Star Wars - The New Jedi Order - Force Heretic I - Remnant - Book 17

by Sean Williams

  Her expression didn't change. "Why?"

  "You need able bodies, and I am willing to work."

  Again she asked, "Why?"

  That was harder to answer. "The sun has not yet set on the fortune of Nom Anor," he said. "It will rise again, given time."

  "And will we rise with it?" called out one of the Shamed Ones off to his left.

  "Yes," he said, looking vaguely in their direction. "I give you my word that, should I return to my former position, I will restore your honor."

  There was a murmur of consent that quickly rippled through the Shamed Ones. They were obviously taken with his offer.

  "How can you listen to this?" The male ex-warrior standing just behind Niiriit stepped forward. "We have no reason to trust him!"

  "I know that, Kunra," Niiriit said, her attention remaining fixed upon Nom Anor before her. "But he's one of us, now. If he betrays us, then he betrays himself. Isn't that right, Nom Anor?"

  The former executor swallowed his pride, and it tasted of bile. Everything Niiriit said was true. They could trust him, because here in the depths of this offensive world, these Shamed Ones were all he had left. Yes, he had told them he would give them back their status if he were returned to his former position, and it was an offer he would happily keep his word on. For the chance to restore his own honor, Nom Anor would make any sacrifice necessary.

  "We are allies, Niiriit Esh," he said, giving her full name in return. "I shall not betray you."

  He raised his gashed fingers and steeled himself to reopen the wound in order to demonstrate by sacrifice that they could take him at his mercy. It was an instinctive gesture, drummed into him after years in Shimrra's court.

  Niiriit stepped forward and stopped him. "That is not necessary down here," she said. "We recognize a different sort of honor, a different sort of gods."

  "Different gods?" he repeated.

  Niiriit nodded, grinning. "And I just know you'll like them," she said, her dark eyes glinting in the greenish light from the globes overhead. "In fact, you've met some of them in person. Spoken to them, even."

  "You are talking about the Jeedai?" he asked, finding it impossible to contain his astonishment.

  "That appalls you, Nom Anor?" She shook her head, as if disappointed in him. "Live and learn, my friend, or die with the others when their time comes. The choice is yours."

  "And I make it freely," he said, bowing low to cover his surprise. The cult of the Jeedai? Here on Yuuzhan'tar? He'd heard whispers of it from his spies in the world-ships, but for it to have infiltrated so close to Shimrra was unthinkable. No, more than that. He would have thought it impossible.

  And yet, impossibly, it was so. What was going on down in these dungeons of Yuuzhan'tar was more than just survival. It was heresy.

  Live and learn, he told himself, repeating Niiriit's words as though they were a mantra. Perhaps there is a way, after all.

  "Tell me about the Jedi," he said. "I am keen to know more..."

  This is going to change everything, Jacen Solo thought as he stood beneath Jade Shadow's tapered nose, watching from off to one side as his friends and family made their farewells to one another. This is the beginning of something new.

  It was a very different kind of premonition that rolled through him as he stood there on the landing bay, pretending to busy himself with last-minute checks to the ship. It wasn't necessarily a sense of foreboding, but rather something deeper, more profound. It was as though he could vaguely make out the future, and it was a strange and alien placesomehow a consequence of this moment.

  Then again, perhaps it wasn't a premonition at all. Perhaps the feeling was a direct result of all the stimcaf he'd been drinking, coupled with the fact that he hadn't been sleeping well of late. For the last few nights he'd

  been sitting in his room for hours on end, worryingnot just about the mission, either, but about leaving half the people he loved behind, as well.

  He watched them now, hugging, shaking hands, kissing, laughing. For all the levity, one would think Jade Shadow and her crew were off on nothing more than a jaunt to the sunbaked moons of Calfa-5 rather than on a mission to the Unknown Regions. But he didn't need the Force to tell him that beneath the casual facade there simmered a somberness that would have been difficult for any of them to shake . . .

  Just about everyone was there to see off Jade Shadow. His mother had come, shadowed once again by her Noghri bodyguards, Cakhmaim and Meewalh. Han clapped Luke on the shoulder and advised him to keep out of trouble. The well-meant hypocrisy provoked a light smile from the Jedi Master, who nodded and wrapped his old friend's hand in both of his and shook firmly.

