by Greg Keyes
But this was different. It was like suddenly noticing the spaces between words. It was a fragile thing, probably something he could never have achieved if he had tried for it, something that might go away if he thought too hard about it.
But for the moment he wasn't doing much thinking. He knew before he should have that the first Yuuzhan Vong he came across on foot was there. The warrior sprang
from behind a tree, long, snakelike amphistaff held in a guard position. He was missing two fingers at the knuckle, and his ear had been cut into fringe. He wore the usual vonduun crab armor and an expression of gratification.
Anakin snapped a heavy tree bough, already rotten and fatigued, and yanked it with more than the force of gravity down upon the warrior. The Yuuzhan Vong was quick and nearly dodged, but nearly wasn't enough as half a metric ton of tree crushed him into the ground. Anakin didn't know if the warrior was dead or alive, injured, or merely compromised. He didn't care, but changed beats, aiming himself away from the bubbles of nothing crawling at the edges of his expanded senses, tightening themselves around him like a vast noose.
The next Yuuzhan Vong caught him by surprise, telescoping his amphistaff across the path so it caught Anakin just below the knees. Pain was a bright line across his shins, but he wrapped himself in the life of the forest and lifted himself up, returning to ground three meters away. The Yuuzhan Vong was charging by then, weapon retracted but ready to flip out once more. Anakin spun to face him, dancing back from the attack, until his enemy whipped the weapon out with a peculiar snap of the wrist. Not entirely limp or stiff, the amphistaff arced over Anakin's shoulder, poisonous fangs aimed at some spot on his lower back.
Anakin didn't try to parry; the staff would only wrap around his weapon and find its target anyway. Instead he leapt toward and to the left of the warrior, closing the distance so quickly that the staff slapped painfully against his shoulder. The head, however, snapped short, and by then Anakin was ducking, driving the point of his weapon up into the warrior's armpit. He pushed his own body and the staff away from the forest floor with the Force, resulting in a blow that sent the warrior hurling almost vertically, three meters in the air.
Again, without waiting to see what the effect was,
Anakin hurried on, opening his pack and tossing out the dried fungi he had gathered earlier. He didn't let them fall, but held them gently aloft with the Force, spread out around and just ahead of him. Two exploded because his Force grip was too tight, but then he was in the zone again, one with everything but the Yuuzhan Vong.
A pair of warriors hit him next, but he hardly slowed down. Each got two explosive grenade fungi. One of the Yuuzhan Vong managed to block one of the spheroids with his amphistaff, but the resulting explosion broke the warrior's concentration, and the next hit him in the head. His companion went down as well, venting a hoarse cry of anger.
The net was tightening, but there was a way out. Anakin could feel a hole in their search pattern. He lunged on ahead, lifting a virtual cloud of stones and sticks to join his remaining fungi. He was like a strange, strong wind, rushing through the trees.
Then something thudded dully into his left shoulder, and he stumbled, his legs refusing service. He hit the forest floor, wondering what had happened. The forest resounded with the sounds of his explosive grenade fungi rupturing on the ground.
He tried to sit up, then he saw the blood, spattered on the dead leaves and along the sleeve of his flight suit.
A Yuuzhan Vong stepped from out of the bushes, holding something about the size of a carbine, a tube that swelled into a sort of stock or magazine.
Grunting, Anakin struggled to his feet. The whole left side of his body felt curiously numb. He reached back and found that a hole had been gouged in his shoulder. He felt something hard in the hole and pulled it out.
It was a mass of cracked chiton.
His legs threatened to buckle again. The Yuuzhan Vong was advancing, weapon trained on him. All around him, Anakin could hear more enemies rushing toward him.
Oddly enough, he still didn't feel frightened or angry. He didn't feel much of anything, except the Force.
And a familiar presence, something not too far away. Not one presence, really, but one that was legion.
"Two can play that game," Anakin whispered.
He dropped his weapon and held his hands up. "Nice going," he told the Yuuzhan Vong. "You shot me in the back with a bug. Very brave."
He could see three or four of them now, with his peripheral vision.
He hadn't expected the warrior to answer, but he did, in Basic.
