Star Wars - The New Jedi Order - Traitor

by Matthew Stover

  "Um, yeah, y'know," he said with a weak laugh, "those wacky gods... I guess they mean well, but they just don't know when to stop. They're way too generous. I'm getting along fine with just the first Gift. The other two, hey, y'know, I can wait..."

  "Silence!" Jacen commanded, stretching forth his arms, hands high, palms forward as though to address a multitude from a mountaintop. "Waste not your breath in prattle! Hear now the lore of the True Way

  !"

  Ganner stared, speechless, but instead of continuing, Jacen's eyes drifted closed. He swayed in place as though he were about to faint.

  "Jacen?" One hand curled to a fist, then extended a forefinger: Wait.

  "Jacen, what did they do to you? Whatever it is, we can fix it. You have to come back with me, Jacen. You don't know what's been happening. Jaina...everyone needs you. I don't know what they've done to you, but it doesn't matter. Whatever you've done, it's not your fault. We can help you..."

  Jacen's eyes opened, then his left lid drooped in a long, slow wink.

  Ganner's mouth snapped shut. Jacen's eyes closed again. Then slowly, one at a time, so did each eye on the end of each of the tentacle-vines that hung from the ceiling: as the red glow within each orb faded into darkness, a pair of vertical eyelids squeezed across them, and the tentacle-vines gradually relaxed, hanging limp, motionless.

  Jacen dropped his arms and opened his eyes. His face seemed to collapse into an exhaustion too profound for any human to bear.

  "How do you feel? Any strength coming back? You think you can walk?" He sounded like a teenager again--but a teenager old beyond his years. Old...too old... that's part of what was so strange about him. Something in his eyes: some old, cold knowledge, a broken admission of bitter truths, that made him not resemble a Solo at all.

  "What are you... what's going on? Jacen..."

  "We can talk now, but not for long. I persuaded all the creatures monitoring us to take a nap."

  "Creatures? Monitoring? I don't..."

  "They were watching us. That was the point of that silly nerf-and-Wookiee show just now. The Yuuzhan Vong have decided I'm the avatar of one of their Twin Gods."

  Ganner stared. His life had become a succession of inexplicable strangenesses. "I had a dream--a dream about a sacrifice--you were going to kill me, then find Jaina and kill her, too... That was just a dream, wasn't it?" He swallowed. "Wasn't it?"

  Jacen reached into one sleeve and pulled out a pouch similar to the one in which he'd carried that poison pad back on the camp ship; this pouch contained a similar wad of damp fabric, which Jacen began to apply directly to the blood-welling punctures where the tube-vines had withdrawn through Ganner's skin.

  "They can't see us or hear us right now. Pretty soon somebody's going to come around to find out why. We have to be ready to go when they get here."

  "Go? Go where? Where are we, Jacen? What--hey, what are you doing to me? What is that stuff?" Everywhere the moisture of the pad touched, Ganner stopped bleeding. Strength flowed back into his drugged muscles.

  "We're on Yuuzhan'tar." Jacen kept wiping him down with the pad. "The Yuuzhan Vong homeworld."

  Ganner had heard the name from refugees on the camp ships. "You mean Coruscant."

  "No. I don't."

  "Just changing a name doesn't make it..."

  "The Yuuzhan Vong remake everything they touch." Jacen's hand fell to his side, and a dark distance stretched his gaze far beyond the walls of this small chamber. "It's not about names. My name is still Jacen Solo." Ganner frowned. An instant later, Jacen seemed to remember where he was. He dropped the pad on the floor and shook out a long, flowing robe of white. "Here, sit up. Put this on."

  Ganner discovered, to his astonishment, that he could now move without discomfort. He sat up and swung his legs over the edge of the hammock. The Yuuzhan Vong had left him his boots and leggings, but he was obscurely grateful to Jacen for providing the robe; being bare-chested here made him feel oddly uncomfortable. Vulnerable.

  He stood and shrugged into the robe, marveling at how good he felt. Being dressed. Being able to stand. He never could have guessed what profound joy might spring from such simple pleasures. A shimmer of motion caught his eye, and he looked down. The robe he wore bore glowing designs like Jacen's, colors pulsing along arterial networks down the sleeves and front, except the designs on Ganner's robe were in black and green upon the white.

