by Greg Keyes
“I think those are Shaper compounds,” Uldir told Txer.
“Shapers?”
“Yes. The Yuuzhan Vong are divided into castes. The Shapers are the ones who make their biotech -- ah, who twist life into the shapes they want. You understand?”
“Yes. Have seen -- not as cut-up as those who fight. Have hair like nest of brvol-snakes.”
“Shapers, right. Those compounds are their laboratories. But what’s that thing?” He indicated something that resembled a squat cylindrical tower, albeit a crooked one. It was huge, at least a hundred meters high and nearly that in diameter. Like the damuteks, it looked as if it were made of coral. Unlike them, its upper surface seemed to be perforated with hundreds of openings, each of which must be a meter or so in diameter.
Uldir lifted his macrobinoculars and examined the base of the thing more closely, but he couldn’t tell much else except -- yes, it seemed to be slowly rotating, as if boring into or out of the ground.
“It’s a drill,” he muttered.
“Makes holes,” Txer said. “We think, anyway.”
“A big hole. That’s some kind of giant worm, I’d guess, or was before their Shapers got hold of it.”
“But one thing we never reckon,” Txer said. “If digging, where puts-it rock?”
Uldir looked at Txer, reminding himself that primitive didn’t mean stupid.
“That’s a good question,” he replied. “I guess it digests the rock, somehow, breaks it down. He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. But look, see those capillaries connecting the mine to the rayed compounds?”
“Yes.”
“Those must be ways down into the mines the worm is digging. If they find anything, they’ll bring them up through there. Which means I’ll find Klin-Fa Gi either in the mines or in one of those compounds.” He sighed. “In other words, she could be almost anywhere down there.”
He moved the macrobinoculars down, and the multitudes of figures moving amongst the compounds resolved into recognizably Yuuzhan Vong shapes, but there were plenty of Myneyrshi -- the tall spindly race -- and Psadans, the armored ones -- as well. There were also more than a few humans, of which Txer’s band also included a number -- the descendants of a long-lost colony, if he understood their story correctly.
He focused on the nearest group, who seemed to be tending some sort of plants that grew on slope, just above where the burned zone ended. They were about a hundred meters away, and Uldir saw no Yuuzhan Vong guards.
“Maybe I can pass for one of them,” Uldir speculated. “If they’ve caught Klin-Fa, there ought to be talk about it. If they haven’t, there might be talk about that too.”
But looking up at the complex, he didn’t feel much hope. He didn’t have the leisure time to insinuate himself into the Yuuzhan Vong camp the way Anakin Solo had done on Yavin 4 -- Vega and the rest were out there, possibly fighting for their lives, waiting for him to finish his mission here and get back into space. Every second he spent here was a risk not just to his own life but to his crew’s, and for that matter to everyone he and his crew might have rescued if they weren’t here chasing one rogue Jedi.
“Jedi,” he murmured, and Txer narrowed his eyes.
“What Jedi?” He asked, suspiciously. “You Jedi?”
“No, I’m not. The one I chase.”
Uldir closed his eyes and concentrated, trying to ignore his body, his thoughts, his immediate surroundings, to feel through the living Force around him. To search for Klin-Fa Gi. She was probably the only living Jedi on Wayland, and the Yuuzhan Vong did not appear in the Force at all. Klin-Fa ought to stand out like a Wookiee at a Tintinna wedding, even to his less-than attuned senses.
The sounds around him faded thin and were forgotten. In the outward-reaching eye of his mind, he was a sphere, expanding, not so much taking in all that he touched, but reminding himself that he was already a part of it.
He felt the belt of sickly life behind him, growing stronger as it marched away from the Yuuzhan Vong settlement. He felt the verge of death and pain he stood on, and the odd blankness of the Yuuzhan Vong themselves. He felt the fractured stones of Mount Tantisss.
Part of him was excited. He’d never commanded this sort of clarity in the Force, even on his best day at the academy.
And yes, better still, there, a flicker, he felt Klin-Fa Gi, and it seemed she was near. He felt her heart pounding, sensed danger, a goal reached, something desired found . . .