"I am Field Commander Sinan Mat. I salute your bravery, Jeedai. I must deny you the embrace of death in battle. For this I apologize."
A little closer, Anakin thought. If they don't mean to kill me. . .
"Will you fight me, Sinan Mat? Just you and me?"
"That is my desire. It cannot be. I am to bring you living to the shapers."
"I'm sorry to hear that. And . . . well, I'd feel worse about this if you hadn't shot me in the back, but. . . forgive me."
Mat frowned and touched his ear. "The tizowyrm doesn't know that word, forgive. What—" Then his eyes widened. The forest was screaming a song of death.
The piranha-beetles fell upon the Yuuzhan Vong in a cloud. Sinan Mat dropped his weapon and clawed at his face as it disintegrated beneath the fierce mandibles. The piranha-beetles didn't spare the other Yuuzhan Vong, either, and a chorus of pain and rage rose counterpoint to the strident song of the insects.
Anakin picked up his staff and hobbled away, knowing his legs wouldn't carry him much farther. He needed to find a place to hide.
Ten minutes later, he leaned heavily against a tree. In the distance the ravenous piranha-beetles had finished
their task, and now, finally, Anakin felt his control of the Force slipping. His shoulder at last understood what had been done to it, and the pain was like burning liquid, dripping down his ribs, drooling across his chest and the side of his head. Each footstep brought a new wave of dizziness and nausea.
He tried to take another step and found he couldn't. With a sigh, he sank down onto the moss. Just a little rest, and then—
A shadow fell across him. He looked up to find two Yuuzhan Vong warriors looking down at him, obviously not a part of the group he had just killed.
He called on all of his energy, trying to find the piranha-beetles again, but they were a distant presence and gorged now, not as easily attracted to a meal by Anakin's will.
A third warrior appeared from the forest behind the first two. He looked different, somehow—mutilated like every other Yuuzhan Vong Anakin had seen, but he was more strikingly grotesque. Unlike the other two, this one was empty-handed.
The newcomer snarled something in his language, and the other two turned.
Anakin wondered, then, if he had slipped into a dream. The first two warriors grunted and spat words at the third. Anakin had heard the tone before—when the Yuuzhan Vong spoke of machines, or other things that they considered abominations. It was a tone of pure contempt.
For a moment the newcomer seemed to cringe beneath this abuse, but then he grinned, all needle teeth and malice. Then he slashed one of the warriors in the neck with the edge of his gloved hand. The other warrior gave a hoarse cry of outrage, lowered his amphistaff, and thrust at the attacker. The unarmed warrior caught the shaft, leapt high in the air, kicking with both feet and striking the staff-wielder in the face.
The first warrior down was coming back up, clutching
his throat. The unarmed one grabbed him by the hair and drove stiffened fingers deep into his eyes, lifting him from the ground by the sockets. The warrior went rigid, and when the newcomer let him drop he fell to the forest floor, twitching.
The warrior who had been kicked in the face didn't get up. Anakin suspected his neck was broken. The unarmed Yuuzhan Vong was the only one still standing. He squatted next to Anakin and peered at him with eyes
like algae-infested pools of water.
He looked—sick. The Yuuzhan Vong showed their rank by scarification and the sacrifice of body parts, but this one looked like an example of that gone horribly wrong. His hair hung in dank patches, and his face and neck were covered with scabs and open wounds. His scars looked swollen and unhealthy. Spiky growths that looked like dead or dying implants moldered on his shoulders and elbows. He stank of putrefaction.
After observing Anakin for a long moment, the Yuuzhan Vong rose, approached one of the bodies, and dug into its ear. He pulled out what looked like a worm of some sort and fed it into his own ear—or, rather, the festering hole that might once have been an ear. He shuddered, and his body spasmed as if in great pain. A thin drool of blood leaked from the orifice.
He turned back to Anakin and held out his hand.
"I am Vua Rapuung, Jeedai. You will come with me. I will help you."
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The young Jeedai fell, her body gripped with convulsions. A strangled cry filled the vivarium.
