by Troy Denning
“Who isn’t?” Han gave Leia a quick nod. “Whatever you say, dear.”
Leia closed her eyes again and began to call directions. At first Han emitted an alarming string of oaths and gasps, but gradually the sensations grew more concrete—and Han’s willingness to follow the blind more ready. Within the hour, they were bobbing and dodging along more or less steadily behind the XR808g.
Finally, Han said, “Looks like he’s going to ground.”
Leia opened her eyes to see the tracking blip drifting down toward the middle of the display, its color deepening to red as the XR808g lost altitude. She looked out the canopy and found the distinctive wafer of a YT light freighter in the distance ahead, descending into the hazy labyrinth of insect pinnacles. Traffic remained heavy above the spires, but there were only a handful of drifting balloon-bikes and slow-moving airspeeders among the towers themselves.
“We’ll take point,” Leia commed. “Why don’t you fly top cover?”
“It’s a plan,” Luke answered.
As the Falcon descended, Leia saw that the mottled colors decorating the pinnacles had been created by pressing colored pebbles into the exterior walls. The effect was remarkably calming. If she watched them out of the corner of her eye, or allowed her gaze to go unfocused, the bright blotches of color reminded her of a meadow in full bloom—and, she realized, of the elaborate mosaics inside the spires depicted in Killik Twilight.
“Could it be?” she gasped.
“Could be anything,” Han answered. “So let’s be ready. Send Cakhmaim and Meewalh to the cannon turrets, and tell Beady to go to ready standby.”
They followed the XR808g down to within a hundred meters of ground level, where the balloon-bikes and airspeeders gave way to rivers of racing landspeeders, speeder bikes, and dangerous-looking rocket carts steered exclusively by Yoggoy pilots. Pedestrians were forced to scurry along the tower bases, hanging on the walls sideways if they were insects or keeping themselves tightly pressed against the foundations if they were bipeds.
Juun began to fly erratically, making last-second turns and doubling back on his own trail. If not for the tracking blip, Leia would have lost him a dozen times in half an hour. Finally, they swung onto a large curving boulevard and began to circle a massive complex of fused towers sheathed in an eye-pulling mosaic done in every imaginable shade of red. The XR808g eased steadily toward the interior lanes, then abruptly dropped to ground level and disappeared into the dark mouth of a huge, barrel-vaulted gateway.
“That kreetle!” Han said. “I should’ve blasted him when I had the chance.”
Leia immersed herself in the Force, then reported, “It looks more dangerous than it feels.”
“You sure?” Han gave her a sidelong look. “No offense, but I know how much time you have to practice that Jedi stuff.”
“Would it make any difference if I wasn’t sure?”
Han gave her that crooked grin of his. “What do you think?”
He eased the yoke forward and swung the Falcon into the murky gateway. Leia activated the forward maneuvering lights, illuminating the interior of a huge, winding passage covered in a wavy pink-and-yellow mosaic. The tunnel was longer than Leia had expected, and each time the ship rounded a new bend, they sent a swarm of insects scurrying for the vault edges.
After a couple of minutes, they emerged in a small, flower-shaped plaza enclosed by a dozen fused towers. The mosaics were bright and disorienting, with solid bands of color gradually paling from deep amber at ground level to pure white at the pinnacletops. At the far side of the area, the XR808g sat on its landing struts, its boarding ramp already dropping into position.
Han brought the Falcon to within twenty meters and set her down with the missile launchers facing the XR808g. “Cakhmaim, Meewalh, be ready with those cannons,” he ordered over the intercom. “Ready—”
“Prepared to open fire, Captain,” the droid reported.
“Not yet,” Leia said, unbuckling her crash webbing. “Only if they shoot first.”
“Survival rates decrease thirty-two percent for combatants firing in reaction,” BD-8 objected.
“We’re not shooting first.” Han strapped on his BlasTech holster. “Just stand ready to look tough.”
“Look tough?” BD-8 inquired.
“Intimidation mode one,” C-3PO clarified. He turned to Han. “You really should use the standardized terms with the BD series. Their tactical overlays leave little processing power for semantic analysis.”
Han rolled his eyes. “Yeah, maybe I’ll read the manual someday.”
