by Troy Denning
Lowbacca, two and a quarter meters of Wookiee, hunched in the front passenger seat with his knees in his chest, growled the opinion that the vines were a good sign.
“I quite disagree, Master Lowbacca,” C-3PO said, speaking from directly behind the Wookiee. “In this context, the tendrils are symbols of inevitable destruction. If the ruins weren’t so obviously deserted, I would suggest that we turn around immediately and erase them from our memory chips.”
“I think Lowie means that we’re in the right place,” Tekli said. Sitting in the passenger seat behind Raynar, the furry little Chadra-Fan was probably the only one in the crowded landspeeder who was even remotely comfortable. “The vines suggest that we’ve finally found a hive with a direct association to Abeloth. But the winged figures are something new. Is there a record of ophidian grotesques appearing with other symbols?”
“Not in my data banks,” C-3PO assured her. “And I have cached every available reference to the subject. In fact, I have available two point three million articles and seven point one million images—”
Lowbacca interrupted with an impatient rumble.
“No, I would not prefer to ride on the stowage cover,” C-3PO replied. “Do you have any idea what all that dust would do to my servomotors?”
Lowbacca rumbled again.
“I am not experiencing a problem with my vocabulator, Jedi Lowbacca,” C-3PO answered. “And even if I were, I assure you that more dust would only make it worse.”
Raynar chuckled, glad to have his friends along to keep his mind off his fears. Officially, Master Skywalker had assigned Tekli and Lowbacca to the mission as its medic and technical officer. But Raynar was pretty sure their most important duty was to keep him sane—at least, he hoped it was. C-3PO was on loan to serve as a translator, so it wouldn’t be necessary for Raynar to risk becoming a Joiner again just to communicate with the Killiks. Whether it was part of Master Skywalker’s plan or not, the droid had also acted as a constant annoyance—and a diversion. The three Jedi had been living in close quarters for over a month now, and C-3PO had given them a handy place to redirect any irritation they felt with one another. It was a job at which the droid had never failed to excel.
The landspeeder was still a kilometer away from the mountain when dark specks began to appear in the spaces between exposed pillars. At first, the flecks seemed to be some sort of decoration, but as the companions drew closer the shapes grew more squarish, then swelled into distant window openings. A path appeared in the dust at the base of the mountain, running through a narrow channel toward a tall black arch that looked a lot like an open gateway.
Deciding the black arch was a gateway, Raynar turned toward it … and felt a cold prickle of danger sense race up his neck. He expanded his Force awareness and sensed something much nearer, a huge hungry presence moving toward the landspeeder almost as fast as the landspeeder was moving toward the mountain.
The sensation made no sense. There was a steady breeze blowing across the plain, raising a thin veil of smoke-blue dust that hung about a meter above the ground, but visibility was still close to three hundred meters, and the presence was a lot nearer than that. Raynar brought the landspeeder to a halt.
“I feel it, too,” Tekli said. “Something is eager to get at us before we reach the mountain.”
Lowbacca groaned a question.
“Well, I can’t see anything except the back of your enormous and furry head,” C-3PO answered. “Perhaps I would be of more use if you didn’t insist on making the droid ride in back.”
“I don’t think it’s an illusion,” Tekli said, ignoring C-3PO and replying to Lowbacca. “It can be sensed only through the Force. And any illusion that can be sensed only through the Force won’t turn away many threats.”
Lowbacca moaned his agreement, and the hungry presence continued to draw nearer. Raynar popped the canopy latch on his side of the landspeeder—then saw the soil settling and understood. He put the landspeeder in reverse and pushed the throttles to maximum.
Too late.
Twenty meters ahead, a giant pair of serrated pincers burst from the ground and spread apart, revealing a slimy red maw about twice as wide as the speeder. The maw led into a long sinuous throat lined by concentric rings of spines. Out of the depths of this cavern shot a spray of gray, ropy tongues that slapped down on the front end of the vehicle. The pincers snapped shut, burying their tips deep in the side panels.
