Again he let his words trail off, sentence unfinished.
Saba felt in Master Skywalker all the weariness of a man who had fought his own fatherand a tempting journey to the dark sidefor most of his life, and she understood. Sometimes the moment demanded too much of even the greatest hunter.
"War narrows our choices," Master Cilghal finished for him.
"Yes," Luke said. "Yes, it does."
Movement through the cramped tunnel was difficult, and made doubly so by the presence of the nutrient vines and cloning pods that were impeding her progress. But she kept going regardless of how hopeless she felt her situation was. She attacked the vines and pods falling around her with a vigor generated from desperation and fear. No matter what she did, though, they kept coming at herthey kept growing around her!
Breaking free of the restrictive passage, she risked a glance back into the dark mouth from which she had just emerged. The vines and pods continued to pulsate steadily, contracting and expanding like a fleshy sphincter. The fine ash pumping from the cave reminded her of blood cells, swirling around her in an almost threatening manner and carrying with it the terrible stench of burning flesha smell that served to remind her of what she was running from.
She fleetingly wondered if her stalkers had been caught in the tangle of vines in the tunnel; but it wasn't so much a serious thought as a hopeand an empty one at that. The thing with her face would chase her until its last dying breath, and the thing chasing it would never stop. The lizardine god-figure was hot on both their heels. She would never be able to face the two of them. Exhaustion wheezed in her chest with every breath she took. Until she found a chance to collect her strength, confronting these nameless horrors was an inconceivable option.
She urged herself away from the tunnel mouth, but found only darkness ahead. Taking tentative steps forward, she waved aside the ash that was getting into her eyes and mouth. She wanted to run, but without being able to see where she was going, it was too risky. Her footsteps vanished into the void, sucked away with the light. She stopped and peered ahead. It was only then that she noticed patches in the shadows that were actually darker than othersthat there were degrees of blackness. When her eyes had adjusted fully, she could see more clearly the cavernous space she was in.
It was tall, with massive arches at either end and small alcoves lining the walls to either side of her, only meters away. From these she thought she could make out movement, like that of beasts shifting in their lair. She looked around her with nervous wonder. It all seemed terribly familiar, in a claustrophobic sort of way.
Before she could isolate the memory, though, the snout of one of the beasts emerged from the shadows, the rest of its lithe body following. She sucked in air, coughing on the ash that went into her throat, as the creature passed by close to her face, the eye on the side of its head glaring out of the dark, examining her as it swept by.
A voxyn, she was sureand all alcoves around her were filled with them!
Her heart beat faster at the thought. As though in sympathy, the vines and pods in the tunnel behind her beat faster also, forcing out even more of the foul-smelling ash into the cavern.
She edged back from where she felt the voxyn to be, bumping into a ladder as she did so. Unable to go forward or back, she began to climb it. Her progress was hampered by the swirling ash, but the higher she climbed, the easier it seemed to become.
If I can climb high enough, she thought, / will be free. She noticed as she climbed that the walls of the cavern began to glow from the lichen covering them. Dimly at first, but with each rung the luminosity of the lichen intensified, until it became so bright that everything below her was lost to the glare.
Was she safe now? she wondered. Was she finally free? Her silent queries were answered by the ladder vibrating under her fingertips as the thing with her face began to climb after her. She forced back the tears of frustration and continued to ascend; there was no choice now but to go up and out. She climbed higher and higher, until the ash that was blowing about her face was no longer gray ash at all it had become white, like snow.
She stretched out her tongue to collect some of the flakes, wanting its wetness to sate her growing thirst. But she winced and spat at the terrible taste. This wasn't snow; it was too dry. This was dust!
Her tears flowed unchecked as she continued her climb, disappointment gnawing at her heart. Disappointment quickly turned to terror, however, when the ladder shook again. The reptilian statue had begun its own ascent, roaring out its anger to those above. But there was something new about its roar that made her hesitate . ..