  To one side stood C-3PO, gleaming bronze in the arc lights illuminating the side of the armored transport looming over them, with R2-D2 beside him, whistling cheerfully to reassure his metal companion.

  "It's not you I'm worried about," C-3PO returned "It's me!"

  R2's domed top turned as it issued another string of beeps and whistles.

  "Well, at least you don't know what awaits you in the Unknown Regions," C-3PO said. "I know far too much about the place Mistress Leia intends to take me."

  Jag Fel helped load the last of the supplies into the transport. Danni Quee was running late and had sent some equipment down ahead of her on a repulsor platform. When it was empty, it beeped to no one in particular and trundled away. Cilghal's apprentice, Tekli, had already loaded supplies the healer had insisted they might need on their long journey. Luckily the giant reptilian Jedi, Saba Sebatyne, had brought less than half her allocation, creating extra space. Like Jacen, the stoic Barabel stood away from the others, her small eyes blinking while her tail twitched restlessly about her feet.

  Perhaps she senses it, too, he thought. After all, those of us leaving on Jade Shadow could be gone for months. Who knows what we'll be returning to, or what we'll even be bringing back with us? Communications with the Unknown Regions were notoriously unreliable, routed through just one long-distance transceiver on the edge of known space. After Anakin's death, he wasn't so naive as to assume that he would ever again see any of these people he was now saying good-bye to.

  But I have no choice. Like everyone else, I must do what 1 must. The war with the Yuuzhan Vong might be won without us, but there are many different kinds of war.

  Jaina noticed him standing to one side and came to join him.

  "What's wrong, brother? Having second thoughts about going?"

  He turned to face her and was surprised by how grownup she looked. Although the age difference between them was barely five standard minutes, she seemed so much wiser and more mature than he pictured her in his mind. Where was the child with whom he'd tormented C-3PO on Coruscant? Or the teenager who had single-handedly repaired a crashed TIE fighter on Yavin 4? The girl was gone, replaced by this young woman standing now before him. Try as he might, though, he couldn't recall exactly when the transition had occurred.

  "Not at all," he replied, forcing a smile. "Just a little overwhelmed, I guess."

  He looked at her again, still somewhat amazed by the confident woman standing before him. They weren't kids anymore. The universe had taught them the hard way that the responsibilities of being an adult weren't always easy. But the Force connection between them was still strong, and this fact alone brought him great comfort.

  "I hope you find what you're looking for," Jaina said, intruding upon his thoughts.

  "I'm sure we will," Jacen said. "All available data suggest that the Unknown Regions are where"

  "I meant in your heart, brother."

  His smile came easier this time. "I won't come back until I do."

  "Is that a promise, Jacen?" she asked. "Or a prophecy?"

  "Perhaps it's a little of both."

  She embraced him, then, tightly and warmly. "Just make sure you do come back, okay?" she whispered close to his ear.

  She winked at him as she pulled away, and before he could say anything more, the space she had just vacated wa
s suddenly filled with other people wishing him well and bidding him good-bye.

  Jag Fel shook his hand with a definite air of reassurance. Jacen forestalled his father's usual gruff attempts at farewells by cutting off whatever he'd been about to say and simply giving him a hug. His mother hugged Jacen, too. She didn't offer any words, though. She didn't need to; the emotion in her eyes spoke volumes.

  Others appeared before him, taking his hand, patting his back, and speaking animatedly. He heard little of what was said; his attention kept going back to his sister, now standing at the back with Jagwho respectfully kept his hands to himself. Nevertheless, even though he didn't hear a lot of what was being said to him, Jacen could feel the sentiments expressed. The air was almost crackling with the Force as so many emotional Jedi clustered around him.

  He would miss the ones who would remain behind, but he wouldn't grieveno more than he would for Vergere. Even now, so many weeks after she died, he could still hear her voice in his mind as clearly as though she was one of those standing right there beside him.

  "You have always been alone, Jacen Solo. Even in the midst of your family, and your friends. Even when you touched the Force. You have always been set apart, distanced, separated and alone, through no choice or action of your own."

