect Da’Gara, showed his range of feelings and doubts clearly.
“A worthy sacrifice, then,” Da’Gara answered. “She will be killed honorably and at the proper time.”
“You honor me by accepting my words, Prefect,” Yomin Carr replied, and Da’Gara had indeed done so, considering that this was an issue of sacrifice, as important a rite as could be found among the Yuuzhan Vong. While nearly all reasoning species understood that death was inevitable, the Yuuzhan Vong culture embraced it, nearly to the point of seeing life itself as preparation for death. Everyone would die, they understood, so how one died was the important factor. Normally, they reserved the most dishonorable deaths for their enemies.
“How long will Belkadan survive in its present state?” the prefect asked.
“Not long,” Yomin Carr promised. He had taken some readings that morning and had done the calculations. “The gases will reach critical mass within a couple of days. The storms should come on strong soon after.”
“You have your ooglith cloaker?” Da’Gara asked. “It would not do to have one who has performed as well as Yomin Carr die uneventfully on a distant world.”
“I am prepared, Prefect,” Yomin Carr answered, standing straight in light of yet another high compliment. His duties were almost at their end, sadly so, for after the transformation of Belkadan, he was merely to remain on the planet and ride out the greenhouse storms while the conquest was under way. “I only hope that you will find some use for me while I wait.”
“It may well be,” Da’Gara answered. “Perhaps we will use the data from your station to facilitate the arrival of the next group of worldships. More likely, Executor Nom Anor will hear of your fine work and gather you to help with his espionage.”
There came a knock on Yomin Carr’s door then, and he quickly covered the villip and replaced it in his closet, then pulled off his shirt and ran to the door, rubbing his eyes all the way to make it look as if he had been sleeping.
Garth Breise stood in the hallway, coils of rope looped about his shoulder. “You ready?” he asked.
“It is still dark,” Yomin Carr remarked.
“I’d rather face the dangers of the forest night than the wrath of Danni Quee,” Garth Breise replied.
Yomin Carr ran to retrieve his shirt. It was all going so very well.
The early morning air was chill, but not crisp, and thick with a strange sulfuric smell. Garth Breise twitched his nose repeatedly but made no comment, Yomin Carr noted with some relief. He reminded himself that he would be more sensitive to the odor, because he knew what it portended. Likely, Garth Breise hardly noticed it.
“Do you want to see them off first?” Yomin Carr asked, motioning toward the bay, where Danni and the others were preparing to leave.
“I already said my good-byes,” Garth replied. “I just want to get this stupid work over with.”
“The tower is only a hundred meters high,” Yomin Carr remarked.
“Only,” the sullen Garth echoed sarcastically. “And cold and windy up at the top.”
“We may be fortunate enough to find a redcrested cougar waiting for us at the base,” Yomin Carr went on, but Garth Breise wasn’t smiling. “It would save us the climb.”
That disturbing notion in mind, Garth Breise paused at the outer perimeter control tower and redirected the nearby spotlights to brighten all the area around the base of the tower. Then he took a blaster from the weapons locker, securing it on his belt, and pulled out another one, offering it to Yomin Carr, who politely declined.
&n
bsp; They exited the compound, closing the door behind them, and started for the tower. As they approached, both noticed movement around the base of the tower, almost as if the very ground had come writhing to life.
“What the heck are these?” Garth Breise asked, bending low to inspect the source of the strange movement: a swarm of reddish brown beetles.
“Perhaps the cause of our transmitter problems,” Yomin Carr offered.
“The cable was chewed by something bigger than beetles.”
“But if some of them climbed inside after it was broken …,” Yomin Carr said, and he left the thought to Garth’s imagination. He knew that wasn’t the case, of course, or at least, not the only source of the comm trouble, but Garth did not—and if some of the beetles actually had crawled inside, the damage to the cable could be complete.
“I didn’t see any out here when I found the break,” Garth said.
Yomin Carr looked up, up, up. “Do you still think it worth the climb?” he asked. “Or should you first inspect the length of cable?”
Garth paused a long while before answering, and Yomin Carr thought he had convinced the man to abandon the climb. “Up,” Garth said, pulling the coil from his shoulder. “Let’s get it over with.”
Yomin Carr started to argue, then stopped. It might indeed be better for the mission to dissuade Garth from going up now, but personally, Yomin Carr was growing more agitated, more eager for action, by the minute. He wanted to make this climb.
And so they did, hand over hand, securing each foothold, securing each length of rope, and then climbing on to the next level. It was still dark when they made the top, Garth Breise leading the way.
“There you have it,” he announced, grabbing the disconnected junction box. “The wind.”
Yomin Carr stepped up beside him. “Perhaps,” he agreed.
A thunderous roar from behind signaled that Danni and the other two were on their way, and the pair looked about to see the Spacecaster soaring into the dark sky, her fiery plumes blotting out the stars.