She hung there with arms wrapped tightly about the coarse wood of the ladder, listening as the reptile bellowed again. This time she realized it wasn't just a vague and angry roar as she'd first imagined it to be; it was something much more than that. This creature was crying out a single word over and over again.
Its howls echoed throughout the dusty cavern, and the ladder she stood on trembled from its bellows. The roar sounded as though its voice had been slowed a thousand times, until it became almost totally unintelligible. But the more intently she listened, the clearer it seemed to become, until she had no doubt whatsoever of what the creature was saying.
It wasn't a word. It was a name.
"Tahiri," it called out to her, its tone tugging at her heart and the guilt she carried. "Tahiri .. . Tahiri ... Tahiri..."
Tahiri woke to the sound of someone screaming, realizing only when she found herself being restrained that it was, in fact, herself.
She felt something cool and scented being pressed against her forehead. Pushing the hand holding it aside, she tried to roll away, but restraints across her chest held her in place. Nevertheless, they didn't stop her from trying to wriggle freeeven when a second hand joined the first, pushing her shoulders firmly back onto the bed. She desperately scrabbled at her side for her lightsaber, only to find it gone. Besides which, the hands were simply too strong. She would never have had the chance to use it even if it had been there.
"Sith spawn!" she shouted at her assailants. "Let me go!"
"Tahiri!" Beneath the whip crack of command to the voice, there was something unmistakably familiar to it. She stopped fighting for a moment, trying to make out the figure standing over her, all but blurred through her tears. It couldn't be, could it? "Calm down, please!"
"Jacen?" The fight drained out of her like air from a punctured balloon, and she sagged back into the soft mattress, sobbing. "Oh, Jacen, I'm so sorry. II didn't know it was you. I thought it was"
"It's okay," he said, his tone warm and reassuring. "Just let it out. Don't keep it inside where it can hurt you."
She frowned at him as he came slowly into focus. His words left her feeling oddly naked. "What do you mean?" she asked, wiping at her eyes with the backs of her hands.
"Bottling things up," he explained. "It doesn't help anyone. Trust me. I should know."
He smiled, but she found it difficult to reciprocate the gesture. The residue of the dream still lingered in her thoughts.
She sat up, this time finding no resistance from either Jacen or the restraints. "You feeling any better?" he asked. She wasn't, not really, but she didn't want to seem ungrateful. "I'll be fine," she said. "Thanks."
"You're welcome," he said, reaching behind her to ease the back of the bed up. It was only then that she looked around and recognized where she was.
Despite the absence of the usual sensors or equipment, there was no mistaking the small, circular room as belonging to a medical ward. The smell of sopor-moss lingered about her, despite the wide-open viewport off to her left that admitted the fresh air blowing off the Cala-marian seas outside. There was a functional edge to the room's walls and furniture. Also, her own clothes were gone, replaced by a drab hospital smock. A thin sheet covered her on the bed.
"What am I doing here?" she asked, rubbing her hands across the bandages on her arms.
"You blacked out."
Jacen sat
on the edge of the bed beside her, his own hands coming over hers to stop her self-conscious movements. Even though he didn't say anything, the message was obvious she shouldn't worry about what was hidden there, yet.
"The medics found you in the Water's Edge market," he said.
She concentrated for a moment, staring at the folds in her sheet. She remembered contacting Jaina, remembered the uncontrollable panic that had disoriented her following the dream of the Yuuzhan Vong cemetery. Then she had found herself in the cavern where the voxyn lay hidden ...
She shuddered at the memory. "What's wrong with me?" she asked, looking up at Jacen.
"It's a bit of a mystery, actually," he said. "They can't find anything."
His brown eyes were searching hers. She looked away, not sure if she was relieved or disappointed.
"I guess I must have just fainted, then."
"You've been unconscious for fifteen standard hours, Tahiri," he said. "You didn't just faint."
"I-I've not been sleeping well lately," she lied, looking away.
Fifteen hours? This was the worst episode yet. Maybe it would be for the best, she thought, if the truth finally came out. Even though she wanted to, however, she found she couldn't bring herself to say the words.