He led the way off the flight deck, and they descended the boarding ramp to find Juun scurrying toward them in a torn tunic.
“Han! Princess Leia!” he called cheerfully. “I was afraid we’d lost you!”
“Sure you were,” Han replied coldly. He stopped a few steps from the end of the ramp and rested a hand on his holstered blaster. “Your transponder just happened to go on the blink?”
“Of course not!” Juun said. “Our guide disabled it. After the last jump, he found the subspace transceiver.”
BD-8 came up behind Leia and glared over her shoulder, clicking and whirring loudly. Juun stopped three meters away and gawked up at the battle droid. Leia tried to get a read on the his truthfulness, but she felt only alarm and confusion.
Juun raised his hands. “Please! It wasn’t my fault!”
Leia glimpsed movement on the tower walls behind him, then saw several tiers of insect soldiers stepping into view. They looked much like Lizil workers, except they were the size of a Wookiee, with meter-long mandibles and scarlet carapaces covering their backs. The undersides of their thoraxes were bright gold, and their eyes were a deep, haunting purple. In their four hands, they each carried a crude electrobolt assault rifle and a short, thick-shafted trident. It took an instant to realize they were standing on small terraces instead of midair, for human eyes found it difficult to interpret the subtle interplay of hue and shadow that defined each belt of the wall mosaic.
“That does it!” Han said, reaching for his holster. “I’m gonna blast you myself.”
The edges of Juun’s cheek folds turned blue. “What for?”
“What for?” Han waved his blaster at the surrounding walls. “For leading us into a trap!”
Juun’s eyes went wide. “I did?”
Leia reached out to the insects above, searching for any hint of hostile intentions, and felt none.
“Don’t play dumb,” Han said to Juun. He aimed his blaster at the Sullustan’s knees. “It just makes me mad.”
Leia reached over and covered Han’s blaster hand. “Put that thing away!” she whispered. “It isn’t what it looks like.”
“Then what is it?” Han continued to glare at Juun.
“We’ll have a better chance of finding out if you keep that thing in its holster.”
Han allowed her to push the blaster down, but BD-8 was harder to convince.
“Situation serious,” the droid reported. “Suggest withdrawal to transport. Permission to lay covering fire?”
“Denied!” Leia and Han said simultaneously.
“Okay,” Han said to Juun. “Maybe it’s not what it looks like. Where’s Tarfang?”
Juun remained at a distance. “In the medbay. When our guide found the transceiver, there was a little fight.”
Leia began to have a sinking feeling. “What about the guide? It’s not—”
Her question was drowned out by the sudden thunder of insect drumming. The three lowest rows of soldiers raised their carapaces, then stepped off their terraces and added to the tumult the roar of hundreds of beating wings. Leia heard BD-8 ask something she could not understand and ordered him to stand down on general principles—though she did pluck the lightsaber off her belt and start easing back toward the Falcon’s boarding ramp.
Juun scurried over to join them, his round ears red with alarm. The soldiers continued to swirl overhead in a dark mass for several seconds, then glided to the plaza flo
or and formed a tightly packed cordon around the Falcon and XR808g.
“Situation critical,” BD-8 reported. “Permission to return to stand ready?”
“G-granted,” Leia said.
The soldiers thrummed their chests in a single deafening boom, then brought their feet together and snapped their weapons to the attention position against their thoraxes. On the far side of the XR808g, the cordon parted to admit a small parade of insects of many different body shapes, ranging in size from that of Leia’s thumb to somewhat larger than an X-wing. Most seemed to be simple variations on the standard Colony pattern, with feathery antennae, large bulbous eyes, and four arms and two legs. But some had exaggerated features, such as one with slender, two-meter antennae ending in fuzzy yellow spheres, another with five large eyes instead of the usual two large and three small, and several that walked on four legs instead of two. One of the largest had a coat of sensory bristles so thick it looked like fur.
In the center of the procession walked an imposing, melt-faced man with no ears or hair and a mere bulge for a nose. His brows had fused into a single knobby ridge, and all his visible skin had the shiny, stiff quality of a burn scar. He wore purple trousers with a scarlet cape over a gold chitin breastplate.