The landspeeder started to slide forward. Raynar pushed the throttles past maximum to overload, clear to the end of the lever guides. The vehicle continued to slide toward the fang-filled maw.
“Out!” Raynar yelled.
Lowbacca popped the latch on his side. He exploded from his seat so swiftly that he caught the canopy bubble on his neck and shoulders, snapping it off at the hinges. Tekli yelled that she was also free. By then, Raynar was already pushing off the steering wheel, using the Force to send himself tumbling out of the landspeeder.
When he looked back, the maw had engulfed the landspeeder almost to the passenger compartment and was dragging it down into the dusty pit from which it had emerged. Still in the back, C-3PO was leaning away from the ropy tongues, waving both arms at Raynar.
“Jedi Thul, why are you just standing there? Please do something quickly!”
The landspeeder passed over the edge of the pit and tipped forward.
C-3PO pointed down into the pit. “I suggest that you kill it immediately!”
Killing the creature was out of the question—and not only because of its size. Instead, Raynar extended a hand and used the Force to lift the droid out of the landspeeder—then found himself struggling against Lowbacca, who’d had the same idea.
Raynar released his Force grasp. C-3PO went sailing, then hit Lowbacca in the chest, bounced off, and landed in the dust at the Wookiee’s feet.
Lowbacca dropped his chin and studied the droid for a moment, then moaned a question.
“I could not possibly know that yet,” C-3PO replied. “I’m still running my diagnostics!”
Lowbacca shrugged and set the droid on his feet, then growled and rubbed his chest.
“It’s not my fault my elbow gave you a bruise,” C-3PO said. “I was merely trying to minimize my own damage.”
The shriek of folding metal sounded from the pit. Raynar stepped to the edge and, through a veil of blowing blue dust, saw a huge heart-shaped head poking out of the bottom. It was rolling the crumpled landspeeder around in its mandibles, using its mouth to tear off pieces and crush them into meter-wide spheres—which it quickly found unpalatable and spat out.
A small hand grasped Raynar’s arm and tried to pull him away from the pit. He pulled back just hard enough to stay where he was, and Tekli stepped to his side.
“Raynar?” Tekli whispered. “Is it really wise to stand where that thing can see you?”
Raynar shrugged. He wasn’t sure what that thing was—but there was a reasonable chance it was a Killik. He took a deep breath, both calming himself and filling his lungs, then raised both forearms in greeting.
“Thuruht?” he called.
The insect stopped chewing and pushed its head another meter out of the pit, revealing a huge bulb that was probably a vestigial eye. The ground trembled beneath Raynar’s feet, and he felt a faint rumbling deep in his stomach.
“Oh, my!” C-3PO said, speaking from three meters away. “She would like to know who is asking—and why you are disturbing her work.”
Raynar smiled as much as the flesh of his burn-scarred face allowed. “Tell her I’m an old friend,” he said. “UnuThul needs help.”
“Jedi Thul, I’m not sure that’s wise,” C-3PO said. “Killiks rarely cooperate with liars, and you haven’t been UnuThul for quite—”
Lowbacca growled, warning C-3PO to be careful about what he said.
Raynar glanced over at the droid. “Tell her, Threepio.”
Before C-3PO had a chance to obey, the ground trembled again.
The droid cocked his head, then said, “As it happens, that won’t be necessary. Thuruht comprehends Basic quite well. She has invited us to the Celestial Palace.”
Raynar looked into the pit and dipped his head. “We’re grateful.”
As the ground trembled in reply, Raynar led the way around the pit and started toward the palace. The air was arid and choking hot, and with a haze of blue dust obscuring everything below their waists, it was difficult to find the best path across the plain. Twice, Raynar sank to his thigh when he inadvertently stepped into another pit.
Several times, he glimpsed a ridge rising in the dust ahead as one of Thuruht’s giant guardians burrowed across the plain to greet him and his companions. Usually, the greeting consisted of little more than coming alongside them and emitting a subterranean rumble so deep they felt it in their stomachs. But about three hundred meters from the palace, a huge head burst from the ground, blocking their way and clacking its mandibles.
