The Final Prophecy: Edge of Victory III

by Greg Keyes

  “Thank you,” she said.

  Han crossed his arms and puffed out a breath of air. “Well, fine—then we’re going, too.”

  “We’d rather have you here, in reserve, when we start the new action,” Kenth said.

  Han’s brow wrinkled in consternation and Tahiri felt a sudden new ambivalence. Whatever was coming up, Jaina would probably be involved. Would Han want to be away, in unfamiliar territory, protecting her, when his own daughter might need him?

  But he was Han, and he’d already started. “Hey,” he said to Kenth. “Don’t start thinking I’m regular military. If Corran won’t go—”

  “Oh, space it,” Corran said. “I’ll go. Now, let’s see this ship we’re going to use.”

  PART TWO

  PASSAGE

  TEN

  “I’ve got blips on the horizon,” Corran muttered.

  “I see them,” Tahiri said, her heart sinking slightly. Everything had gone fine, up until now. The holes in Yuuzhan’tar’s planetary defenses had been where they were supposed to be. They had come through the upper atmosphere fine. Corran hadn’t even complained about her flying. But now, just when they were almost there, trouble came hunting like a qhal.

  “They haven’t seen us yet,” she told him. “They’re atmospheric fliers—they don’t have the legs we do.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Corran said. “The minute they figure out something is bogus, this mission is over. And you’re coming in way too steep.”

  “I know,” Tahiri said. She could feel the yorik coral hull of the ship beginning to blister. She straightened out infinitesimally, but that sent them bouncing violently across a thermal boundary.

  “I thought you knew how to fly these things,” Corran grunted.

  “I do,” she said, feeling her irritation grow. “You want to avoid our blip friends, don’t you? That means coming to ground fast, before they come in range to scent us out.”

  “They’re going to see us,” Corran said. “Because we’re going to burn like a meteor if you don’t slow up.”

  “All the better,” Tahiri said. “You saw the system chart. There must have been half a billion satellites in orbit around Coruscant. Without anyone to maintain them, they must fall by the dozens every day.”

  “Good point,” Corran conceded. “They won’t notice us as we disintegrate.”

  “Right.”

  “We’re only ten klicks from the ground now.”

  Tahiri nodded. “Hang on, and hope the dovin basals in this thing are healthy.”

  She nosed up ever so slightly, and now her goal came in sight—Coruscant’s single sea. It didn’t look like the holos she’d seen. There, it had been a sapphire in a silver setting, an artificial bathing pool on a planetary scale. Now it was a vast jade bezeled in a landscape of rust and verdigris.

  The fliers were almost in range.

  “This is going to be really, really close,” she told Corran.

  “Great,” Corran said, teeth gritted.

  “From what I’ve heard, you’ve done crazier things than this,” Tahiri said.

  “Yes. Me. I’m a highly trained pilot. You’ve flown, what, three times?”

  “The controls are yours if you want them.”

  The controls, of course, consisted of a cognition hood that fit on Tahiri’s head. She guided the ship by becoming a part of it. A non–Yuuzhan Vong could fly one—Jaina had proven that—but it helped to have the language and the instincts.

  And her instincts told her she couldn’t wait any longer or Corran really was going to have cause for complaint. She cut in the dovin basals, pushing them away from the planet, killing their velocity. She nudged the applied force up quickly, so quickly that the living gravitic drives couldn’t also fully compensate for the g’s they were pulling. She felt her weight double, then triple, and the blood in her brain started looking for a way out of her toes.

  Hang on, she thought. Hang on.

  Blotches of darkness filled her vision, and her chest felt like a bantha was sitting on it. She saw the blips coming into range, entering—

  Then the lozenge-shaped craft hit the water and skipped like a stone. Everything went crazy for a moment. She didn’t quite black out, but the ship’s pain jammed through her own thoroughly confused senses. She growled, then howled.

  When it all made sense again she saw green.

  They were sinking.

  “Well,” Corran said. “That was—interesting. Are you okay?”