“Who’s the fashion victim?” Han asked Juun.
“I think it’s the Prime Unu.” Juun’s voice was almost a gasp. “Nobody ever sees him.”
“The Prime Unu?” Leia asked.
“You might consider him the chief of the Colony,” Juun whispered. “He’s doesn’t rule it, at least not the way most species think of ruling, but he’s the heart of the whole thing.”
“Sort of the king bee, huh?” Han asked.
Leia felt Luke reaching out to her from above, alarmed by the growing trepidation he had been sensing in her. She filled her mind with reassuring thoughts.
The Prime Unu stopped in front of the XR808g, and two of his companions boarded the battered freighter. Leia reached out in the Force, trying to gauge his intentions, and found the same double presence that she had come to recognize in the Joiners of the Lizil nest. But the individual element of his presence felt stronger than most and—to her surprise—somehow familiar. Leia allowed her thoughts to roam freely over the past, seeking their own connections to that familiarity.
Her mind went first to the Jedi academy on Yavin 4, during a time when Anakin was still too young to attend and jealous of his older siblings. The memory brought with it a flood of emotion, and Leia found herself struggling to retain her composure— to avoid the torrent of grief and remembrance that always threatened to sweep her away when she thought of her lost son.
Her mind was telling her that the Prime was tied to her children—particularly Anakin—and she could not help hoping that the Prime was Anakin; that her son had somehow survived the Myrkr mission after all, and the funeral on Hapes had been some other young man’s.
But that was fantasy. Had it been Anakin standing next to the XR808g, Leia would have known. She would have felt it in her bones.
Her thoughts wandered to another memory, on Eclipse, where Cilghal and Danni had learned to jam Yuuzhan Vong battle coordinators. The Jedi were meeting in a lab, with the milky splendor of the galactic core pouring down through the transparisteel ceiling. Cilghal was explaining that she had discovered where the enemy was growing the deadly voxyn that had been attacking the Jedi across the galaxy.
. . . a full-grown ysalamiri, the Mon Calamari was saying, and suddenly Leia felt an enormous, murky presence in the Force pressing her away from the Prime. She looked up and found him staring in her direction, his blue eyes shining like a pair of oncoming blaster bolts. Leia raised her chin and held his gaze. Her vision grew dark around the edges, and soon she could see nothing but his eyes.
He winked and looked away, and Leia felt herself falling.
“Whoa!” Han caught her under her arms. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” Leia allowed Han to hold her as her vision returned to normal. “The king is Force-sensitive.”
“Yeah?” Han replied. “I’ve never seen you react that way before.”
“Okay, he’s very Force-sensitive.” Leia gathered her legs beneath her. “We might know him.”
“You’re kidding.” Han studied the Prime for a moment, then shook his head. “Who is it?”
“I don’t know yet,” Leia said.
A pair of insects emerged from the XR808g carrying the Yoggoy guide that Juun had been assigned. The chitin of its thorax was pitted and charred, three of its limbs hung beside its body loose and swinging, and both of its antennae had been broken off. The Prime pressed his melted brow to the insect’s, then raised the remains of a three-fingered hand and began to stroke the stumps of its antennae.
“An Ewok did that?” Han asked Juun.
The Sullustan nodded. “Tarfang is not the gentle soul he seems.”
A contented boom reverberated from the chest of the wounded guide, and the Prime stood and started toward the Falcon. It was impossible to read the expression behind his grotesque mask of a face, but the briskness of his pace suggested how he felt about what he had just seen.
“The king doesn’t look very happy,” Leia said. “Maybe you should wait aboard the Falcon, Captain Juun.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Juun said. “The guide assured me there would be no—”
The Prime raised two fingers and pointed at the Falcon’s laser cannons. There was a thunk as the turrets broke their collar locks, then the muffled scream of grating servomotors.
“Hey!” Han protested.
The turrets continued to rotate—tearing up their internal maneuvering mechanisms—until the cannons faced aft.
“Hostile action under way,” BD-8 reported. “Permission to—”
The Prime raised a finger toward him, and the request ended in a garbled blast of static. The harsh smell of melting circuits filled the air, then the droid crashed to the ground. Han glanced over his shoulder.
