"The Jedi Knight," Shok Tinoktin remarked.
Nom Anor nodded, thinking it perfectly ironic that the Mediator 's own starfighters would clear the way for the fake capsule.
Shok Tinoktin worked hard to keep both the Mediator and the capsule in sight so that they could enjoy the spectacle of the Mediator 's starfighters intercepting and chasing away the Osarian Z-95 Headhunters.
"Your friends from Osarian do not seem interested in talk, Commander Ackdool," Nom Anor said calmly.
"Osa-Prime is in flames," Ackdool came back, a slight crack showing in his cool diplomatic shell.
"We agreed to cease fire," Nom Anor said.
"You will be protected, all the way in to the Mediator , and escorted back to Rhommamool after our discussion," Commander Ackdool assured him, and from his formal tone alone, Nom Anor could guess that he had snapped to attention as he spoke. "On my word."
"As you will," Nom Anor said, cognizant of the fact that his villip couldn't nod. "Break up the screen," he quietly bade Shok Tinoktin, and the man complied, rolling the channel back and forth so that the communications' visual break seemed like a malfunction.
"Commander Ackdool?" Nom Anor's villip asked on cue, its tone full of trepidation.
"I hear you," Ackdool's crackling voice replied. "We've lost screen."
"The malfunction is here, I fear," Nom Anor said. "I see nothing but Osarian ships. And I am without controls. I cannot evade them!"
"Be calm, Nom Anor," Ackdool replied. "My starfighters will protect you."
Indeed, watching from the shell, Nom Anor and Shok Tinoktin couldn't help but smile as the Mediator 's superior starfighters intercepted the Osarians and easily chased them away. One got a torpedo away, though, and only a brilliant maneuver by one X-wing, breaking from the pack and intercepting the torpedo with a line of laser fire, saved the undefended capsule from incineration. Still, the shock of the torpedo blast sent the capsule off course and into a continuing roll.
"I never doubted you," Nom Anor said calmly.
Ackdool's ensuing pause was telling, confirmation that his apparent cool in the face of death had just elevated the commander's respect for him. Nom Anor almost wished at that moment that he actually was in the capsule, that he would be meeting with Ackdool and the Osarians.
Almost.
"Without controls," Nom Anor growled, "I cannot even shut down my engines, and cannot change course. To the tar pits of Alurion with you, Ackdool. You promised sanctuary."
"We'll get you," Commander Ackdool assured him.
A moment later, the capsule abruptly halted its roll, and despite the fact that its engines were still firing and it was pointed at an angle that ought to have taken it far from the Mediator , it began drifting in toward the great ship.
"Tractor beam," Shok Tinoktin explained. "Those engines on the capsule will do nothing to hinder it. They'll pull her in and hold her until they can shut her down."
Nom Anor smiled and watched, not even bothering to answer Ackdool's continuing calls to him, as the capsule, flanked by starfighters, approached the Mediator .
The A-wing jolted, and the shell started to turn.
"We're bouncing along the atmosphere," Shok Tinoktin explained.
Nom Anor glanced at him, and poor Shok worked doubly hard to keep the Mediator in view, fearing the consequences if the executor did not witness this moment of glory.
The capsule disappeared into the Mediator 's lower docking bay. Shok Tinoktin reopened the visual channel.
"Boom," Nom Anor said, smiling at Shok.
"Boom," Nom Anor's villip echoed to Commander Ackdool.
The nuclear fission explosives packed into the shuttle detonated, vaporizing the entire section of docking bays, blowing out a huge section of the lower floor of the great battle cruiser, issuing a shock wave and a rain of white-glowing metal shards that folded many of the nearest buzzing starfighters in on themselves and lifted the tail of the battle cruiser, uprighting it ninety degrees before any stabilizing jets could halt the roll.
Nom Anor and Shok Tinoktin drifted away in their shell, caught by Rhommamool's gravity and pulled along the planet's rim. When they were far enough from the Mediator so that they wouldn't be detected, Shok blew the shell apart with laser cannons, and off they streaked in the modified A-wing, around the other side of the planet, confident that Commander Ackdool and his crew had too much to handle in just securing the rest of their ship to even notice their departure.