Then a black spike of anger and despair struck him between the eyes, and a shriek of hatred that was somehow more the taste of salt and bitter Jiqui peels than a sound.
His tenuous hold on the Force snapped, replaced by another sensation, a sort of burring in his bones.
It took him a moment to understand the feeling was coming from beneath him, up through his feet, that it was the ground trembling. And it was growing stronger. He opened his eyes, gazing at the ruined mountain, at the terrible Vong-thing growing into it.
Something was different, but it took him a moment to place it. Then he saw, but still didn’t understand. The tower was larger, puffy, bloated looking.
“Txer,” he said, “Run. Now.” He bolted down the hill, across the blasted landscape toward the Yuuzhan Vong settlement.
“Why?” Txer shouted from behind him.
“Just do it!” He didn’t have time to explain that he wasn’t quite sure why, but that if he waited to think it through they would all be dead.
A glance behind him showed Txer and his Free People still hesitating. “Come on!” he howled.
Txer started forward. After that, Uldir kept all of his attention on the rocky path and the rumbling in the planet that grew stronger with each footfall. He ran, hoping the Free People followed -- hoping his luck hadn’t betrayed him at last.
He’d reached the bottom of the foothill they’d stood upon and just started up the slope toward the damuteks when he heard shouts from the sentients behind him. The Psadan, who were basically armored spheres, were mostly rolling down the hill. The Myneyrshi were having a bit more trouble with their delicate looking legs. As they started uphill, however, their positions were reversed. The Myneyrshi pulled themselves gracefully up the slope with their six limbs, while the Psadan began to lag behind. It was Txer who first shouted and exclaimed, and Uldir followed the direction the fellow indicated with his gaze. The vibration in the ground was rattling his teeth, now.
The tower bristled. From each of the hundreds of openings on its upper surface, a snaky tube emerged and lengthened, arcing in unison out over the valley and toward the foothills in what looked like slow motion, but which, given the distances involved, was probably quite fast. Each of the tubes was headed for a slightly different destination. Many of them seemed to be coming straight toward Uldir.
Uldir quickened his pace.
“What is?” Txer asked.
“We have to make it out of the burned zone!” Uldir shouted. “To the first of the Yuuzhan Vong gardens.”
He glanced up, and could see the dark mouths of the tubes facing down now, like cave worms coming to take a bite out of him. How low did they have to get? The sky was full of the arcing shafts now, some aimed far beyond the ridge. It might have been curiously pretty if he didn’t remember the perimeter of destruction, if the burned zone didn’t fit so well with the geometry of what he was seeing.
They were about to find out what the drilling-worm digested rock into, and he didn’t think they were going to enjoy the enlightenment.
The end of the scorch-zone was just ahead, but the Psadans weren’t doing so well. One stumbled, and Txer supported him. Another slipped back near Uldir. He bit his lip. If he paused to help the Psadan, he might die, which was one thing, but then he would fail his mission, which was altogether another. He couldn’t . . .
No. Whatever else his mission was, first and foremost it was to help his fellow being in need.
He put a shoulder under the Psadan’s stout arm, and together they struggled toward the strip of green ah
ead. They had maybe thirty meters to go -- some of the Myneyrshi had already reached it.
The sky was a vault of black cords now, and an opening wide enough to swallow Uldir was dropping swiftly toward him. He didn’t think it would swallow him, though. He wondered, in fact, if he would feel much of anything.
The smaller rocks on the hillside were actually rattling now, from the pressure building below them. Any moment now . . .
Uldir’s foot struck a rock wrong, and he slipped down, his ankle twisting painfully as the Psadan’s weight fell disproportionally on him. Grunting apologetically, the Psadan tried to lift him into a carry.
“Too late,” Uldir muttered.
He didn’t see the yellow-and-black clad figure until she was beside him, until her strength had flowed into him and he and the Psadan were practically carried forward to the edge of the Yuuzhan Vong fields by the power of the Force.
“You’re an idiot, Uldir Lochett,” Klin-Fa-Gi informed him.
