by James Luceno
Nearly everyone else was living in filth.
A new stench in the air told Melisma that they were nearing the communal refreshers. "Maybe it's only when there's no wind," Gaph remarked.
"Then maybe we should petition climate supervision to whip up a hurricane," Melisma said from behind the hand she'd clamped over her mouth.
As promised, just past the refreshers was Section 465, announced by a sign, to which someone had added the words Ryn City.
More than half the thirty-two were on hand to greet Gaph and Melisma's quintet as they trudged into a courtyard that might have struck some as uncommonly sanitary but was in fact normal for the Ryn, who were by nature almost ritualistic about order and cleanliness.
The leader among the ensconced group, a tall male named R'vanna, welcomed them with bowls of tasty Ryn food and a slew of questions about the circumstances that had brought them to Ruan. Gaph started at the very beginning, explaining how they had just fled the Corporate Sector when their caravan of ships had been set upon by a Yuuzhan Vong patrol. Scattered far and wide as a result of emergency hyperspace jumps, many had ended up at Ord Mantell's Jubilee Wheel, where they had been caught up in another Yuuzhan Vong attack. Refugees by then, some had found transport to Bil-bringi, others to Rhinnal, and still others to Gyndine.
Then R'vanna told his story, which, while it began in the Tion Hegemony, had much in common with Gaph's tale of woe.
One of the women showed Melisma and her cousins to a dormitory. Leaving the infant in the care of her cousins, Melisma rejoined Gaph and R'vanna, who was in the midst of painting a vivid picture of life in Facility 17.
"Though water is rarely a problem-our overseers simply create rainstorms as needed-food shortages have begun to occur on a regular basis and disease is rampant. The diseases could easily be eradicated, of course, and Ruan is capable of supplying all the food needed just from what the labor droids allow to rot in or on the ground, but it's to Salliche Ag's advantage that everyone in camp remain as miserable as possible."
"How is that to Salliche's advantage?" Melisma asked. "And why would Princess Leia praise the company for its unconditional generosity if we're a burden to everyone?"
"Salliche is desirous of refugees, child, but not for the camps. They want us in the fields."
"As workers?"
"Of a sort." R'vanna paused to tap a wad of charred t'bac from the bowl of a hand-carved pipe. "The New Republic is genuinely committed to relocating everyone to populous worlds, but with the war and all, the chances of relocation are slim-even though you won't hear mention of this in the familiarization classes."
"Familiarization?" Melisma said. "For what?"
"Why, to prepare us for our new lives among the civilized peoples of the Core. You'll soon see for yourself. But as I say, chances are slim. Some of those living on Noob Hill can afford to purchase forward passage with private transport companies, but not everyone is so fortunate. In any event, no one wants to be here any longer than necessary, so many have accepted offers by Salliche Ag to work their way off Ruan."
"In the fields," Gaph said.
R'vanna nodded. "Except that very few manage to earn enough to purchase onward passage. Most of the camp's earliest arrivals have been forced into indentured servitude, here on Ruan or on other Salliche-administered worlds, and rumors persist that those who refuse Salliche's benevolence often disappear."
"But it makes no sense," Melisma said. "Sentients will never replace droids as workers. Sentients need more than the occasional oil bath and data upgrades. Not to mention that production would be drastically reduced."
R'vanna showed her a patient smile. "I said as much to a Salliche representative who visited Ryn City only last week. And do you know what he told me? That the hiring of sentients not only eases the refugee problem but allows the company to advertise its products as retaining 'handpicked freshness.' "
Gaph mulled it over for a moment. "So our options, for the moment, are either to go to work for Salliche Ag or remain mired here."
Melisma glanced around the courtyard, and at the masterfully built dormitories and kitchens. "How have you managed to do so well? Walking through the camp, I was afraid we were going to be attacked and killed. If folks could find a way, I'm sure they'd hold us accountable for the Yuuzhan Vong invasion."
R'vanna smiled sadly. "Life has always been thus for the Ryn. But not everyone fears or distrusts us. It's thanks to those few that we've done so well."
