"But that doesn't mean they won't continue to try."
Ngaaluh bowed her head. "This is true, Master. And I will stop them as best I can."
"How goes our plan?" Nom Anor asked, taking the opportunity to change the subject to one of immediate concern. "Have you inveigled yourself within the corridors of the intendant Ash'ett?"
"I have." She nodded, sending shadows across her angular features. "He is exactly as you said he was greedy and self-serving. He mouths platitudes to the old gods and curses the Jedi, but would follow neither, given the choice. He is his own creature."
His own creature, Nom Anor echoed to himself. They were well-chosen words, and would have served as a good description of himself, too, had she but known the truth.
"You agree, then, that he must fall?"
She nodded. "With him out of the way, there will be room for someone sympathetic to our cause. I will place the ones we have prepared in his staff, and guarantee his destruction."
"Excellent." He nodded sagely, inwardly crowing with delight. Prefect Ash'ett was an old rival, someone who had shown no compunction when it came to squashing those around him in order to advance himselfNom Anor among them. Like many of his old rivals, Ash'ett had risen to power on Yuuzhan'tar, taking territory and glory as the opportunities arose during the fall of the infidel empire. Such power should have been Nom Anor's. Ash'ett's time of reckoning was long overdue, and would come with interest.
"I have identified another unworthy," Nom Anor said. "When we are done here, we will move to Gileng, where a certain Drosh Khalii has grown fat on the profits of war for too long."
Ngaaluh nodded again, her eyes gleaming in the yellow lichen torch. If she was daunted by the thought of having another target to consider before this one had been eliminated, she didn't say.
"The hard work of revolution goes ever on," Nom Anor said.
"We are making progress, Master."
"Indeed." He resisted the urge to ask Where to? "Do you have anything else to report?"
"Yes, Master."
"Tell me, then," he said, offering Ngaaluh a slice of waxwood. The priestess accepted it but didn't place it in her mouth straight away.
"I hear whispers in the court, Master," she said.
"That is not uncommon. At any given time, there might be hundreds of rumors crossing the galaxy."
"The name of the Unknown Regions, as the Jeedai call them, recurs in these rumors. The missions they speak of, however, seem unrelated to the Chiss. Their focus is on something entirely different."
"Which is?"
"I'm not sure, Master. There are few details beyond what I have told you."
"Gossip," Nom Anor said, dismissing the news with a wave of his hand. "Idle chatter among the ruling classes as they seek to deflect blame from themselves. I've seen it a thousand times before."
"As have I, Master but these whispers persist. Something is afoot. The enemies of Shimrra are restless."
"Well, if so, perhaps we can use them to our advantage." Anything distracting Shimrra from the heretics was a potential boon.
Ngaaluh slipped a piece of the waxwood between her tattooed lips. "There is a rumor I heard from a very reliable source of a mission newly returned from the Unknown Regions. The mission had been gone an extremely long time, and its commander was surprised on his return to find that many of his commanding officers had been replaced."
Not surprising, Nom Anor thought. The life expectancy of the warriors decreased the closer one got to the top.
"Go on," he said, hoping the story would soon get interesting.
"The commander, one Ekh'm Val, sought an audience with the Supreme Overlord himself. He boasted of finding the lost world of Zonama Sekot."
"Zonama Sekot?" Nom Anor frowned. "But the living planet is nothing more than a legend."
"Not if this Ekh'm Val is to be believed."
"What happened when he spoke to Shimrra?"
"I don't know," Ngaaluh said, leaning in close, her eyes glittering. "That I haven't heard. Commander Val appears to have disappeared."
"Really?" Nom Anor was mildly intrigued now; he couldn't tell why Ngaaluh was telling him this, but the story was an interesting diversion. "Perhaps he was lying and paid the price for it."
"Perhaps," she conceded. "But the rumor persists. There may be truth behind it."
"Do you think it is important?"
"My instincts tell me to listen. The Jeedai teach that we should trust those instincts."
Nom Anor almost rolled his eye. "By all means listen, thenand report back to me if you learn anything of importance."