The Free People shouted as one, as out and across the valley the hundreds of tubes coughed out a fluorescent orange haze. The smell was lightning against stone, hot copper hitting water. The haze collected in low spots, cooling to blood red and then nearly black, rolling over the hills in an expanding torus which left the Yuuzhan Vong base and gardens -- and thankfully, Uldir Lochett -- untouched in the center.
“What is it?” Txer asked, waving at the terrifying sight.
“Mining vents,” Klin-Fa Gi said, briskly. The Chom-Vrone chews up rocks and digests into a state of semi-plasma in a process a lot like the weapons their skips use. When it has a full load, it spews it in a perimeter around their settlement, as you see. Keeps things clear and undesirables out.”
“Yeah,” Uldir grunted. “Or almost all of them, anyway.” He noticed that she had a few new wounds, though none of them looked serious. She also had something strapped to her back, something wrapped in layers of what seemed to be living tissue.
“What’s that you’ve got?”
“Never mind that now,” Klin Fa said. “We’ve other troubles.” She pointed. Coming down in a wave from the settlement above were dozens of Yuuzhan Vong warriors. Behind Uldir, the curtain of superheated rock vapor was still spreading. They could face the warriors or fry.
“Well,” Uldir grunted. “At least we have our backs to a wall.”
To Be Continued in Insider #62. . .
Greg Keyes is the author of Star Wars: The New Jedi Order -- Edge of Victory I: Conquest and Star Wars: The New Jedi Order -- Edge of Victory II: Rebirth.
CHAPTER IV:
Relic of Ruin
VEGA SEPEN GLIMPSED the shadow of death on the long‑range scanner. To the untrained eye, it wasn’t much, just a pale green oblong blip. To her experienced eye, it was a Yuuzhan Vong frigate.
Her experience came from hard lessons. She’d been a junior tactician on the pirate vessel Free Lance withUrias Xhaxin when she first laid eyes on the living ships of the Yuuzhan Vong. Back then, the extragalactic race had been little more than a rumor. The battle-hardened crew of the Free Lance had lost the skirmish in seconds, escaping only by making a blind hyperspace jump.
Since then, the Yuuzhan Vong had conquered half of the galaxy.
Vega Sepen was no idealist. At twelve she’d been left homeless and friendless on the streets of Eriadu when her Corellian parents were killed in a reactor meltdown. She’d escaped that life at fifteen by stowing away on a smuggler’s ship. They’d almost spaced her, but she’d challenged the first mate to a vibrodagger duel. She got her chance because the crew thought it would be amusing to see what an adult Nikto could do to a silver‑haired human girl who stood barely 1.3 meters tall.
The mate had been tough, and he’d been fast–she still had a scar on her cheek to remind her of that–but he hadn’t been fast enough.
She’d changed ships often in the next ten years, finally ending up with Xhaxin, which seemed a good place to be.
Until the Yuuzhan Vong came along.
No, she wasn’t a save‑the‑galaxy type, but for the Vong she’d made an exception. Unless they were stopped, they would certainly kill every sentient in the galaxy that did not become their slave.
She’d tried the military, but while her skills were adequate, her attitude was incompatible.
So she’d ended up with rescue, and eventually Uldir Lochett and his Jedi extraction‑and‑transport team, and now here, staring at what might very likely be her death.
She scratched her armpit and yawned, then keyed on the Comlink.
“You two are taking your sweet time,” she said. “The frigate hasn’t seen us yet, but it’s only a matter of an hour or so. When it does see us, we’re dust.”
“We’re working as fast as we can,” Leaft growled. “This hardware is more than a century old.”
“And it probably won’t work,” Vook added, despondently.
“Wrong attitude,” Vega told them both. “It’s the Boss’s luck that we found this hulk at all, and he’s counting on us. So you’ll make it work, and you’ll hurry.”