"Charity?"
"Bite your tongue, child," Gaph said theatrically. "The Ryn do not accept charity. We work for all we get."
Melisma looked at R'vanna. "What sort of work can we do here?"
"The sort we're best at apprising people of their options, allowing them to see the error of their ways, providing them with helpful tips to see them through the complexities of daily life."
"Telling fortunes," Melisma said, mildly disdainful. "Reading sabacc cards."
Gaph was grinning broadly. "Singing, dancing, the rewards that come to those who dispense good advice . . . Life could be worse, child. Life could be much worse."
"Aren't you the one who said that help had arrived?" the red-maned Ryn named Sapha asked Wurth Skidder aboard the slave ship Creche.
"I might have said something to that effect," the Jedi was willing to concede. "Heat of the moment, and all that."
Roa regarded Skidder with interest, then glanced past him at Sapha. "When was this?"
"On Gyndine," she told him, "when he rushed to be captured by the multilegged creature that was herding us together. He said, 'Take heart, help has arrived.' "
Roa looked at Skidder once more. "He rushed?"
Sapha shrugged. "It looked that way from where I stood."
Side by side, the three of them were standing to their waists in the viscous sorrel-colored nutrient in which the young yammosk marinated, like an excised brain in an autopsy pan. The cloying odor-like garlic roses bathed in nlora perfume-had taken some getting used to, but by now almost all the captives were beyond the retching stage, though a male Sullustan had fainted moments earlier and had had to be carried out.
One of the more gracile of the creature's manifold tentacles floated in front of Skidder and his comrades, and their hands were busy massaging and caressing it, the way the Bimms did with certain breeds of nerf to assure steaks of extraordinary tenderness. Roa's worrisomely wan pal, Fasgo, and two Ryn were doing the same to the other side of the tentacle. The arrangement of six to a tentacle was repeated throughout the circular basin, except at the yammosk's shorter, thicker members, where two or three captives sufficed.
"He rushed," Roa said, more to himself this time; then he fixed Skidder with a gimlet stare. "Sapha almost makes it sound like you wanted to be captured, Keyn."
"To wind up here?" Skidder said. "A guy would have to be either deranged or dauntless."
Smile lines formed at the corners of Roa's eyes. "I've known a few in my day who were both. I can't put my finger on it, but something tells me you fit the bill."
Two hose-thick, pulsating ducts projected from the yammosk's bulbous head to disappear into the arching, membranous ceiling of the hold. Skidder assumed that at least one of them furnished the creature with a required mix of respiratory gases, though Chine-kal assured that yammosks became oxygen breathers as they matured into actual war coordinators.
At the moment the clustership's commander was completing a circle on the grated walkway that ran around the lip of the yorik-coral basin. Concentric to the basin stood a company of lightly armed guards.
"For all the revulsion it seems to invoke in some of you, the yammosk is an extremely sensitive creature," he was saying. "One effect of its powerful desire to bond is empathy of a high order, which later culminates as telepathy, of a sort. As part of its early training, the yammosk is conditioned to regard select dovin basals as its children, its brood-the same dovin basals that provide thrust for our starships and the single-pilot craft the New Republic military re
fers to as coralskippers. When, then, we enter into engagements with the forces of your worlds, the yammosk sees its children as threatened and attempts to coordinate their activities to minimize loss."
Chine-kal came to a halt close to where Skidder and the others stood, and gestured to the ceiling. "The darker blue of the throbbing arteries that enter the yammosk just above the eyes is linked even now to the drive of this ship, because the yammosk is still in the process of familiarizing itself with the dovin basal. The kinder you are to the yammosk, the more affection you show for it, the better you make it feel, the better its link with the dovin basal, and the better the ship performs."
The commander pivoted to face one of the membranous walls. In a blister visible to all the captives sat a pulsing, heart-shaped organism.