“Bloah!” he gasped. “Can Luke do that?”
“Maybe I’ll wait aboard the Falcon after all,” Juun said.
The Sullustan turned and raced up the boarding ramp—and the Prime surprised Leia by letting him. The ghastly figure crossed the last few steps and stopped in front of the Solos, towering over Han by a good third of a meter. For a moment, he stood glaring down, his breath coming in audible wheezes that suggested badly damaged lungs, his blue eyes sliding back and forth between their faces.
Then Cakhmaim and Meewalh appeared at the top of the boarding ramp with power blasters in hand. Leia started to order the Noghri to stand down, but she was no match for their reflexes. They shouldered their weapons and yelled for the Solos to drop to their bellies.
The Prime flicked his wrist, and both Noghri went tumbling back into the Falcon’s main corridor. He stared in their direction for a moment, no doubt checking to make sure they would not surprise him later, then turned back to Leia and Han.
“Captain Solo.” His voice was a deep, gravelly rasp that made Leia’s throat close with empathic pain. “Princess Leia. We weren’t expecting you.” He glanced skyward, where Luke and Mara were still circling onstation in the Shadow. “Nor the Masters Skywalker.”
“Sorry about that,” Han retorted. “We tried to comm, but it turns out there’s no HoloNet in the Unknown Regions.”
“No HoloNet.” The Prime’s upper lip quivered, straining to smile, but not quite able to break free of its scar-tissue cast. “We hadn’t considered that.”
He turned away and walked under the Falcon, craning his inflexible neck around awkwardly to inspect the ship’s belly. He made a complete circuit like this, pausing beneath the cargo lift, rising on his toes to peer at the seals around the missile tube doors, kicking the landing struts. Finally, he reached up and touched the carbon-scored hull.
“We never liked the black,” the Prime said. “White is better. White is your color.”
Leia’s mind flashed back to the Yavin
4 visit, to a handsome blond-haired boy lying unconscious on the floor after being bitten by Jacen’s crystal snake—a handsome boy dressed in the haughty scarlet, gold, and purple of the Bornaryn shipping empire.
“Raynar?” she gasped. “Raynar Thul?”
TEN
“RAYNAR THUL IS NO MORE,” Raynar said. He was squatting on his haunches in the heart of the Prime Chamber, high atop a circular dais where he would always be visible to the hundreds of insect attendants that followed wherever he went. His long arms were hanging over his knees with the backs of his hands resting slackly on the ground before him, and his blue eyes were riveted, unblinking, to Luke’s face. “We are UnuThul.”
“How strange, then, that I still sense Raynar Thul’s presence within yours,” Luke said.
He found it difficult to meet Raynar’s gaze, not because of those unblinking eyes or the ghastliness of the face that held them, but because of the conflicting emotions they aroused— elation that Raynar had survived his abduction, regret over what had happened afterward, anger and anguish that so many others had failed to return at all . . . especially his nephew Anakin. He still woke up nights praying that it had been just a bad dream; that there had been a better way to stop the voxyn and he had never been asked to authorize the mission to Myrkr at all.
But Luke was careful to keep those feelings hidden, buried deep inside where they would not show in the Force and complicate a discussion already sure to be difficult and full of emotion for both sides.
“Raynar Thul may be in hiding,” Luke said carefully. “But he is not gone. I feel that clearly.”
“We are surprised, Master Skywalker, that you cannot feel the difference between a ghost and a man.” The same murky presence that Luke had felt in the Lizil cantina rose within Raynar’s body, not forcing Luke out, but preventing him from feeling anything else. “Raynar Thul vanished with the Crash.”
“And then UnuThul was born?”
“The Kind are not born, Master Skywalker,” Raynar said. “An egg drops, a chrysalis is spun.”
“You mean there was a metamorphosis?” Leia asked. Along with Mara and Saba, she was sitting cross-legged with Luke on the dais floor. Han, of course, could not be talked into sitting. He was pacing the edge of the dais, keeping a wary eye on the attendants below and grumbling about the heat and mugginess and too-sweet smell of the nest. “Is that the story on the walls?”