  He hadn't understood everything his teacher had said to him, and suspected he would be picking at the meaning of her words for many years to comeif not the rest of his life. Vergere had been a creature of contradictions, a pet of the Yuuzhan Vong at one moment, an ancient Jedi Knight in another.

  "Everyone is part of you," she had said, "just as yo u are part of everyone."

  It was a simple truth, and one he embraced now as he said good-bye to his friends and family. While his loved ones lived, wherever they were, he had no cause to grieve. . .

  At that moment, Danni Quee bustled into the bay, her shoulders laden with bags. Following her, looking somewhat dazed and confused, was Tahiri.

  "I found this one wandering in the corridors outside," Danni said.

  Tahiri flushed pink. "I-I got lost on the way here," she stammered. "I'm sorry."

  Jacen felt a wave of compassion for the girl. The three deep scars on her forehead stood out strongly against her blood-filled face. She still looked terribly thin and

  uncertain of herself; there was little in the girl's appearance and nervous manner to suggest the Jedi he knew her to be.

  He reached out with the Force to touch her, comfort her. She glanced over at him, a faint trace of gratitude in her smiling eyes. But she turned away quickly, uneasily, back to the others.

  "So this is it?" Danni said, her eyes bright, her curly blond hair standing in a nimbus around her head. "We're really going?"

  "We're really going," Luke said. Mara went aboard Jade Shadow to prime the yacht's systems. Saba and Tekli followed. The sound of mechanical systems whirring into life gave the farewells a new urgency. The Solo/ Skywalker clan gathered for one last moment while the others moved aboard. Jacen was unsurprised to see tears in Tahiri's eyes when she was invited to join in, but was glad she agreed.

  "May the Force be with us all," Luke said after a moment.

  "It always is," Jacen said automatically, paraphrasing another of Vergere's teachings. "The Force is everything, and everything is the Force. The only uncertainty lies in ourselves."

  Jaina smiled at her brother; Leia did the same, and kissed his cheek.

  Then it was time to go. Everything was loaded, and everyone was there. There was no point delaying any longer. As R2-D2 glided ahead of him up the ramp into Jade Shadow's belly, Jacen felt the premonition rush through him once more. It prompted him to halt momentarily and cast a quick glance back to his parents and sister.

  What if I'm wrong about Zonama Sekot? he wondered anxiously. What if this grand quest is nothing more than an elaborate means of running away from conflict? What if I misunderstood Vergere completely? Even if he had understood her perfectly and was doing exactly the right thing for the moment, it still wouldn't be easy. As she had said "No lesson is truly learned until it is purchased with pain," The lesson the Galactic Alliance had to learn was a difficult one, and he was in no doubt that the people most likely to bear the cost would be those on Jade Shadow.

  He offered a brief wave and then continued into the maw of the ship. At the top of the ramp he saw Danni standing there, waiting for him. Her smile did little to hide her own anxieties.

  "There's nothing to be nervous about, Danni," he said, looking calmly and evenly into her eyes. "Everything is going to work out just fine."

  "Really?" she said, shucking the larger of her bags. "Well, either you know something I don't, Jacen Solo, or you're one of the best liars I've ever met."

  PART TWO

  DESTINATION

  The moment Jade Shadow dropped out of hyperspace near Bastion, capital of the Imperial Remnant, Saba Se-batyne knew something was wrong. Her mind rang with the distinctive and unsettling harmonics of life extinguished in great amounts. But it was more than that this was the absence of life itself, as though chunks of the vital universe had been hollowed out, deeper than vacuum.

  She roared at the same time Mara announced "Yuu-zhan Vong!"

  "Where?" Luke asked from the copilot's seat.

  "Everywhere!" Mara's hands played across the controls. "Hold on, everybody. This could get rough!"

  The ship lurched violently. Saba didn't need viewscreens to tell her that they'd been seen by the enemy. The empty points that were the Yuuzhan Vong and their strange, living vessels spun around her like pollen in a miniature hurricane. Jade Shadow danced among them, weaving in and out of confrontations, desperately trying to shake off any enemy craft they picked up on their trail. The ship rang with the sound of weapons fire, both incoming and outgoing.