They made the jump to lightspeed soon after, leaving Rhommamool far behind. Nom Anor had pushed the conflict past the breaking point, beyond any hopes of peaceful resolution, and so his duty there was finished. Let them think he had died in the explosion on the Mediator , a martyr to the cause. Let the roused rabble he had left behind on Rhommamool die eagerly.
He was still considering the beauty of his plan and his faked ending when the A-wing came back to sublight hours later. Shok Tinoktin was fast asleep in the pilot chair in front of, and just below, Nom Anor, breathing rhythmically, contentedly. The coordinates had already been entered, and the A-wing was flying itself to the next destination, the next spot where Nom Anor could stir up the passions of the oppressed, could cause havoc to the New Republic and keep the fools so consumed by the civil wars and unrest among their own that they would not turn their eyes outward to the fringes of the galaxy, where far more dangerous trouble was beginning to stew.
The Osarian-Rhommamool conflict would explode fully now, he knew, and the New Republic Advisory Council would send in half the fleet to intervene and keep the warring planets at bay, while the councilors spent countless hours fretting over petty details, with half of them, no doubt, trying to find some way in which they might personally profit from the disaster.
Nom Amor worked hard to keep his personal disdain for the New Republic government from clouding his vision and allowing him to grow too optimistic. The Praetorite Vong, the Yuuzhan Vong war force that had come in to assist in the conquest of the galaxy, was not overwhelmingly large, by any means, and they couldn't afford to underestimate their opponents at any turn.
He looked to Shok for a moment, making sure that the man was asleep, then reached into a case at the side of his cramped seat and produced Da'Gara's sympathetic villip. In mere moments, the creature inverted to show the head of the prefect, complete with his starfish breather.
"How goes Yomin Carr's operation?" Nom Anor asked after the polite and formal greetings, and he was glad to be speaking again in the more comfortable Yuuzhan Vong tongue.
"Belkadan is dead to our enemies," Da'Gara assured him. "Yomin Carr remains there, my newest eyes in this region of the galaxy."
"He has turned the station's satellite scopes to our advantage then?" Nom Anor asked.
"Indeed, Executor," Da'Gara said. "Or he will, as soon as the storms pass. We are far from blind, though, for the war coordinator scans the nearby sectors."
"And are you pleased by what the war coordinator sees?" Nom Anor asked.
"This region is sparsely populated," Da'Gara answered, a twinge of regret in his voice. "The war coordinator's observations, along with the previous reports, prove that there will be little resistance while we gain a foothold."
Nom Anor nodded his approval - and relief. The Praetorite Vong would be vulnerable for a while, with only the one frozen planet as a true base. There was great advantage in using a war coordinator, a yammosk, for the attack. In addition to its own powerful energies, and true to its title as war coordinator, the creature could bring the forces of the three expeditionary worldships into tight focus and purpose, could allow the coralskippers to fly in perfect unison, thus making them many times more efficient. But there was a downside to such an endeavor, for if the New Republic somehow managed to bring all of their considerable firepower to bear on that frozen base planet and, impossible as it seemed, managed to destroy the yammosk, the resulting chaos among the Praetorite Vong could bring about complete disaster. The Praetorite Vong had to move slow
ly at first, allowing the yammosk to put all the base defenses in place, and to allow for the arrival of the next two fighter-packed worldships.
"Have you selected your next target?" he asked.
"Sernpidal," Da'Gara replied. "Third planet of the Julevian system and the most heavily populated planet of the entire sector."
"An ambitious step."
"But the largest threat to us," Da'Gara explained. "The yammosk has been watching them and is not secure in their too-common atmospheric breaches, nor in the multitude of communications transmissions emanating from the surface."
"If you are to be discovered, it will likely come from there," Nom Anor agreed.
"We will try to do it quietly," Da'Gara explained. "Perhaps through plague - perhaps similar to the molecular disaster Yomin Carr exacted upon Belkadan, though defeating outgoing communications from a planet as advanced as Sernpidal will prove no easy task, nor will the task of keeping our enemies on world for the course of the destruction. The war coordinator's own calculations put the former at seven-point-three to one against our success, and no better than one-to-one concerning the latter, even if we bring two full complements of coralskippers to bear."