He'd hate me if he knew, she thought. They would all hate me! "Tahiri?"
She looked up again. "I'm sorry," she said. "I don't know what's happening to me." That, at least, was partly true.
"That's okay," he reassured her. "I'm sure Master Cil-ghal will work it out sooner or later." "I'm sorry to have been a burden, Jacen." "You're not," he said. "Coming here to keep an eye on you was a good excuse to get out of some tedious meetings I'm supposed to attend. Besides, it gave me a chance to get a little bit of shut-eye myself. Things have been pretty hectic these last couple of days."
He did look tired, she noted. There were lines around his eyes that she hadn't noticed the last time she had seen him. But how long ago was that? After his return from Coruscant? During the battle at Ebaq 9? It dismayed her to realize that she couldn't remember just when that had been. In recent weeksmonths, perhapsher life had become a blur.
"Where's Jaina?" she asked. "Sleeping. She said to say hi when you woke up." Disappointed, Tahiri nodded and looked down at her folded hands, She didn't know why she wanted to talk to Jaina so badly, or what she would say when she did. That she was sorry she hadn't been able to save Anakin the way he had saved her? That she missed him as much as
Jaina did? No, what she wanted to say, what she needed to say, could never be saidnot to Jaina, not to anyone.
She looked again to her arms, wondering at the wounds underneath the bandages. She remembered doing it to herself, remembered seeing herself do it, but she had been unable to stop herself.
She closed her eyes, wanting to shut out the thought. But it was impossible. The thoughts were always with her these days, waking or sleeping.
"Is Master Luke angry at me for missing the meeting of the Jedi?" she asked.
"No, of course not," he said, laughing lightly. "Uncle Luke isn't the sort to get angry about stuff like that. Trust me, he's more concerned about your well-being. Actually, he had been hoping to take you along on this new mission with us. He thought you could use some time away from all the action. But given your condition, it was decided that perhaps it would be best if you rested some more."
"Mission?" she asked, the beginnings of dismay creeping into her voice. "What mission?"
"We're looking for something," he said. "I don't know how long it will take usor even where we're going, for that matterbut I do know it's something we have to do. If we don't, we could end up losing the wareven if we end up beating the Yuuzhan Vong."
She frowned. "That doesn't make sense."
"It depends on how you look at it," he said.
"And how do you look at it, Jacen?"
"Honestly?"
She nodded.
"Well, personally I think the worst thing we could do would be to wipe out the Yuuzhan Vong."
Her frown deepened at this. "Why?"
Jacen stood, running a hand through his shaggy brown hair. "We already know that they'll never give up," he explained, moving around the bed. "They'll just keep fighting until they're all dead. But when they're gone, where does that leave us? I don't know about you, Tahiri, but I don't particularly want genocide on my conscience."
She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could, he went on.
"I know what you're probably thinking if the Yuuzhan Vong don't register in the Force, then why should we care if we wiped them out? But I don't think it's that simple, Tahiri. The Force isn't just about what happens to living things; it's also about what living things do to one another. No matter how you look at it, if we win by military means alone, then we'll end up committing an atrocity, and there's no way I can explain such an action without resorting to the dark side. I refuse to accept that there is no alternative."
She stared at him, taken by the passion in his voice. This was a Jacen she had never seen before. Committed and sure of himself, he was no longer the teenager she had come to know. His experiences on Coruscant had changed him. He was so much more the adult now.
"Do you remember Vergere?" he asked after a few moments' silence.
"Of course." The change in subject puzzled her.
"She told me something before she died." There was a slight deepening of the lines around his eyes as he spoke, and his hands fiddled with the railing at the foot of the bed. "She told me about a place she once visitedlong before you or I were ever born, Tahiri. It was a world unlike any other in the galaxy. The people who lived there had a reputation for building starships. But not just any starships. These were without equalstarships that could outperform anything built even today. She was sent by the Jedi Council on a mission to find the shipbuilders, even though there were those who thought the planet little more than a myth. She was successful she found the planet and its inhabitants; she saw the marvelous starships in operationand many other things, for that matter, things the likes of which no one had ever dreamed possible. It had jungles and vast forests; but they were not shunted aside or eaten away in the name of industry. This was a world in balance."