  Saba's blunted claws left great dents in the fabric of the navigator's chair she occupied. She wasn't aware of the low rumbling coming from her throat until Jacen Solo braved the shaking deck to come and crouch down next to her.

  "Do you feel it, Saba?" he asked. "Can you tell through the Force what's going on?"

  "I feel..." Her teeth clenched tight as another wave of death rolled over her. Bastion was being pummeled by the Yuuzhan Vong; lives were being extinguished by the millions. She didn't have words.

  "I'm sensing life here," Jacen said, "but in great disarray."

  Saba agreed. She could sense the life energies scattered around the system some on the planet, panicked, trying to escape the invaders; some in orbit, pulling back before an overwhelming invasion; and several other clusters throughout the system where forces were attempting to regroup. They were outnumbered by the Yuuzhan Vong, but they were there.

  "I can make out at least fifteen capital ships!" Mara shouted from her position at the controls. "Big ones, too!" She shook her head in frustration. "Bastion is going to take a pummeling, no matter what we do."

  "It looks to me like they're pulling out," Luke said. "Falling back to regroup elsewhere. Look." One figure stabbed at a screen. "They're civilian ships. They've evacuated Bastion."

  There was a moment of tense silence as the significance of that statement sunk in. To evacuate Bastion, the Empire must have been hit hard. But it wasn't finished. As galling as a retreat was, sometimes it made the best tactical sense. The ships flooding in waves from Bastion were getting out under cover of the planetary shields. It looked like they would hold long enough to save much of the population. If the population had stayed put, however, the concentrated fire of the Yuuzhan Vong would have eventually overwhelmed them.

  That portion of the battle was already decided. Saba sent her mind out across the system, to where life-lights clustered in smaller groups. The largest, she guessed, contained the equivalent of two Star Destroyers as well as a number of support vessels. They were swinging around the back of a gas giant, caught in its gravity shadow and harried by a powerful enemy contingent.

  Saba focused on the viewscreens before her, trying to match what sh
e'd seen against the coordinates in the real world. Jade Shadow was too small to affect what happened on Bastion, but it might make a difference in a smaller arena.

  "There," she growled, pointing with a thick finger. "That section there. But you must be quick. They're in trouble."

  Jacen stood and stepped over to his aunt to relay the information. Saba shut her eyes as Jade Shadow leapt forward, ducking and weaving. Mara made a short hy-perspace jump to take it closer to the gas giant, and for one brief and blessed moment there was nothing but silence.

  Just another planet attacked by the Yuuzhan Vong, she told herself. Hunt the moment.

  A small, furred hand grabbed Saba's scaly wrist. Opening her eyes again, she saw that Tekli now occupied the space that Jacen had just vacated. The diminutive Chadra-Fan emitted a wave of pheromones that Saba found soothing. She knew that the healer's apprentice had learned how to control her chemical scents to produce compounds with properties therapeutic to various species, but she hadn't realized that the Barabels were included among those.

  Although it might once have seemed strange to her to be comforted by a creature that looked more like a meal than an equal, she sighed gratefully, allowing herself to relax and be taken by the peaceful scent. A moment later, all too soon, it was back to the fighting.

  The screen was filled with a bloated, orange-yellow gas giant. Numerous rings and moons crowded around it, as if for safety; many already showed signs of disruption as warring fleets plowed past or sometimes even directly into them. Far below, through the dense atmosphere, Saba felt alarm spreading through a colony of balloonlike life-forms; similar to the giant beldons of Bes-pin, they were too primitive to understand the meaning of the disturbances taking place in the sky.

  Jade Shadow came around the planet as though intending to ram the remains of the Imperial fleet, trailing two determined coralskippers. As Mara neared the two Star Destroyers that Saba had sensed, she performed a deft gravitational whip around one of the gas giant's larger moons. The coralskippers followed, tugging at Jade Shadow's shields with their dovin basals. Plasma fire peppered at their rear until, when Jade Shadow's vector had matched that of the Imperial fleet and it was in full view of the Star Destroyers, Mara stutterfired to distract them, then used the Force to drop two shadow bombs under their guard. The coralskippers blossomed into energy. Once the afterwash of the explosion had passed, Jade Shadow slowed and leveled out.