It had been a long time since Raynar had been part of a Killik hive-mind, but he didn’t think the creature was trying to threaten them. He motioned his companions to lower their weapons and stepped forward. Keeping his prosthetic arm at his side, he raised his flesh-and-blood hand in greeting. The insect responded by dipping its head and rubbing its worm-like antennae across his forearm. Then it emitted a soft, muffled boom and withdrew.
As soon as the creature vanished into the ground again, Tekli stepped to Raynar’s side. “You’ll be coated in pheromones now,” she observed. “You still have your nasal filters in place, yes?”
Raynar sniffed hard. Finding it difficult to draw air, he nodded. “No worries,” he said, starting toward the palace again. “No one who’s been a Joiner wants to become a Joiner again—including me.”
Lowbacca observed that no one ever wanted to become a Joiner in the first place. The pheromones just made it happen.
“We’ll be okay,” Tekli assured the Wookiee. “Even if the filters overload, the counteragents will give us enough protection to get through a week of exposure.”
Lowbacca turned to Raynar and growled a question.
“Hard to say,” Raynar answered. “But a week is probably long enough.”
“And if it isn’t, I have more counteragents aboard the Long Trek,” Tekli said. “We can always return and take another injection.”
Lowbacca glanced over his shoulder, looking back toward the distant ridge where they had landed the scoutship, then grumbled unhappily.
“I quite agree,” C-3PO replied. “That’s a very long walk, indeed. My actuators simply won’t tolerate it.”
“You won’t need to,” Raynar said. “Pheromones don’t affect droids. You can just wait with Thuruht.”
“Alone?” C-3PO objected. “I’m quite sure that’s not what Princess Leia had in mind when she offered to send me along.”
“Probably not,” Raynar agreed.
As they entered the channel at the base of the dust-mountain, Raynar realized the scale of the place was even larger than it had appeared from the landspeeder. The channel stretched two hundred meters to the gate, and its walls were easily seventy meters high. The archway at the far end was large enough to accommodate a Lancer frigate, and the enormous support columns flanking the entrance rose a hundred meters before vanishing into an overhang of wind-packed dust.
The figures on the pillars were largely hidden by the dust. On the left-hand column, all that could be seen were two sharp-taloned feet dangling beneath the overhang, tangled in the coils of what was either a serpent or a tentacle. On the right-hand column, even less was visible—only a single wing dipping out of the dust, wrapped in what was a length of either vine or rope.
The air grew dank and humid as they drew within a couple dozen steps of the archway. Raynar sensed the fused Force presence of a group of Killiks loitering in the passages near the entrance, and his pulse started to pound in his ears.
“Don’t worry,” Tekli said, stepping to his side. “We’re here with you.”
Lowbacca added his own reassurances, promising to drag Raynar out by his feet at the first hint that he was becoming a Joiner again. The words were offered in kindness, but Raynar found them to be of little comfort. There was something to fear. If becoming a Joiner again was the only way to learn what Thuruht knew of Abeloth and the Celestials, then become a Joiner he would. And he knew the same was true of Lowbacca and Tekli. The Order needed the intelligence they had been sent to gather far more than it needed them.
The trick, of course, would be making sure that at least one of them stayed sane enough to report back to the Jedi Council.
Together they stepped through the archway into the cool darkness of the ruins. Raynar heard the clatter of approaching insects, and a moment later he began to feel their antennae brushing over him, paying particular attention to his real forearm. They were careful to avoid the prosthetic, however. Killiks did not like artificial body parts. The devices blurred the line between living being and droid, and Killiks did not understand droids. Droids were alien and never to be welcomed, because droids never became Joiners.
As his eyes adjusted to the darkness, Raynar found himself facing a trio of Killiks with mottled-blue exoskeletons and four delicate arms. They had the same heart-shaped heads as their giant hive mates outside, but they were only about a meter and a half tall and lacked the huge mandibles of the guardians. When they saw Raynar studying them, all three folded their arms against their thoraxes and dipped their heads.
“Ruur ubb unuwul burur,” said one. “Uru rur rruru bub.”
