by Greg Keyes
“Sorry about that,” she heard Prann say. “Sonics leave you with a terrible hangover without the benefit of ever having the fun.”
He was standing a meter away. The Toydarian stood across the room with a blaster trained on her.
“I hear Toydarians are more resistant than most species to Jedi mind tricks,” Prann said. “I hope we don’t have to test that. I’d like to see all of us walk out of this healthy.”
“Prann, what’s going on?” she managed. “Who are you really?”
“Oh, that name’s as good as any.”
“What are you, Peace Brigade?”
His eyebrows squinted together. “Colonel Solo,” he said, “now you’re hurting my feelings. That pathetic bunch of collaborationists? Hardly. I’m a liberator.”
“Of what?”
“Technology, actually.”
“Ah,” Jaina said. “You’re a thief and a smuggler.”
Prann shrugged his shoulders. “What I do is more like emergency salvage. I haven’t taken anything the Vong wouldn’t have destroyed anyway. Remember Duro? We got some good stuff there, in hit-and-run raids after New Republic forces pulled out. If we hadn’t it would have been wasted. The Vong sure weren’t going to use it.”
Her head was starting to clear. “So you came here after the Vong took Bilbringi?”
“Nope, this job was a little different. Most of my story was true—except that it was Vel, here, who discovered the missing station in the shipyard databanks. I’d heard a story that one of the Golans disappeared right before the New Republic forces invaded. A few of us got jobs in the shipyards, and Vel managed to slice into the old Imperial records.” He beamed. “One of the best slicers in the business.”
“Ah, just average,” the Toydarian replied. He didn’t take his gaze off Jaina.
“He’s very modest,” Prann added. “Anyhow, he found an old encryption that suggested the station had been cloaked—apparently Thrawn was keeping it in reserve as a little surprise, but when Thrawn died the station was lost, because he obviously didn’t share the information with his command structure. We were able to reckon a general sector and calculate for drift and then we sort of—um—borrowed a crystal grav-trap detector from the Bilbringi dry docks to find it. After that, the story is more or less the one I already told you.”
“So what do you want with me?” Jaina asked. “Why did you stun me?”
“Well, frankly, Colonel Solo, I don’t want anything from you, especially trouble. But I need to borrow some parts from your X-wing.”
“You can’t all escape in a single X-wing.”
“No, we can’t. We’re going to escape in the station itself.”
“Come again?” Jaina said. “I thought you said it isn’t equipped with hyperdrive.”
“No, I said Golans aren’t usually equipped with hyperdrive. This one wasn’t, either. But how do you think we were planning on salvaging a space station without the Bilbringi authorities noticing?”
“You brought your own drive,” Jaina realized.
“Yes. We almost had it installed when the Vong showed up and torched our transport. Unfortunately, the motivator was still on the transport. No motivator, no hyperdrive.” He held his palms out. “So—we’ve been waiting.”
“You can’t use an X-wing motivator to jump a station this size,” Jaina pointed out.
“No, but we can cobble one together from seven.”
Jaina jerked at the webbing. “Leave my squadron alone!”
“Hey, calm down,” Prann said. “They’re all okay. We hit them with ion beams, hauled them in with tractor beams, and stunned them with sonics. And that wasn’t easy—not with the Wookiee and that crazy Twi’lek. Look, I’m not trying to make any enemies, here.”
Jaina could only stare at him in the face of such an absurd statement.
“We were hoping you would all dock,” he continued, “and make the whole thing easier, but we’ve been working out contingencies for a while now. Not a lot else to do here, you know.”
“Look, Prann,” Jaina said, “General Antilles needs this battle station.”
Prann laughed. “I’m sorry, Colonel, but we’ve all invested a little too much in this baby to just hand it over to be destroyed. Do you know how much I can get for the cloaker alone? No, forget it. In a few hours we’ll be ready to jump. Meanwhile, we’ve put the cloak back on.”
“And what about me?”