"Here you see a small dovin basal, approximate in size to the ones housed in the noses of the coralskippers. Its color indicates how well you are succeeding at your task, and its current pale red tells me that you are doing reasonably well, but not as well as you might. So what we're going to do is increase the pace of our strokings in time with the count provided by the dovin basal. If we're successful, the ship will respond in turn. So let us begin ..."
Skidder braced himself. It wasn't so much that the h andwork itself was fatiguing, but intense and constant tactile contact with the tentacles quickly left everyone exhausted, almost as if the yammosk was feeding off the captives' expended energy to somehow enhance itself. It was easy enough to refuse participation, but holding back led only to someone being singled out and punished.
As the dovin basal began to pulse more rapidly, the captives increased the speed and force of the strokings and kneadings, struggling to find a rhythm. The pulses grew even more rapid; the manipulations grew more urgent and frantic. The count quickened once more. Many of the captives were breathing hard, some of them wheezing. Rills of sweat coursed down faces and arms. Those who couldn't sustain the pace collapsed, doubled over atop their assigned tentacles, or slid down into the gluey nutrient. But the rest had found a collective beat the yammosk responded to by sending ripples down its tentacles.
Skidder could almost feel the clustership surge.
Then the dovin basal slowed and gradually returned to a gentle pulsing.
"Good," Commander Chine-kal said at last. "Very good."
Skidder swallowed hard and calmed himself. Sapha and Roa were panting, and Fasgo looked delirious.
Chine-kal began another circuit on the organic walkway. "As some of you have already learned, battle coordination is only one of the yammosk's talents. When I told you earlier that its empathy bordered on telepathy, I was not overstating things. Also as part of its training, the young yammosk is conditioned to establish a cognitive rapport with the commander in whose custody the yammosk will serve. In fact, this yammosk and myself are already on familiar terms. But we're going to attempt something that has never been done-the truly 'extraordinary' part of this joint endeavor. We wish the yammosk to become familiar with you-with all of you-so that we might bring this invasion to a speedy and relatively painless conclusion."
Skidder glanced at Roa. "Did you know about this?"
The old man returned a grim nod.
"As the yammosk becomes more accustomed to your touch," Chine-kal was saying, "it may wish to touch you back, especially on the chest, upper back, neck, and face. You will allow it to do so. It may take no interest in some of you; with others it may find a deep affinity. In either case, I caution you not to resist its telepathic probes, for you risk injuring yourself as much as the yammosk. Resistance could very well result in madness or death. Laugh, cry, scream if you must, but do not resist."
"He's not kidding," Roa said with sudden solemnity. He looked intently at Sapha, then Skidder. "Try to keep your mind blank, otherwise it will pursue your thoughts like a predator chasing the first meal of the day. That's where you can lose your way. Believe me, I've seen it happen more than once."
Skidder had been doing his best to hide his Jediness, his strength in the Force, the events that had motivated him to be captured, his wish to avenge his fallen comrades. Faced with Chine-kal's revelation, however, he suddenly couldn't help but recall what Danni Quee had told him of the way the Yuuzhan Vong had used a yam-mosk to break Miko. Nor could he suppress his urgency to make contact with his fellow Jedi and apprise them of the enemy's latest plan.
He turned slightly to gaze at the yammosk's eyes, and those ink-black organs seemed to gaze back at him. The tentacle beneath his hands rippled, and its blunt tip rose from the nutrient to wrap around Skidder's shoulders.
Roa, Sapha, and the others fell back in surprise.
"Why, Keyn, you fortunate soul," Roa said after a moment, "I do believe the yammosk has taken a liking to you."
EIGHT
From the rear of Lorell Hall on Hapes, Leia was a bright white speck against the blue-black of the night sky, visible through the towering panoramic windows at her back. Rising at a sharp angle from the ramparts of the sandstone bluff that dominated the capital city, the assembly hall enjoyed a breathtaking view of the Transitory Mists and, just now, four of the planet's seven moons. So seamless was the illusion, that people seated in the lower-tier seats might have easily imagined themselves aboard a space vessel, advancing on the star that was Ambassador Organa Solo.