Nom Anor spent a long while considering those odds, and as he grew uneasy about the chances - though still agreeing that Sernpidal had to be dealt with promptly - he turned his thoughts in a different direction.
"It must be something that does not directly connect an invasion, and certainly that does not reveal the scope of even our portion of the invading force," he said. He considered again the problems immediately facing the New Republic Advisory Council, and the firepower they would now have to employ close to the core of their galaxy to prevent complete catastrophe. "But not quiet," he explained. "No, let us destroy Sernpidal and kill as many enemies as possible, but let us use this disaster to lure some our enemies' warships out to us. Taken in full, the New Republic fleet could possibly cause trouble for the Praetorite Vong, but if we can bring them out, little by little, they will prove of no consequence."
"Not quiet?" Prefect Da'Gara echoed skeptically.
"But not revealing," Nom Anor replied.
Another long pause ensued, both considering the problem at hand. Then the villip in front of Nom Anor correctly reflected the eager light that came into the prefect's eye.
"Yo'gand's Core?" Da'Gara asked.
The suggestion caught Nom Anor by surprise, and he almost dismissed it out of hand as preposterous. But he took the time to think about it, honestly considering the possibility. Yo'gand was a legendary general among the Yuuzhan Vong, the one most often given credit for turning the tide in the Cremlevian War and thus uniting the various Yuuzhan Vong tribes in generations long past. His "core" tactic had proven a decisive blow in that long-ago conflict, destroying Ygziir, the home planet of the most powerful tribe, and killing nearly all of the obstinate leaders in one fell swoop. Yo'gand had utilized the power of a strong dovin basal, the same gravity-focusing creature now used to propel worldships and other craft, by dropping it to the surface of Ygziir, where it focused one beam to latch on to the planet's core, the other to grab at the passing moon.
Since the destruction of Ygziir, Nom Anor's people had learned to easily counter the tactic, but these infidels, without understanding of the extragalactic creatures, and without the countering powers of other dovin basals, would have no way to determine the source of impending disaster - and they would not have the firepower to defeat it.
Nor would New Republic investigative teams figure out the true source, or the power behind it. Not until it was far too late.
"Make your noise, Prefect Da'Gara," Nom Anor said. "Destroy Sernpidal and plan your expansion. I will await your call."
"What?" a bleary-eyed Shok Tinoktin asked, coming awake groggily.
Nom Anor's villip inverted to its unremarkable state, and he replaced it in his bag.
"The call," Nom Anor replied. "The call of the oppressed, begging mercy from the uncaring councilors of the New Republic."
"Preparing your next speech?" Shok Tinoktin asked.
Nom Anor smiled. Indeed, he would soon be doing exactly that. His next speech to rouse the rabble, and then his next.
But soon, he knew, his speech would be one of conquest, an ultimatum to the New Republic to accede to the demands of their new masters or be utterly destroyed.
Chapter 12 The Game, the Reality "It was ... strange," Jaina admitted to her brothers later on, as the three explored the wonders of Lando's newest home, such as the transparent pneumatic tubes that shot them from one tower to another, and the windbreak open-drop chutes that got them from the thirtieth floor to the first in a harrowing plummet. For the latter, they basically buckled on helmets and stepped into a hole, falling, falling, against the wind of a giant fan that slowed them gently and put them down on the lowest floor.
"You found your peace," Jacen replied.
"You practiced your piloting skills," Anakin put in quickly, and he and Jacen glared at each other. They had been at it again, arguing the inner gains of the Force against the practical skills to which it could be applied, ever since Anakin, soon after his abrupt departure from Lando's Folly, had found Jacen and the others in the control room, all of them standing quiet, stunned by Jaina's performance and waiting for the confirmation that she was okay.
Jaina shook her head and chuckled at the ridiculous debate.
"Were you conscious of your movements?" Jacen asked.
"In navigating the field?" Jaina said. "I don't even remember it."
"Because you let yourself go with the Force," Jacen reasoned, thinking that he had just scored a victory.