“You’re a bit of a problem. I know enough about you to know that the longer I keep you around, the better the chance you’ll be able to use those Jedi powers of yours to—well, I don’t know, do I, and that’s the problem. On the other hand, I don’t want to kill Han Solo’s daughter. I mean, I respect the guy, and I know he’s already been through a lot.”
“You’re just afraid he would hunt you down and kill you,” Jaina said.
“Yeah, that, too. Look, I’m a businessman—this is business. Once we’ve got the hyperdrive working and jump out of here, we’ll put you all off someplace safe—with your starfighters. Okay?”
“No,” Jaina said, “not okay. Who are you going to sell your cloaker to, Prann? The Vong? Because they’re going to be the only ones around to buy it if you don’t help us here.”
“That’s a little dramatic, don’t you think?” Prann said. “I mean, there’s still plenty of market for this sort of thing in the Corporate Sector—heck, in lots of places. A small planetary government is what I’m looking for, one afraid they’ll soon need negotiating power. If this battle here goes sour, it’ll only make the market that much better.”
“Until there is no market,” Jaina snapped. “Until the Vong have everything, because Huttoads like you are still trying to make a profit rather than doing what they can to help us win.”
Prann’s smile vanished. “We sat out here for a year surrounded by Vong,” he said angrily, “in constant fear that they would find us. Sure, they can’t see us when we have the cloak on, but we can’t see them either. Every single time we pushed out the probe we all got the shakes. And who knew what the Vong have that might detect us at any second? Do you know what it’s like to be surrounded by that kind of pressure every day for a year and not be able to do a single thing about it?” His face was getting redder, and his voice was rising. “After what we’ve been through—sister, you can keep your platitudes. I’m taking this station, I’m selling it, and I’m going to take my share and retire to some little backwater so far away the Vong won’t reach it in my lifetime and sip cool drinks on a hot beach.”
“There’s no place that far away,” Jaina said.
“I’m willing to look,” Prann replied.
Jaina focused the Force on the Toydarian. “He’s crazy,” she told the Toydarian. “Stun him and help me out of this.”
The Toydarian blinked, looked briefly confused, and then laughed.
Prann smiled, too, his tirade apparently over. “So it’s true, then. Good. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to help get those motivators coupled together. Vel, I’ve changed my mind. Take her to fire control and watch her there. I can’t spare you just to be a guard during this. Just—keep an eye on things, and don’t let her talk to anyone.”
“I want to see my pilots,” Jaina said.
“After we’ve made the jump,” Prann told her. “Not before.”
With that he left the room.
TWENTY-SEVEN
“Nothing,” Corran grumbled, folding down to rest on a log. “I must have looked for ten kilometers in every direction, and there’s no sign of natives.”
“Maybe there aren’t that many,” Tahiri said, reaching up to pick an oblong fruit with a serrated corona of leaf at the top. They had dubbed it a pingpear, and it was one of the eight fruits that Nen Yim had identified as edible and nutritious. Since their food stores were limited, Corran had insisted that they eat native food when possible. The gathering expeditions also gave them an opportunity to talk away from the Yuuzhan Vong without leaving them too long unobserved.
“Or maybe we had the misfortune to crash in the one uninhabited region they have left,” Corran said. “It doesn’t matter—we can’t stay here forever. I’ve been trying to think of a way to attract the attention of that Imperial frigate, if nothing else.”
“Any thoughts on how to go about that?”
He nodded. “Yes. I’ll have to go to the one place I’ve been avoiding.”
“Oh. The giant hyperdrive.”
“Right.”
“Which you don’t want the Yuuzhan Vong to know is a giant hyperdrive because you’re afraid it will disillusion them somehow.”
“You get two marks,” Corran said. “But it’s the only sign of civilization around. There might be someone tending it. Failing that, there might be other things—a hyperwave, for instance, or even a subspace transceiver. And Harrar’s been after me to check it out, anyway.”
“How do you think he’ll react when he finds out what it is?”
“You tell me.”