His eyes gleamed with the wonder of this secondhand vision.
"Vergere fell in love with the place," he went on, "rejoicing in its jungles, its many forms of life, the way it seemed to her to be a living hymn to the Force. But she failed to guess the truth underlying what she sawat first, anyway, even though it had been under her nose right from the beginning. The thing about those starships made on the planet, the thing that made them really special, is that they were alive."
Tahiri's eyes narrowed. "Like the Yuuzhan Vong ships?"
He nodded. "These were DO ordinary ships, Tahiri," he said. "They lived and breathed and died just like any other being. They were alive like you and me, like any living thing. And so was the planet that made them."
"The planet?" she started, incredulously. If it hadn't been Jacen telling her all this, and had he not been so earnest in his telling, she might have laughed the whole thing off as a joke. But he was serious; this was real.
"Its name was Zonama Sekot," he said. "It was a living being in its own right, one of the most wondrous things this galaxy has ever produced."
Tahiri felt a strange tingling sensation go through her. " 'Was'?" she echoed.
"Not long after Vergere arrived, aliens came and attacked it. Zonama Sekot referred to these aliens as 'Far Outsiders.' We know now that these Far Outsiders were the Yuuzhan Vongpossibly a reconnaissance party sent to explore the galaxy before the actual invasion. The planet had been negotiating with these Outsiders for months, Vergere learned. The Yuuzhan Vong were fascinated by it, as you can imagine. A living planet would not be so different from one of the worldships that they used to cross the great gulf between galaxies."
"So what happened?" Tahiri prompted when Jacen went quiet as if in thought.
He looked
up. "The Yuuzhan Vong attacked and Zonama Sekot fled," he said. "The whole planetmoved. It changed systems, and hasn't been seen since."
"Moved?" Tahiri echoed. "Just like that?"
He nodded. "There's no mention of it in any records anywhere. It's as though it completely vanished."
"And you're going looking for itthis living planet?"
"Exciting, isn't it?" he said, coming back around to her side and sitting on her bed. "Vergere told me that the Yuuzhan Vong, in their own way, revere life. Not as a Jedi reveres life, cherishing each individual as a component of the Force that is both life and greater than life, but rather in their own perverse way. Their reverence for life, she said, is mixed with notions of pain and death. This fascinated me, and still does. It underpins their entire culture. I've always felt that if we could understand this ideology better, then we would understand them better.
"Call it an instinct." he went on. "Zonama Sekot is the key to the whole thingto victory. I'm sure of it. That's why Vergere told me about it. It might help us find a way to turn back the Yuuzhan Vong. It did it once before, after all, if on a smaller scale."
"Maybe it can make us ships as good as or better than the Yuuzhan Vong's coralskippers." Tahiri marveled at the thought. "How do you intend to find it?"
He shrugged. "That's the problem, isn't it? It's done a very good job of staying hidden all this time, so tracking it down isn't going to be easy. When I talked about it with Uncle Luke, there was only one conclusion we could come to if it hasn't been seen, then it has to be in the Unknown Regions. There's nowhere else it could be. A fertile world is not exactly the sort of thing that would be omitted from a ship's log."
"Let alone a world that has appeared out of nowhere," Tahiri added. "Or has a mind of its own."
"Exactly," Jacen said. "It's literally the stuff of legends. And in the absence of rumors, we have to go chasing them ourselves. We're stopping at the Empire first, since their territory borders the Unknown Regions; they might have information we can use. And then there's the Chiss they've explored the Unknown Regions much more than we have; they'll have access to a wealth of data"
Star Wars - The New Jedi Order - Force Heretic I - Remnant - Book 17 Page 7