"Interesting," Mezhan Kwaad said, watching the reaction. "Do you see, Adept Yim, that—"
"I fail to see what interests you, Master Mezhan Kwaad," a voice said from behind.
Nen Yim turned and immediately supplicated. Another master had just entered the vivarium, one so incredibly ancient the signs of his domain were entirely obscured. His headdress was a fragile, cloudlike mass, and both hands were those of a master. Both of his eyes had been replaced by yellow maa'its. He was accompanied by an adept aide.
"Master Yal Phaath," Mezhan Kwaad said. "How good to see you, Ancient."
"Answer me, Mezhan Kwaad. What so interests you about this creature's agony? She is an infidel and cannot embrace the pain. There is no surprise in that and nothing interesting in it."
"It is interesting because the provoker spineray causing her pain has been designed to do so selectively," Mezhan Kwaad replied, "one nerve array at a time. What we have just seen is a reflex unknown in Yuuzhan Vong. We may now confidently map a part of the human nervous system that has no counterpart in our own."
"And this is of what use?" Yal Phaath asked.
"We cannot shape what we do not know," Mezhan Kwaad answered. "This species is new to us."
"It strains the protocol," the older master said. "What can be discovered that is not codified already?"
"But, Master," Nen Yim said, supplicating as she did so. "Surely in a new species—" She broke off when the master flicked the gaze of his maa'its toward her.
"Are all of your adepts so insolent?" he asked dryly.
"I should hope not," Mezhan Kwaad said stiffly.
Yal Phaath turned back to Nen Yim. His headdress writhed slightly in the air, turning a pale blue. "Adept, if knowledge is not to be found in the archives and sacred memories, what then does a shaper do?"
Fear glittered in Nen Yim's nerves. What could he see, with those strange eyes? The maa'its probed the hidden regions of the spectrum, of course, and the domain of the microscopic, but did they peer farther yet, into the sins crouched beneath her skull? She contracted the tendrils of her headdress into a ball, a deep supplication. "We petition the Supreme Overlord, Master, that he might ask of the gods."
"Correct. There are no new species, Adept. All life comes from the blood and flesh and bone of Yun-Yuuzhan. He knows them all. Knowledge cannot be created; that is the stuff of heresy. If the gods do not grant us knowledge, it is for good reason, and to seek further is an attempt to steal from them."
"Yes, Master Yal Phaath."
"I suspect this is not your fault, Adept. It is your own master who uses the provoker spineray so. You are susceptible to her influences."
Mezhan Kwaad smiled gently. "The protocol of Tsong specifies the use of the provoker in just such a manner."
" I am aware of that. But you strain the intent of that protocol. Not to breaking, perhaps. And yet who knows what I might have observed had I arrived a little later?"
"Are you accusing me of something, Master?" Mezhan Kwaad asked mildly. "If not, one might believe you are merely jealous because Lord Shimrra chose Domain Kwaad for the honor of this shaping."
"I accuse you of nothing, nor am I jealous. But dangerous heresies have surfaced in recent years, most often among Domain Kwaad."
"I have never been accused of heresy, nor have any of my subordinates," Mezhan Kwaad said. "If you try to bathe me in the filthy secretions of slander in a pitiable attempt to regain the favor of your domain with Lord Shimrra, you will discover I can be a most unresting foe."
The old shaper drew himself very erect. "I do not slander. But I watch, Mezhan Kwaad. Rest assured, I watch. And now—"
He broke off suddenly and staggered. His aide caught him. Nen Yim was still wondering what had happened when she suddenly felt something pressing her entire body, as if she were deep under water. Her lungs labored to draw the syrupy air and her pulse hammered.
Through flashes of blue and black, she saw that Mezhan Kwaad and Yal Phaath's aide were also struggling to breathe.
The pain increased sharply. Soon her eyeballs would collapse, then her heart. Striving for calm, she spun her failing gaze around the room.
The young Jeedai stood at the side of the vivarium, hands pressed against the transparent membrane. Her green eyes blazed and her teeth were drawn back from her lips in a rictus of fury. Nen Yim saw murder there, and suddenly understood.
She staggered toward her master. Mezhan Kwaad had already collapsed. The ol-villip that controlled the provoker spineray had fallen from her hands. Nen Yim took it up and stroked the variable tissues, all of them at once.