She thought about that for a moment, trying to recall how she had felt when she’d gone to the top of the ridge a few days before.
She held up the pingpear. “It’s like discovering a perfect piece of fruit has a nasty worm in it—after you’ve already taken a few bites.”
Corran nodded. “That’s what I figured. Still, we have to do something, and I can’t imagine he’d let me go without him, not as curious as he’s been about it.”
“How far away do you think it is?”
“I eyeball it at about twenty klicks.”
“Yeah, that’s what I figured, too,” Tahiri said. “So when do we start?”
“We don’t,” Corran replied. “Harrar will go with me. I need you to stay and look after the other two.”
“Again? I’m sick of baby-sitting. Don’t you trust them yet? They’re completely moon-eyed over this place, both of them. Harrar is the one we ought to worry about.”
“I do worry about Harrar. That’s why I’m keeping an eye on him. But the other two—they’re still the enemy, Tahiri. No matter how well we seem to be getting along with them as individuals, we can’t lose sight of the fact that our goals might be quite different.”
“I understand that. It’s just that Nen Yim and the Prophet are boring. All they do is poke at bugs and twigs all day. Why don’t you let me go and you stay here, if you think someone has to?”
“Because this is how I want it, that’s why. Brush up on your meditation technique and practice your lightsaber footwork.”
“That’s all I’ve been doing for the past week.”
“Well, life is hard,” Corran said, more sarcastically than he needed to. “Sometimes you actually have to spend a week without going into battle. I’m sure you can handle it.”
“Yes, sir,” Tahiri replied, unenthusiastically. She felt a knot of hurt and resentment in her belly. Why was Corran treating her this way? Couldn’t he see it hurt?
“So Harrar and I will start in the morning,” he went on. “It shouldn’t take us more than a day or a day and a half of walking, but I can’t say how long it will be before I figure out if there’s anything useful there—maybe an hour, maybe days. I need you to stay alert here.”
“For what? Vicious fruit?”
Corran looked up, his eyes sharp. “I don’t know,” he said. “But the longer we’re here, the itchier I feel.”
“Maybe you’re bored, too.”
“It’s more than that. I’ve got a bad feeling about this whole deal. But there’s nothing I can do about it until I have some way to contact Luke.”
“If he’s still here.”
“I think he is. I get occasional glimpses.”
“So do I,” Tahiri said, “especially of Jacen. But the Force doesn’t care how far away they are. They could be back on Mon Calamari.”
“That’s not how it feels,” Corran said. “You’re going to have to trust I’ve learned a thing or two over the years.”
The angry tone startled her. “Corran, I know you’re a more experienced Jedi than I am.”
“Not the impression you give.”
“I’m sorry if I—” The knot, growing since she had first seen him again, exploded. She felt warmth on her face and realized to her utter shame that she was crying.
“Sometimes I don’t express myself very well, I think,” she said. “I mean, I’ve just integrated two personalities. I don’t have this all worked out yet.”
“Hey, easy,” Corran murmured. “I misunderstood you, that’s all.”
“No, no—Corran, you’re my hero. Ever since that time when you and Anakin and I—I thought we were friends, and then—” She stopped. She was just sounding stupid.
“Look, Tahiri—”
“I need more training,” she blurted out. “Special training. Can’t you see that? Why haven’t you ever offered—I mean you know so much more than I do …” She trailed off, both horrified and relieved that she had finally said it.
He just stared at her for a second. “I never imagined you wanted anything like that from me.”
“Well—” How could someone so smart be so stupid? “Why wouldn’t I? I need some sort of guidance, Corran. I might seem like I know what I’m doing, but I don’t.”
“I’m not a Master, Tahiri,” Corran said gently. “There are Masters who would be happy to train you.”
“You have half a chance of understanding me,” Tahiri said. “They don’t.”
“I think you’re selling them short.”
“Maybe.” She thrust her chin out defiantly. “Does that mean you don’t want me?”