"Of course, Master. I am your obedient servant."
Ngaaluh smoothed her robe and waited for him to speak.
He took pity on her and tossed her a compliment as Shimrra might have tossed the yargh'un a heretic for a snack.
"You're doing excellent work, Ngaaluh. Your skill at deception is admirable."
Ngaaluh snorted. "It's all I can do to not cry out my rage against the atrocities that Shimrra commits upon the truth."
"Your perseverance does us all proud."
The priestess paused, turning the remaining waxwood between her callused fingers. "It is hard at times," she said.
"You should rest," Nom Anor said. Ngaaluh looked exhausted, physically as well as spiritually. He, too, felt the need for stillness. While nights, per se, might not have technically existed in the depths of Yuuzhan'tar, he still had to listen to his biological rhythms. "Go back to your chambers, before you're missed, and get some sleep."
Ngaaluh nodded and rose painfully to her feet. "Our struggle goes well. I have hope that we will achieve our goals soon."
He only nodded encouragingly, hiding his weariness behind a careworn smile. "Go, now, my friend."
Ngaaluh bowed again and left the room. Barely had she gone when a soft knocking issued from the door.
He sighed. "Yes?" he called, expecting it to be Kunra to advise him of the successful deployment of the fake heretics.
The guard outside opened the door to admit Shoon-mi. The Shamed One peered cautiously into the room.
"Forgive me, Master, for visiting you at this late hour."
Nom Anor irritably waved away his lackey's concern. "What is it?"
"I was wondering if there was anything I can get you, Master."
"If there was, don't you think I would have called you?"
Shoon-mi nodded as he took a step into the room. "It's just that you didn't call for your evening meal. I thought that"
"I wasn't hungry, Shoon-mi; it's as simple as that. I had work to attend to."
Shoon-mi executed a pious bow. "Forgive me, Master. I had only your well-being at heart."
"It's appreciated," he said. "But now I really must rest."
"As you wish, Master." Shoon-mi bowed a third time, and went to leave. As he was approaching the door, he turned back as though he had forgotten something. "I have taken the liberty of taking your masquer to have it refreshed."
"My masquer?" Nom Anor looked around at where it normally hung with the others on stalks by his bed. Sure enough, the skin and features of the Prophet were missing. "Very well. It was starting to look a little shabby. Good thinking, Shoon-mi."
"I shall have it returned to you in the morning, Master, in time for your first audience."
Fatigue rushed through Nom Anor at the thought of resuming his usual routine so soon. Being outside had reminded him of how far he had fallen. He may have risen on the back of the rising tide of heretics, but there was still a long way to go before he could walk freely in the natural world.
"I'm sorry, Master," Shoon-mi said. "I am babbling while you should be resting. Are you certain that there is nothing I can assist you with before you retire?"
Nom Anor shook his head, waving his religious adviser away. "I promise you that I will call should I need anything, Shoon-mi."
With that the Shamed One bowed one last time and left.
The door clicked shut again
, and Nom Anor threw th e heavy bolt across to ensure he had no more interruptions. Outside, he thought he could hear voices whispering Shoon-mi and Kunra, rapid and emphatic, as though arguingbut he didn't have the energy to listen in to the conversation. Let them fight among themselves, he thought, reclining on the bed with a chorus of creaking sinews. At least it keeps them occupied.
Exhaustion carried him quickly into sleep, and once there he dreamed of a man with a face more scarred than any he'd seen before, flayed and salted and left to fester. The nose was an open wound, and the mouth a jagged and lipless mess. Incongruously, two red mqaaq'it implants stared out at him from where eyes should have been, giving the visage an air of authority.
The image snarled at himand Nom Anor awoke to the realization that the face was his own reflection, but the eyes belonged to Shimrra. He shuddered on his narrow bed and pulled the covers tighter around him. Sleep, however, had fled, and he lay huddled in silence until dawn broke, far above, and duty once more called.