  “Yeah. Now let’s see if it was worth it.”

  The blips—or, rather, the projected symbols that represented the approaching craft—continued to get closer.

  Something in the ship creaked as they continued to sink.

  “I wonder how deep it is here,” Corran mused.

  “Not too deep, I hope,” Tahiri said. “If I use the drive with them this close, they’ll notice. The hull should be able to take a good bit of pressure.”

  The blips were right overhead, now, and they suddenly broke their pattern.

  “Not good,” Corran said.

  “Khapet,” Tahiri snarled. She’d screwed up. Now they would have to fight, run, and hope to make it to a safe place to jump to hyperspace before they were overwhelmed. Nice going, Tahiri. Prove to Corran you really are the stupid little girl he remembers.

  “They’re going,” Corran breathed. “They must have just been investigating the splash. Or the burn trail.” He nodded. “Good call. I don’t want to do it again anytime soon, but …”

  “That’s two of us,” Tahiri said, sighing and watching the fliers continue on their patrol.

  Somewhere, something cracked. It sounded like ceramic breaking.

  “Okay,” she said. “Let’s just ease us up a little.”

  “Do that,” Corran said, “but don’t surface—wait, how well can this thing work underwater?”

  “Well enough. Unless I have to use voids.”

  “Yes, let’s not do that,” Corran said. “Can you disable the function?”

  “Sure. But why?”

  Corran tapped his datapad and pulled up a chart.

  “The Western Sea is like any sea—it’s fed by rivers. But because Coruscant is Coruscant, the rivers are artificial. Big pipes, to be exact. If we take this one”—he indicated a spot on the chart—“it will get us pretty close to where we’re going.”

  “Assuming the tubes are still there,” Tahiri said. “Yuuzhan’ tar isn’t Coruscant.”

  “It’s worth a look,” Corran said. “Anything that will keep us below the level of detection—and between what Jacen and our best intelligence tells us, they don’t have very secure control of a lot of the old underground. That’s why our Prophet is there, presumably.”

  “It’s not the way he told us to come.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Corran said. “Which gives it another mark, as far as I’m concerned.”

  Tahiri nodded and changed her heading. “I hope we don’t bump into anything,” she said. “I can only see ten meters or so.”

  “Just go slowly. We’re not in a hurry anymore—the rendezvous is hours away.”

  They found the river, a mammoth tube whose diameter the ship’s radar analog suggested was a hundred meters or so. Tahiri kept them centered in it, and worked her way slowly up its length.

  “That’s funny,” she said, after a few minutes.

  “Funny ha-ha or funny we’re about to die?”

  “Odd. What were these tubes made of?”

  “Duracrete, mostly. Why?”

  “That’s what the sensor signature was like when we started in. But it’s changed, now.”

  “Changed how?”

  “It’s irregular.”

  “Maybe it’s decomposing,” Corran suggested.

  “And not metal,” she added.

  “Let me guess. It’s alive.”

  “Probably.”

  Corran scratched his beard. “The Yuuzhan Vong must be replacing the abiotic drainage systems with biotic ones.
That would be typical.”

  “Yes.”

  “How far back was the boundary? How long have we been in this new part?”

  “We just passed it. We’re only a few tens of meters in.”

  “Right,” Corran said. “Back up. I want to think about this for a moment.”

  Tahiri shrugged. “You’re in charge.”

  “Yes, I am. I was wondering if you knew that.”

  It didn’t quite sound like he was kidding.

  Tahiri reversed direction until they were back in the old tunnel.

  “What would they be using in place of the old pipe?” Corran asked. “Were we about to swim up the gut of a giant worm?”

  Tahiri considered. “I’m not really sure,” she said. “The shaper damuteks have succession pools in their centers. Waste goes into them to be purified, and they have roots that go down into the planet to draw up water and minerals.”

  Corran nodded. “I remember hearing that Anakin crawled down through one of those ‘roots’ so he could hide in subterranean caves long enough to build a new lightsaber.”