The Jeedai screamed and pounded on the membrane, and for an instant the pressure actually increased, crush-
ing so hard that Nen Yim couldn't breathe at all. Then, more suddenly than it had come, the uncanny pressure relented, and her lungs jerked in a much-needed breath.
The Jeedai writhed on the floor of her chamber. Nen Yim watched her, reaction starting to set in.
An eight-fingered hand fell on Nen Yim's shoulder.
"Adept," her master said, in a strained voice. "The ol-villip, please. Before the specimen dies."
Nen Yim nodded dumbly and handed Mezhan Kwaad the organism. Mezhan Kwaad adjusted it until the Jeedai stopped her contortions and succumbed to unconsciousness.
"That was well-wrought thinking, Adept," Mezhan Kwaad told her.
"What happened? Tell me," Yal Phaath demanded impatiently.
"The Jeedai did it," Mezhan Kwaad replied. "Surely you've heard of their powers."
"Do not insult me. I am, of course, current on the information concerning the Jeedai. They can move objects, communicate with one another as villips do, even influence the minds of weaker creatures. But there has never been any evidence that they can affect Yuuzhan Vong. Quite the contrary."
"I beg the master for permission to speak," Nen Yim said.
Yal Phaath gave her a reluctant glance. "Speak."
"The Jeedai did not affect us, not directly. She affected the molecules of the atmosphere, compressing them."
"She tried to crush us with our own air?"
"And would have succeeded but for my adept," Mezhan Kwaad observed.
"Amazing. And this power—it is not generated by implants of any kind?"
"She has no implants, either biological or"—her voice lowered—"mechanical. From our earlier interrogation,
she believes that she is manipulating a kind of energy produced by life."
"Ridiculous," Yal Phaath said. "If such a power existed, why would the gods deny it to the Yuuzhan Vong?"
Mezhan Kwaad smiled a carnivorous smile. "The gods have not denied it to us, they merely withheld it for a time. And now they have delivered it." She stepped to the vivarium membrane and parted it with a flick of her fourth finger. She knelt by the unconscious Jeedai and stroked her face.
"She is young, her body and mind still pliant to shaping. Th
e warriors promise us more like her, soon." She stood, looking down at the creature for a few moments, then stepped away and resealed the membrane.
The old master shrugged. "For the glory of the shapers and the Yuuzhan Vong, I wish you success." He sounded doubtful.
"You may observe anytime you wish," Mezhan Kwaad said. To Nen Yim it seemed as if her master was taunting Yal Phaath.
But the old master ran a negative ripple through his tendrils. "Among other things, I've come to take my leave. The new project awaits me, a shaping that will end this Jeedai threat forever."
Mezhan Kwaad stiffened a bit. "Oh?" she said politely.
"Indeed. Under interrogation, the infidels who serve us admitted that they were tricked by those who presently harass our ships in space. From this information came a most interesting item, about a certain sort of beast, one that can sense and hunt these Jeedai."
"The infidels knew where to find these beasts?"
"No," Yal Phaath said. "Not those on this moon, at any rate. But we have sources in their senate, and one of them was able to discover and provide the information. As it turns out, the beasts are native to a world already in possession of our Lord Shimrra, a planet the infidels call Myrkr. I am to oversee the shaping of these beasts."
"Interesting, about these beasts, if true," Mezhan Kwaad allowed. "For the glory of the Yuuzhan Vong, I wish you well. I also wish you success in leaving the system. Apparently the infidels have been quite successful in preventing outgoing traffic."
"I have no fear," the ancient master replied. "If Yun-Yuuzhan wants my life, it is his to take. But I suspect he has many tasks for me yet."
"Captain, one of the Yuuzhan Vong warships has broken orbit," H'sishi said. "It has a substantial escort."
Karrde stroked his mustache. "Get Solusar up here. Meanwhile, close distance, and have the Etherway and the Idiot's Array lay down a barrage. Let's keep her in the gas giant's mass shadow for as long as we can."
"Yes, sir," Dankin, the pilot, returned.