"Almost there," Han said, dipping the Falcon's nose a little deeper into the turbulent soup that was Esfandia's atmosphere. The freighter's chassis shuddered under the extra forces she was being asked to bear. She was riding the dense, frigid gases she encountered with all the grace of a ronto.
Leia clutched the sides of her rattling seat to prevent herself from being thrown to the floor, mentally keeping her fingers crossed the whole time. In the copilot's position, she did what she could to assist Han in the "splashdown," as he'd called it. She'd never entered such a dense atmosphere before, outside a gas giant. The situation was compounded by the fact that the heat of the Falcon alone tended to make the bitterly cold, liquid air explode in new and turbulent ways around them as they plummeted groundward, not to mention the various hot spots left by the Yuuzhan Vong bombardment. She doubted Esfandia had experienced such an input of energy for millennia.
"We're almost there." Han kept up the litany of small encouragements, although Leia suspected he was talking to the ship herself rather than her passengers.
They had made it past the Yuuzhan Vong fleet easily enough; in the heat of the moment, one battered old freighter feigning a death roll would never warrant too much attention. From there it was just a matter of getting under cover without displaying too many course changes.
"This is definitely one of your crazier ideas," Droma said from behind them, clutching both their seats for safety's sake. "If it's at all possible, you've actually become more reckless since last I saw you."
"I'm getting us through this, aren't I?" Han said, returning his attention to the task at hand.
"This far, yes," Droma said. He pointed to the viewport. "But that's a whole lot of murk to be lost in."
"We have a radar survey of the surface of the planet," Han said calmly. "It's not as if we're going to run into a mountain or anything."
"So all we have to do is find the station; is that it?"
Han looked back at the Ryn, obviously detecting his friend's sarcasm. "Something like that, yeah."
"Before someone sees the Falcon on their scanners and drops a bomb on us," Droma said.
"Or we lead them to the station ourselves," Leia added, following up on the Ryn's point. The Millennium Falcon's engines would stand out like a nova in the planet's cold atmosphere.
Han dismissed their concerns with a brief snort. "Look, all we have to do is release a couple of concussion missiles along the way. Their heat signatures will confuse the readings from orbit, right? Besides, the Vong mines have already stirred things up down here. Hot air rises, remember. Get us deep enough and the upper layers will cover us quite nicely."
"Are you sure?" Droma asked.
"I'd bet my life on it."
"And mine." The Ryn tooted mournfully. "That's the problem."
"Hey, trust me, okay?" The ship glided forward in silence for a few seconds before he added, "I know what I'm doing."
Leia clutched her seat even tighter, having heard those words from her husband all too often in the past. Han usually did know what he was doing, but the ride was rarely an easy one.
"Now," Han muttered, "where do you suppose we should start looking?"
Leia peered ahead and saw nothing but blackness. Through a low-light enhancement algorithm on the displays she saw a featureless orange fog. The radar map, taken on a quick pass before dropping into the soup, suggested they were crossing what resembled a vast arterial basin. But that wasn't possible; water had never flowed on Esfandia, except within the communications base. These icy depths knew no life and, should the bubble of hospitality within the Falcon be breached, it would kill them as soon as
Leia jumped as something loomed out of the darkness, visible only as a bright orange splotch on the enhanced display and shaped like a large, quivering flower. It was gone before she had a chance to make out exactly what it was.
"What was that?" Droma asked, sounding as startled as Leia had been.
"I don't know," Han said. "And I'm not about to go back to find out. " He arbitrarily set a reference grid over the barren landscape, steering the freighter across it. "There's a series of deep channels just east of here. I'm cutting our velocity and altitude to take a closer look. When we reach the edge, Leia, I want you to send out a missile to cover our tracks, okay?"
"How many concussion missiles do we have?" Droma asked. "It could take us forever to find this thing. "
Han shrugged. "It's a small world. "
"It's not that small. And remember, what makes it easier for us to find them makes it easier for the Yuuzhan Vong to find us. "
"Then we'd better get started, hadn't we?" Han said. He swung the Falcon over a steep rise, then flattened out. "Ready with that missile, sweetheart?"