  He frowned. "What's this?"

  "It's your sacrificial robe. For the processional to the Well of the World Brain."

  Ganner stared. His dream flooded back to him. On that day, Ganner Rhysode will walk proudly at my heel, as I lead him into the Well of the World Brain, where we will together offer up his death to the glory of the True Gods.

  "Oh, no you don't," he said. He started pulling the robe off over his head.

  "Oh, yes I do."

  "This is some kind of trick." Wasn't one of the Yuuzhan Vong Twin Gods supposed to be some kind of trickster or something? How much truth was Jacen telling? "This is all some kind of trick. You're lying to me."

  "Well, actually, yeah. I am."

  Ganner stopped, staring at Jacen out through the neck hole of the robe, which was now halfway over his head. Jacen's lips twitched in that unmistakable Solo half smile.

  "Everything I tell you is a lie."

  "What?"

  "See, the thing is, everything everyone tells you is a lie. The truth is always bigger than the words we use to describe it."

  "I knew it! This is some kind of trick!"

  "Yeah. But not on you."

  Ganner shook his head wordlessly. He couldn't connect this Jacen to the cheerful dark-haired kid he used to know. He suffered an instant of wild hope: maybe Jacen wasn't Jacen--maybe this traitor who had promised to murder him was some kind of impostor, some kind of clone, something force-grown in a Yuuzhan Vong shaper's vat...

  "Uh, Jacen? You are you, aren't you?..." Ganner grimaced. That sounded stupid, even for me.

  "No," said the man who looked like a sad, grown-up Jacen Solo. "I'm not. But I was."

  "I don't understand."

  He sighed. "Thinking of me as Jacen Solo," he said distantly, "will only get in your way. I was the boy you knew, Ganner, but I'm not the boy who knew you."

  "But you're alive." Ganner shrugged into the robe, and smoothed it down. "That's the only thing that counts. I found you. After all this time. That's the important thing. You're alive."

  "No."

  "Yes it is," he insisted. "You have no idea how important... you have no idea what it'll mean to the New Republic that you're alive! What it'll mean to Jaina..."

  "But I'm not."

  Ganner blinked. Jacen only looked sad.

  "I don't understand," Ganner said.

  "I can't help that."

  "But, but, but, Jacen, come on, don't be ridiculous..."

  That dark distance captured his eyes altogether. "I've been dead for months, Ganner. I died not long after Myrkr. I just haven't gotten around to lying down, yet."

  A chill trickled the length of Ganner's spine. "You're... dead?"

  "That's right," Jacen said. "And so are you."

  Some of Jacen's quick-sketched explanation made sense. The planted rumors leading to the "trap" on the camp ship had never really been intended to catch anybody; Jacen had only been stalling for time. As weeks passed with no results, Jacen hoped Nom Anor would lose patience and pull him out of there. If he'd really wanted to catch Jaina, all he would have had to do was reopen the Force-bond that had linked them since birth. Nothing in the galaxy would have stopped her from finding him.

  "Nothing in the galaxy stops Jaina from doing pretty much whatever she decides to do. So I have to hold that part of myself shut down. If she finds out I'm alive, she'll come for me--and that'll just get her killed, too. Like Anakin. And me." That strange sadness leaked back onto his face. "And you."

  Ganner let that pass. It was clear that Jacen wasn't firing on all thrusters--and after what he mu
st have been through, Ganner couldn't blame him.

  "What if she had shown up on the camp ship after all?"

  Jacen's eyes closed and opened again, a motion too slow and deliberate to be called a blink. "Then I'd be having this conversation with her. And you'd have the chance to live to a ripe old age." Jacen had felt Ganner coming days before he arrived, and had done everything he could--under the circumstances--to discourage him.

  The freezing dread, the growing conviction that he was going to his death, finally even the outright compulsion to turn and run, had all been Jacen's doing, reaching through the Force to push Ganner away.

  "But nothing worked." Jacen sighed and shook his head. "If you weren't so bloody brave, you might have lived through this."

  "Uh... yeah. Right. I guess," Ganner said hesitantly. "But... uh, Jacen? You do understand that I'm not really dead, don't you?"