  “Yes, he did.”

  “And you think the Yuuzhan Vong are converting the Western Sea into a huge succession pool?”

  “Maybe. Or it might be more like a ship’s maw luur. It’s the same idea—a combination nutrient bank and sewage treatment plant—but the technology is a little different because a ship’s maw luur is a closed system. Here, I’m not sure which they would use—but in a lot of ways, Coruscant was more like a worldship than a normal planet, right? No natural ecosystem?”

  “Yes. In fact, the Western Sea served something of the purpose you describe anyway.”

  “Sure. So while they’re still deconstructing the place, maybe their interim design is based more on worldship than planet.”

  “Makes sense. So if this is a big maw luur, we’re—” His eyes widened. “Get us out, now.”

  Tahiri gave the command, and the dovin basals quivered to life. They began moving back toward the entrance.

  “New plan,” Corran said. “I’ve no intention of going up a world-sized digestive tract.”

  “I hate to say this,” Tahiri said, “but that revelation—”

  Something slammed into the ship, hard.

  “—may have come a little late.”

  “What is it?” Corran said.

  “Something big,” Tahiri said. “We’re inside it.”

  “Well get us outside it!”

  “I’m trying, but it must have ten times our mass.”

  Her skin suddenly began burning. “Uh-oh,” she muttered. “It can digest yorik coral, whatever it is.”

  “Part of the maw luur?”

  “There are symbiotic organisms in a maw luur that help break down larger things. Nothing this big, though.”

  “But this is a really big maw luur,” Corran said. “Digesting really big things.”

  “True,” Tahiri replied. “Anyway, if you’ve got any suggestions on what to do here—”

  “Fire the plasma cannon.”

  “In an enclosed space?” Was Corran crazy? “That could be bad.”

  “So could being digested.”

  “Right.”

  She bit back a shriek as plasma ejected into the water and brought it instantly to boiling, scalding and compressing her hull. The pressure and heat mounted, peaked—and then they were tumbling free. When they finally stabilized, the water in the eyelamps had gone dark blackish red, and nasty chunks of pulverized meat floated all around them.

  “Well, that was disgusting,” Corran said.

  “Yes,” Tahiri informed him. “And this tube is sucking.”

  “I agree. So let’s get out of it.”

  “No,” she said, trying to remain calm. “I mean it’s sucking us up it—capillary action, probably, like the roots of a succession pool.”

  “Surely not too hard to counteract with the dovin basals?”

  “Not at all,” Tahiri replied. “If, that is, the dovin basals were working.”

  ELEVEN

  “The dovin basal is dead?” Corran asked.

  “Not dead,” Tahiri said. “But it’s badly damaged. I’m trying to coax something out of it, but it’s sort of in shock right now.” Of course, it could also be dying, but she kept that thought to herself.

  “We’re going faster,” she said, instead. “Whatever’s pulling at the other end of this tube is increasing its draw.”

  “How fast?” Corran asked. His voice was maddeningly calm now. Did he think this was her fault?

  “Only about sixty klicks a minute,” she said.

  “That’s fast, when you don’t have anything to damp inertia, which I’m guessing we don’t right now. If we hit something at this speed …”

  “Like another predator?”

  “I’m thinking more along the lines of a full stop,” Corran said, punching at the datapad. “This tunnel is going to split eventually, and again, and again—little rivers flowing into the big one, streams into the rivers, sewers into the streams—eventually we’re going to hit tubes too small to go through.”

  “That was going to happen anyway,” she pointed out. “You must have had some plan for us to exit this thing in the first place.”

  “That sort of assumed we were going to be under power,” Corran said wryly.

  “We may have some power. I’m starting to feel something in the dovin basal.”

  “It’s coming back on-line?”

  “It’s a living thing. It can’t go on- and off-line.”

  “Fine. It’s coming around?”

  “Somewhat. I might be able to nudge it into responding, but it won’t be able to keep it up for long, so I’ll need to pick my moment. Or moments—I think short bursts of power would be okay.”