“No,” Corran said. “But it’s not that simple. We’d have to ask Master Skywalker. And at the least it means you’ll stop talking back and do what I say. Do you understand that?”
“You mean you’ll take me on?”
“Provisionally, since there are no Masters around, and until I get Luke’s yes or no on the matter—if you agree to those conditions.”
She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “I agree, then.”
“Good. Then you stay here with Nen Yim and the Prophet. The end.”
“Okay.”
Nen Yim examined the thing she had grown. It was, to all appearances, a qahsa. The differences between it and the usual item were invisible to the naked eye. She reached for it, but the faint sound of approaching footsteps gave her pause.
It was the shaped Jedi, of course. She was never far from Nen Yim, always watching. It had been a source of irritation, at first, but now it seemed somehow less of a bother. The young human’s insights had proven valuable, and had even prompted this experiment.
“Hello,” the shaper said.
“You seem in a good mood,” Tahiri replied.
The corners of Nen Yim’s mouth turned up. “That may change in a moment. I’m about to try something new. It will probably fail.”
“Is it dangerous?”
“I don’t see how it could be, but anything is possible.”
“Maybe you should wait until Corran and Harrar get back,” Tahiri suggested.
“They only left a few hours ago,” Nen Yim said. “They could be gone indefinitely. I think this should be safe.”
Tahiri turned a curious eye toward the experiment. “What is it, exactly? It looks like a qahsa.”
“It is, so far as it goes. But I grew it with modifications.”
The Jedi sat cross-legged near her. “What sort of modifications?”
“Your talk of the Force binding the life of this world and serving as its means of intercommunication interested me. And yet, since Yuuzhan Vong life does not appear in the Force, I could think of no way to test that possibility. However, it occurred to me that if the ecosystem of this world is truly self-regulating, it must have some sort of memory—it needs to know what happened yesterday and last cycle to plan for tomorrow. Furthermore, that memory must be shared somehow by all of its constituents.”
“I’m with you so far.”
Nen Yim indicated a
ten-legged arthropod she had enclosed in a nurturing membrane. “Even if the memory were stored at a molecular level, a creature this size could not possibly carry enough to be useful, so I reason the planet’s central memory core lies elsewhere, but that any living thing—even a cell—must be able to contact it, perhaps through this Force of yours.”
“Interesting. And you’ve found a way to test that?”
“I think so.” She glanced up at the young Jedi. “To explain, I may have to speak of things that will upset you.”
Tahiri’s eyes narrowed. “This concerns my own shaping, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“Go on.”
“There is a protocol—the protocol of Qah—which is used to integrate manufactured or borrowed memories into the brain tissue of Yuuzhan Vong life. We use it often, mostly for rather mundane purposes—teaching ships to fly, for instance. But we also use it at times to enhance our own memories, to gain skills or knowledge without having to learn them. In the past, on rare occasions, we’ve used the protocol to replace entire personalities.”
“Which is what you tried to do to me.”
“Exactly. But the protocol of Qah did not work on your human tissues, naturally—Yuuzhan Vong and human tissue are not sufficiently compatible for that. So instead we used your own brain cells to create a sort of human Qah cell, but filled with Yuuzhan Vong information. It was a hybrid cell.”
“And that worked,” Tahiri said.
“Correct,” Nen Yim said. “In terms of your brain tissue, you are quite literally half Yuuzhan Vong. We did not implant merely memories, but also the cells that carried them.”
Tahiri’s eyes narrowed. Nen Yim had learned that was a sign of danger.
“Do you want me to stop?” she asked.
“No. I mean, yes, but it’s like picking a scab. In fact, there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.”
“I attend,” Nen Yim said, cautiously.
“I need to know—was there a real Riina?”
Nen Yim blinked. What an interesting question—but of course she would be curious about that. “I’m sure there must have been,” she said. “The name was probably changed—names are easy to change—but the details of your childhood undoubtedly came from a real person. Such memories might be generated, I suppose, but there would be no reason to when they could be donated by any living Yuuzhan Vong.”