  "You're the one who needs to understand, Ganner. You are really dead. When you came back to the chamber in the camp ship: that's what killed you." Jacen sagged exhaustedly against the wall, and rubbed his reddened eyes. "The warriors who were with me were going to slaughter you on the spot. The only way you could have escaped is if I'd helped you... and if I had, if I'd shown them I was still a Jedi at heart... the pilot would have triggered the dovin basal and wiped out the whole ship."

  "And themselves along with everybody else?"

  "Suicide missions are an honor for the Yuuzhan Vong. That stuff about the Blessed Release? That's not just dogma. They really believe it."

  And the sad, dark distance in his stare made Ganner wonder if maybe Jacen believed it a little himself.

  "We've both been dead for a long time, Ganner. And today..." Jacen drew new strength from somewhere. He pushed himself off the wall and stood like a man who knew fatigue only by reputation. "Today is the day we stop breathing."

  Ganner scrubbed at his face as though he could massage understanding in through his skin. "Then why not just let them kill me?"

  "Because I need you. Because I can use you. Because we both have a chance to make our deaths count for something."

  Jacen explained that the "sacrifice" was a sham. It was nothing more than an excuse to get into what he called the Well of the World Brain. Ganner understood this "world brain" to be some kind of organic planetary master computer, shaped by the Yuuzhan Vong to manage the ecology of their re-created homeworld. Jacen had been racking his brains for weeks, trying to figure out a way to get inside the Well, which was some kind of reinforced bunker, a sort of impenetrable skull designed to protect the World Brain from any possible harm. The Yuuzhan Vong--especially Nom Anor, who was Jacen's control--hadn't let him anywhere near the place.

  They didn't entirely trust that Jacen's "conversion" was real.

  Ganner understood. He didn't entirely trust that it wasn't.

  "I've been waiting a long time for a chance to steal ten minutes alone in the Well of the World Brain. You, Ganner--your ‘sacrifice'--you're my key in the door to the Well. All I need is to get in there."

  "What's so important about this world brain? What are you going to do once you're in there?"

  Jacen stood very, very still; his face settled into an unbendable durasteel determination that was pure Skywalker "I am," he said with quiet, absolute conviction, "going to teach the Yuuzhan Vong a lesson about the way the universe actually works."

  A wave of chill shivered through Ganner then, as though some cold shadow had flowed into the Force. "I don't understand."

  "You don't have to. Repeat after me: ‘I have seen the Light of the True Way

  , and go to the Gods with joy in my heart, full of gratitude for Their Third Gift.'"

  "You must be crazy."

  Jacen nodded thoughtfully, as though he'd spent some time considering that possibility and had come to the conclusion that it could not be denied.

  "What makes you think I'd go along with this?"

  Jacen's durasteel stare fastened on Ganner. "I'm not asking, Ganner. I'm offering. I don't need your cooperation. Ten minutes after I walk through the door of the Well, we'll both be dead whether you play along or not."

  "So why should I?"

  Jacen shrugged. "Why shouldn't you?"

  "How do I know I can trust you? How do I know I shouldn't jump you right now?" Ganner shifted his weight onto the balls of his feet, reaching a balanced stance from where he could spring in any direction. "I know you're stronger now, Jacen--stronger than I've ever been. I felt it on the camp ship. I know you can kill me if you want. But I can make you kill me here."

  Jacen spread his hands. His face was blankly expectant. "Choose, and act."

  "Choose? What do you mean, choose?"

  "Choose to die here for nothing, or choose to die in the Well of the World Brain: where your death can change the galaxy."

  Ganner licked his lips. "But how am I supposed to decide? How do I know whether I can trust you?"

  "You don't." Jacen's face softened again, and a hint of the Solo half smile traced itself ruefully onto his lips. "Trust, Ganner, is always an act of faith."

  "Easy for you to say...!"

  "I guess it is. You want to see how much I trust you?" He reached again within his robe. When his hand came out, he opened it toward Ganner, offering.

  "Here." On his open palm balanced the handgrip of a lightsaber. Ganner blinked. He rubbed his eyes. When he looked again, it was still a lightsaber.

  "Take it," Jacen said. "Use it, if you must. Even if you choose to use it on me."

  "You're giving me your lightsaber?"

  Jacen shook his head. "It's not mine." He lifted his hand. "Go ahead. Take it."