She keyed off the comm and regarded the arid, pockmarked surface of the nameless asteroid the No Luck Required now rested on. It wasn’t much as asteroids went, a rock eight kilometers in diameter and too smooth to offer good hiding spots, which was what they had come to the Wayland system’s Trojan points looking for. They’d found something better–the crumpled wreck of what had once been a battle cruiser. From the look of it, the ship was pre‑Imperial, and a curious part of Vega wondered how it had ended up here, in a system so far from everything that the late, unlamented Emperor had used it as a secret base. She wondered what had brought it down, too, but was grateful that whatever had caused its crash had left three of its hyperdrive motivators intact, because if she and her companions stood any chance of leaving the system alive, it rested on restoring their own ailing hyperdrive capability.
Now they had the parts, which was more than they had dreamed of a few hours before. All they had to do was fit them into their own damaged ship, fly back to Yuuzhan Vong infested Wayland, find their captain‑if he was still alive‑pull him out of whatever trouble he was in, run the gauntlet yet again, and hope there weren’t any interdictors in the system.
If they managed all of that, and if the Boss had been successful in his mission, then their only worry would be how to keep a dark Jedi captive long enough to get her to Master Skywalker.
“Life gets more interesting every day,” Vega murmured.
She watched the shadow of death change course again.
“Uvee?” She said.
Still re‑routing shields, the UV002 astromech’s reply scrolled across her display. Estimate full efficiency in 6.8 standard minutes.
‘That’s great, Vega replied. “But the frigate just changed course again. Can you run an analysis of their new search pattern?”
Sure thing, the droid cheerfully replied.
There was a brief pause.
Estimate twenty‑eight standard minutes before search grid discloses our location, the droid finally offered.
“Oh, hurrah,” Vega grunted. Her hour had just been chopped in half.
So it was a pleasant surprise when Vook’s voice came back over the comm only a few moments later, sounding a shade less than hopeless, which from Vook might as well have been a shout of jubilation.
“The installation is complete,” the Duro said.
“Uvee?”
Shields to maximum efficiency.
‘Terrific,’ Vega said. “Let’s fly.”
“We don’t have the fuel,” Vook said. “The tank had a stress fracture. We leaked what we didn’t burn coming here. The damage is repaired, but we need more juice.”
“What about the old ship? Any fuel left in her tanks?”
“I already thought of that,” Leaft growled. His voice sounded like he was inside of a metal box.
“Leaft, where are you?” Vega asked suspiciously.
“Where do you think?” The Dug repli
ed, testily. “I’m connecting a fueling hose to this piece of junk. Looks like there’s enough left in there to get us going.”
“You went outside without permission?”
“Hey, don’t go thinking you’re the Boss, Sepen,” Leaft said. “I already have to take orders from one human. I’m not taking them from two.”
“Really?” Vega’s voice sounded cold, even to her. “We might have to have a chain‑of‑command discussion one of these days.” Maybe with stun batons.
“Any time, sweetness,” Leaft replied. “There. Hooked in.”
She could see him near the wreckage, an ungainly figure in his vacsuit. She took a deep breath to calm herself. After all, the Dug was only doing what needed done. He should have checked with her first, but–let it go. The last thing they needed at the moment was to fight among themselves.
She’d be glad when they got the captain back Though she couldn’t imagine how, he somehow managed to keep this ridiculous crew in line.
A few silent moments passed, and for five minutes or so, things went surprisingly smoothly. Vega watched the fuel indicators swing beyond the halfway mark.
Which was about the time Leaft said, “Oops.”
“What? What’s that?” Vega asked.
But at that moment, something flashed outside, sun bright, and the asteroid rocked beneath them.
From his mooring station, Uvee stuttered out an electronic shriek.
Uldir Lochett aimed his blaster at the oncoming Yuuzhan Vong warriors but didn’t fire.
They weren’t in range yet, so he didn’t want to waste any shots. Not that he would get that many when they were in range. Klin‑Fa Gi might kill half a dozen of them with her lightsaber if she fought as well as, say, the fabled Corran Horn or Anakin Skywalker. She wouldn’t, because she wasn’t–she’d had trouble enough taking out a single Yuuzhan Vong warrior back on Bonadan. And she was wounded, and tired.
If his own luck held true to form–and it was usually very good luck–he might get three or four with his blaster before becoming fertilizer for the greenware field he stood in.