  Corran frowned down at his chart. “Originally, there was a nexus up here where six smaller tubes branch off. It’s probably coming up fast. If you can take the third from your left, do it.”

  Almost as he said it, they burst into a flattened sphere full of water. Something black with a lot of tentacles went whipping by them, furiously fighting the current. Tahiri bit her lip, trying to interpret the ship’s failing senses through the murk.

  “One, two, three—it might be four,” she muttered. “There’s not time for a better count.”

  She sent a gentle command to the dovin basal, which quivered and then reached out. It didn’t take much—just enough to divert them into the right stream.

  “I think I did it,” she said.

  “Good,” Corran said, “now—”

  “No!” Tahiri yelped. The rim of the tube loomed.

  A sudden shock nearly tore them from their crash couches, and an unholy shriek of impact filled the cabin. A series of lesser shocks followed as the ship rattled down the smaller tube, turning end over end.

  Tahiri’s stomach churned, and her last meal made a good try at escaping its intended fate.

  “Sorry about that,” she managed.

  “Can you get this tumble under control?” Corran asked.

  “I could,” she said, “but I really like tumbling.” Didn’t he think she was trying? “What’s our next turn?” she asked.

  “The next node, we take the second from the right.”

  The dovin basal was starting to come out of its funk, though Tahiri could tell it was very weak. They couldn’t fight the current, but her control of their forward motion improved. They made the next turn without clipping anything, and the next. The tube had narrowed so much that they had only a few meters’ clearance.

  “This is almost it,” Corran said. “The next intersection used to be a cooling tower. We should be able to go up into the water jacket. We can park the ship there and go the rest of the way on foot.”

  “Let’s just hope they haven’t replaced the cooling tower with, I don’t know, a lorqh membrane,” Tahiri said.

  “Don’t tell me what that is, okay?” Corran said.

  A few moments later, the ship bobbed to
the surface in a large, open area. Tahiri made out a flat, sturdy-looking surface a tier above, and gently coaxed the ship up to it.

  “Well done,” Corran said.

  “Thank you. Are we where you thought we were?”

  Corran studied the chart. “Yep. From here, we can find access tunnels to the place we were supposed to meet this Prophet. All we have to do now is find him, bring him back here, and do all that in reverse.”

  Tahiri sighed. “And find another ship. I don’t think we can even make orbit in this one, much less a hyperspace jump.”

  Corran’s jaw clamped, then he shrugged. “Well, we’ve stolen ships before. We can do it again.”

  But she could tell he was worried. The quipping was to set her at ease, because he still thought she was a kid.

  “Fight what’s in front of you,” she said. “Let’s go find out more about this Prophet.”

  * * *

  “Can’t say the Vong have improved much on this,” Corran remarked, as they wound their way through the dark caverns that had once been Coruscant’s underworld. Now it was a mass of corroding metal, strange, pale growths, and luminescent lichen. It looked as if it had been abandoned for centuries rather than months. Despite the setbacks Jacen had engineered with the dhuryam—the World Brain—the Yuuzhan Vong shapers seemed to be making headway.

  “Of course, it was never exactly homey down here,” he added.

  “Yuuzhan Vong,” Tahiri corrected. “Did people live here back in the old days?”

  “Lots,” Corran said. “The vast majority of people who lived on Coruscant weren’t what you would exactly call comfortable.”

  Tahiri shivered. “I can’t imagine living like this, below-ground, surrounded by metal, no sky, no stars.”

  “Is that Tahiri or Riina talking?”

  There was something subtly testing in his voice. “Neither one of them would have liked this,” she said. “Tahiri grew up in the desert and in the jungles of Yavin Four. Riina grew up in a worldship. Both were surrounded by life.”

  “Riina didn’t grow up anywhere,” Corran said. “Riina was created in a laboratory.”

  “You think that makes a difference?” she asked, stung. “How do you know all your memories are real? If you found out your memories of Mirax were implanted, that there was no such person, would she be any less real to you?”