  "So what is this? A fake? Another trick? Is it going to blow up in my hand?"

  "It's not a fake," Jacen said with a sadness so profound it could only be expressed with quiet, dry exactitude. "It's not a trick."

  For the third time, he extended the lightsaber toward Ganner. "It's Anakin's."

  "Anakin's...!" A sharp, hot thrill shot through Ganner's whole body, as though he'd been narrowly missed by a stroke of lightning. "How did you get Anakin's lightsaber?"

  "A friend kept it safe for me." Jacen squinted as though mildly surprised to hear those words come out of his mouth--then he nodded, reluctantly agreeing with himself. "A friend."

  Ganner could only stare, drop-jawed. Dazzled. Awed. "And you want to give it to me?"

  "You might need one. Since I destroyed yours." Ganner's hand shook as he took the lightsaber. It was warm in his hand, warm with Jacen's body heat, smooth and gleaming. He could feel its structure in the Force, could feel the way it fit together, the individuality of design that made it Anakin's. He could feel Anakin in the handle. And he could feel a gap: where his own lightsaber had held a Corusca gem, this one had only a void, an empty space in the Force--but to his eye and hand, the handgrip held a shining amethyst that seemed to flicker with its own interior light. He triggered the activator and the blade snarled out to full extension, brilliant, eye-burning, buzzing with a hum he could feel in his teeth. It lit the whole room with a vivid, unnatural purple glow.

  "What about you? Where's yours?"

  Jacen shook his head. "I haven't seen my lightsaber since Myrkr. For what I have to do, weapons are irrelevant."

  "But--but " A dull thudding penetrated one wall, a wall dominated by a huge knurled pucker like a pursed mouth carved from wood. Voices came thinly from outside, snarling in the guttural retching hacks of the Yuuzhan Vong tongue.

  "They're here," Jacen said. He nodded toward the lightsaber in Ganner's hand. "Better put that away. If they find it on you, they'll kill us both." A gently ironic smile quirked his lips. "I mean, they'll kill us both too soon."

  Ganner was floundering, choking on unreality. His dream had made a great deal more sense than did his waking. He waved Anakin's lightsaber as though he'd forgotten what it was. "You have to help me understand--!"

  "Just remember: ‘I have seen the Light of the True Way

  ,' "
Jacen repeated firmly, meaningfully, " ‘and I go to the Gods with joy in my heart, full of gratitude for Their Third Gift.' "

  As Ganner stood gaping helplessly, the puckered mouth on the wall suddenly yawned into a hatchway that opened on an enormous vaulted hall beyond. He jerked, nearly dropping Anakin's lightsaber in his haste to deactivate it and stuff it into one of his white robe's voluminous sleeves. The hall was full of scarified Yuuzhan Vong warriors standing rigidly at attention, weapons extended in present arms. Just beyond the opening stood a pair of nervous, sweating Yuuzhan Vong of a caste Ganner did not recognize. Both held leashes attached to reptilian creatures the size of banthas; the reptilian creatures crouched on their haunches while their taloned forelimbs forced the hatch sphincter to full dilation.

  Several steps farther in, a dozen or more impressively costumed Yuuzhan Vong, caparisoned in identically fantastic arrays of clothing that shone and shimmered and writhed with restless life, formed a half circle that framed two individuals. One of these wore the immense spiny headdress Ganner had heard was favored by shaper masters; the other wore a long black robe, and grinned a lipless, needle-toothed smile Ganner recognized from his dream.

  Nom Anor.

  Jacen faced them without the slightest appearance of concern. "What signifies this interruption?" he intoned, once more in the rolling-thunder mode of his Avatar-of-God voice. "How do you dare disturb Me as I share the Light?"

  Nom Anor stepped forward, and leaned close to Jacen to murmur, astonishingly, "Very good, Jacen Solo. You wear the mantle impressively." Then he stepped back, and said more loudly, so that those nearby could hear, "The monitor creatures suddenly lost consciousness. We were concerned. Is all well?"

  "Your concern is an insult," Jacen snapped with magnificent arrogance.

  Nom Anor's eyebrows quirked as though he struggled to suppress a smile, but the master shaper and the ring of fancy-dress Yuuzhan Vong--priestly caste, Ganner guessed--seemed to take him considerably more seriously. Several of them flinched openly.