Leia was. On the radar map ahead she saw a sharp drop approaching. Targeting the orange void behind her and putting the missile on a timer fuse, she let it fly just as the Falcon dipped her nose and dived deeper into the frigid atmosphere. The missile shot off into the distance, its boiling wake a gently curving arc leading nowhere.
Han hugged the canyon wall as closely as he could while they fell. Leia caught sight of two more of the odd flower-shaped objects whipping by and wondered what they might be. Pockets of gas? Crystal agglomerates? Clumps of the local equivalent of amoebas, perhaps? Whatever they were, they were exceedingly delicate. In the rear view she saw nothing but wisps left after the Falcon had passed, and the fierce burn of the freighter's engines soon evaporated even those.
The bottom of the canyon came with surprising suddenness. One moment they were diving nose-first, the next Han had swung the Falcon around level. There was little change to the forward view.
"Cutting main drive, " Han announced. His voice seemed unnecessarily loud in the almost deathly quiet of the cockpit. "Dropping back to repulsors. "
Leia kept her eyes on the sensors as the Falcon cruised through the depths, but there was little to see. The canyon floor was darker and more barren than before. The ambient temperature had risen, although it was still very cold. The surface of Esfandia was a strange and alien place that was unlikely to ever see the stars. Its stony ground could have been composed of frozen carbon dioxide, and was twisted into peculiar shapes that were so fragile that they would have probably been disturbed by a single ray of sunlight.
"Can anyone see anything out there?"
Han made a show of peering out the forward viewport, squinting as though this would somehow make the blackness outside easier to penetrate.
"Nothing, " Droma said softly. "How big is this base meant to be, anyway?"
"Fifty meters across, " Leia said, "not counting its legs. "
"So if it was here, it'd certainly stand out. We might not be able to see it, but we'd definitely get a solid ping off its hull. "
Leia nodded. "Even if it was buried, we'd spot it from up close. "
"Then I guess it's not here. " Han scrolled through the radar map. "At least not in this canyon. " His finger indicated a much larger network south o
f their present position. "I propose we surface and try this one here. Unless anyone has any better ideas. "
A sense of futility welled up inside Leia. She couldn't begin to imagine the number of possible hiding places there could be on Esfandia for something like a communications base. There were hundreds of canyons, and probably a thousand times more fissures it could have slipped into. They could search for months and not find it.
"Maybe we'll get lucky, " she said, more for her own sake than anyone else's.
"Hold it, " Droma said. She looked around to the Ryn, waiting for him to continue. His head was cocked in a manner suggesting that he was intently listening to some faint and far-off sound. "There's something... "
"What is it?" Leia pressed.
"Are we scanning comm frequencies?"
"Across the dial, " Han said. "Why?"
"Turn up the gain. Listen. "
When Han did as he was instructed, a faint whistling became audible. At first Leia thought it was just random noise, but a closer inspection revealed it to be chopped up into discrete fragments, almost like a-
"That sounds like a digital transmission, " Han said, finishing the thought for her.
"Could it be the base?" Leia asked, mystified.
"I'm not sure, " Han said. "I can't get a fix on it. The signal seems to be coming from several places at once. We must be getting echoes off the canyon walls. "
"It is a signal, though, right?" Droma asked.
Leia listened for a few seconds longer, then shrugged. "I don't recognize the protocol. Han?"
Han shook his head. "It's all Kubazian to me. Where's Goldenrod? He might be able to translate. "
"He shut himself down during the trip, " Droma said. "He's sitting there in the main hold with those Noghri bodyguards of yours. The three of them aren't really much for conversation, are they?"
"Well, don't just stand there jabbering, " Han said. "Make yourself useful and go wake him up. And don't feel the need to be too gentle, either. He should know better than to be snoozing at a time like this. "
On the contrary, Leia thought. The droid knew only too well that trouble would be awaiting them when they arrived at Esfandia. It invariably was. She couldn't blame him for wanting to opt out every now and then.
Star Wars - New Jedi Order - Force Heretic III - Reunion - Book 19 Page 9