“Thuruht welcomes the wise UnuThul and his followers to the Celestial Palace,” C-3PO translated. “The hive is honored that he has chosen to rejoin the Kind through them.”
Lowbacca let out a quick growl, informing Thuruht that they weren’t there to join anything.
“Are you certain you wish me to translate that, Jedi Lowbacca?” C-3PO asked. “You’re actually being rather—”
Thuruht interrupted with a short thrum, and the droid turned to face the insect. After a moment, he looked back to Lowbacca.
“Thuruht says it doesn’t matter why you came, the hive will be honored to have you.” He shifted his attention to Raynar. “We are asked to attend the queen in her chamber.”
Had his burn scars permitted it, Raynar would have raised his brow. Modern Killik hives were no longer organized around a queen, but he supposed it only made sense that Thuruht’s social structure would reflect its great age. He inclined his head to the blue insects.
“If you’ll show us the way.”
All three turned and led the Jedi and C-3PO up a stale-smelling passage that ascended along the outer walls of the palace. The climb was steep and lonely, rising in a rough spiral that felt five kilometers long.
They frequently passed through musty-smelling areas where a side tunnel led into the depths of the palace. The few insects they encountered seemed to be wandering about aimlessly rather than executing the business of the hive. Most of the time, the balls of luminescent wax hanging along the walls were too dim to see much more than the silhouettes of the three guides ahead. Every so often, however, they would pass one of the huge windows they had seen from outside, and the light would spill in to reveal archways decorated with bas-relief carvings of plants and animals from a thousand different worlds.
But it was the panels between the arches that put a flutter in Raynar’s stomach. The images depicted the grandeur of deep space, always with some peculiar twist that seemed unlikely to occur in nature. There was a supernova exploding in only one direction, a ring of nine planets circling their sun along a single orbital path, a nebula hanging like a curtain between two star systems. Finally came a scene that looked all too familiar—a system with five planets orbiting the same star in very similar orbits, with the third and fourth locked in a tight twin-planet formation.
Raynar stopped. “What’s that picture?”
The insects answered without stopping or looking back. “Urrub.�
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“Our work,” C-3PO translated. The droid paused, waiting in vain for a more thorough explanation, then said, “I’m sorry, Jedi Thul, but Thuruht doesn’t seem to be in a very informative mood right now. Perhaps they’ve been offended by Lowbacca’s rudeness.”
Lowbacca moaned a halfhearted apology.
Thuruht continued to ascend the corridor. Raynar remained where he was and called, “Is this one the Corellian system?”
The insects stopped five meters up the passage, then reluctantly turned around. “Buurub uu ruub ur ru ub.”
“Thuruht wouldn’t know what it is called by lesser beings,” C-3PO translated. “But to Thuruht, it is known as Five Rocks.”
Tekli stood on her toes, reaching up to wipe the dust away from the third and fourth planets—the twins—then asked, “Does Thuruht know why the system was constructed?”
“Ub.”
The insects turned and walked on.
“Thuruht said ‘yes,’ ” C-3PO translated. “May I suggest we follow? They seem to be growing impatient with us.”
Lowbacca shrugged and started up the passage. Raynar and Tekli fell in behind the Wookiee. A few minutes later they turned toward the center of the palace, traveling down a long hall even larger and more ornate than the one they had just ascended. The air grew warmer and more humid, and the glow-balls started to shine more brightly. Dozens of workers began to appear, scurrying in and out of side passages, carrying tools and bales of a stringy yellow fungus, or waxy orbs of golden membrosia, one of the Killiks’ favorite nourishments. Raynar started to feel thirsty, and he noticed Lowbacca eyeing a membrosia bearer as she crossed the corridor ahead.
“That I miss about being Taat,” Tekli said. Taat was the hive she and Lowbacca had inadvertently joined years before, after Raynar had summoned them to help the Killiks fight the Chiss. “It will almost be worth the trip to have some again.”
“They sell it in Restaurant Galatina on Coruscant, you know,” C-3PO offered helpfully. “I understand the Horoh is especially fine this year.”