"Because she learned to apply the use of the Force as an addition to her physical piloting," the persistent Anakin declared. "Her actions were so automatic because she practices her flying. All the time."
"It's more than that," Jacen insisted.
"Then why didn't you do better?" Anakin asked.
"I never found the level of meditation."
"Because you don't practice enough," Anakin said. "That's why I beat you." He snapped his ringers in the air, as if tracking points. "I know how to apply the Force to practical tasks, not just sitting around in the dark, falling inward."
"Then why don't you ever win our sparring?" Jacen asked.
"I'll beat you right now," Anakin insisted, going for his lightsaber.
"You're acting pretty stupid for a couple of supposed Jedi Knights," Jaina said dryly.
"On the contrary," came another voice, and the three turned as one to see a man approaching, a noticeable swagger to his walk, a lightsaber dangling from his belt.
"Kyp," Anakin greeted.
Kyp Durron walked over, nodding to the boys and then dropping a long stare over Jaina. "Pretty good flying," he said at length.
"Pretty good?" Jacen asked with a chuckle.
Kyp glanced at him, holding a stern look for just a moment before a wide smile spread over his face. "Okay," he admitted. "Better than that. I knew I was in trouble as soon as I heard you were flying, Jaina. Now I'll have to go run the belt all over again, just to take back the lead."
"You going now?" Anakin asked, moving right before Kyp, obviously a bit in awe of the older Jedi.
"Not now," Kyp explained. "I'm heading off world, out of the system, actually. Got some work to do. My squadron's holding ready, waiting for me. But I wanted to find you guys and say hello."
"Your squadron?" Jacen and Anakin asked together, Jacen skeptically and Anakin hopefully.
"Some friends who fly with me," Kyp explained.
"Miko Reglia?" Jaina asked.
"And others."
"But no other Jedi," Jacen asked more than stated.
"Just some friends," Kyp explained. "If you three wanted to join in sometime - if your father and your uncle Luke would let you, I mean - you'd be more than welcome."
"Join in what?" Jacen had to ask.
"Work," Kyp said.
"Work?" Jacen's ske
pticism did not diminish.
"Stopping illegal trade, settling disputes," Kyp explained. There was no bravado in his tone, just a grim determination, the stern set of his eyes more intense than anything the three kids had ever seen from him.
"Is that the role of the Jedi now?" Jacen asked. "Chasing smugglers? " Both Jaina and Anakin stared at him incredulously, stunned that he would challenge the older and more experienced Jedi Knight.
"Is it not?" Kyp returned with a snort.
"There was a time when the smugglers were considered friends of the Jedi," Jacen dared to say.
"Like your father," Kyp reasoned.
"That was a different time," Jaina put in, physically moving between the two and trying to diffuse the tension. "A time when an illegitimate government ruled the galaxy."
Jacen shook his head, hardly seeming convinced.
"Do you think it beneath us?" Kyp asked, and he moved, politely but forcefully, past Jaina to stand right before Jacen. "When innocent people are robbed of all their wealth, or taken captive, perhaps, and tortured, is it not the province of the Jedi to come to their aid?" he asked, his voice rising with each word.
"It is," Anakin agreed.
"There is a difference between finding trouble in your path and going out of your way searching for it," Jacen said. "We are not galactic police."
"I've already heard all of this from your uncle," Kyp replied.
"And is there a better source for wisdom for any Jedi in all the galaxy?" Jacen asked.
"And yet, he didn't stop me from my self-appointed task," Kyp was quick to add, poking his finger Jacen's way to accentuate every word. "He asked me to temper my choices, but not to stop." He finished with a nod, then turned his gaze upon Jaina. "Magnificent flying, Jaina," he said. "I'll be back to give your record a run, and then I expect you to go after mine."
"You'll never catch me," Jaina said kiddingly.
Kyp patted her on the shoulder, his easy smile returning, and walked past. "Off we go," he explained, and he turned back, though he kept on walking. "My offer holds, for all three of you when you get away from your aunt and uncle. I could use more Jedi to round out the squadron."
Star Wars The New Jedi Order - Vector Prime - Book 1 Page 16