"Esteemed representatives of the Hapes Consortium of worlds," she began in a voice that surrendered none of its resolve even in the farthest reaches of the hall. "Eighteen years ago, following the New Republic's conquest of Imperial Center, I came before you to solicit financial support for a fledgling government bankrupted by war and plagued by an insidious virus that was killing thousands of nonhumans with each passing day.
"That visit unlocked a gateway between our respective regions of space that had been sealed for the previous three thousand years but has remained open ever since. In fact, not long after my initial visit, the Consortium graced Coruscant with a stay, during which you bestowed upon us treasures we had scarcely dreamed existed-rainbow gems, thought puzzles, and trees of wisdom, along with a dozen Star Destroyers you had captured from Imperial warlords who had sought to intrude on your domain.
"It was thought then that the New Republic and the Consortium might enter into an alliance through matrimony-though destiny had other unions in store for the would-be partners in that marriage."
Gracious laughter and hushed exchanges swept through the audience, and scattered clapping modulated to extended applause.
Leia took the opportunity to glance behind and to the right, where Prince Isolder was leaning forward in expectation of just such an acknowledgment. Beside him, also smiling and elegantly attired, sat his wife, Queen Mother Teneniel Djo of Dathomir, her fingers sparkling with lava node rings and her auburn hair bound by a dazzling tiara of rainbow gems, dawnstars, and ice moons.
Alongside Teneniel sat her mother-in-law, Ta'a Chume, her gray hair elaborately coiffed and only her eyes visible above a scarlet veil. Behind them sat several dignitaries and officials, including the Consortium's ambassador to the New Republic.
Coruscant's ambassador to Hapes was seated to the left of the podium, also among sundry dignitaries and officials, though beside her sat the Jedi daughter of Isolder and Teneniel, Tenel Ka. The biceps of her truncated left arm-severed above the elbow years earlier in a light-saber training match with Jacen-was adorned with bands of electrum, and a lightsaber dangled from the narrow belt that cinched her robe.
In the wings stood C-3PO, newly polished, and Olmahk, incensed at having been made to wear piped leggings, a dress tunic, and a tight-fitting cap.
"My friends," Leia continued as the applause was dying down, "the New Republic and the Consortium have never been anything but allies. But I come before you tonight with a request that is sure to test the bonds of that alliance. And in place of gifts I bring only an urgent warning."
A guarded silence fell over the gathering.
"Speaking for the New Republic, I respect
the high value you have long placed on isolation." Without looking, she gestured broadly at the panoramic window behind her. "Were Coruscant blessed with a heavenly phenomenon as majestic as the Transitory Mists, the New Republic, too, might have chosen a more introspective, self-nurturing course. But sadly that is not the case.
"A great shadow has been cast on the galaxy, eclipsing many New Republic member worlds, and a call to arms has been issued far and wide. Though Hapes, Charubah, Maires, Gallinore, Arabanth, and the other worlds that make up the Consortium have yet to be thrown into darkness, that circumstance is unlikely to endure. For so grim is this shadow, so monstrous and far-reaching, it may well have the power to extinguish all light."
Leia paused and remained silent until the agitated murmuring quieted. "The source of this shadow lies outside the confines of our galaxy, but the intention of those who cast it is clear conquest-unequivocal and thorough. They are called Yuuzhan Vong, and as I speak they are poised to invade the Colonies and the Core."
Again, Leia waited for the murmuring to exhaust itself.
"Peaceful coexistence is not an option, for the Yuuzhan Vong seek nothing less than to remake the galaxy in their own image-to have all of us swear allegiance to
the gods they worship and in whose name they launched their campaign. To avoid conflict, some worlds have already surrendered. And given what the Yuuzhan Vong have done to worlds that resisted, one can hardly fault anyone for capitulating. But the New Republic will neither bargain nor surrender. The invasion must be halted, and that can be effected only through a unified effort on the part of those worlds that choose freedom over enslavement."
