by Greg Keyes
"And get Solusar up here," Karrde repeated. "We'll need him for this."
"I'm already here, Captain Karrde."
Indeed, Solusar was standing just behind him. "Ah. Perfect. The Yuuzhan Vong are trying to punch a ship through our defenses, presumably to leave the system. My question is, should I let them go?"
"You haven't let any others go," Solusar pointed out.
"True. But none of those tried in such force. If we fight here, I'll lose ships, more than we can spare. If I thought relief was on the way, I might risk it. As it is, I need to know—are there Jedi on that ship?"
For an instant, Karrde saw a twinge of what might pass for fear in the Jedi's eyes.
"I can't be certain," Solusar said stiffly.
"Why not?"
"I can't sense the Yuuzhan Vong in the Force. Their ships might as well be lifeless asteroids as far as my senses are concerned."
"Then I should think the children would stand out in quite a spectacular manner."
"They should, and they don't. If it weren't important, I would say there are no non-Yuuzhan Vong on any of those ships. But it is important. If I'm wrong, we might end up letting them go—then we'd be fighting here for nothing."
"How might you be wrong? I don't understand."
"The Yuuzhan Vong not only don't exist in the Force—they make me doubt my Jedi senses altogether. They make the whole area . .. murky, somehow. I've no better way to explain it."
Karrde looked back at the screen. The Yuuzhan Vong had scrambled fighters.
"I can't wait much longer, Solusar. I have to decide. Forget the ships; try to sense them on the moon. If they're still there, they can't be on that warship."
"I'll try," the Jedi said. He closed his eyes.
Karrde watched the enemy fighters race closer. So far, he had managed hit-and-run operations at minimal risk to his people. He'd made good use of mines and asteroids and other classic guerrilla weapons of intrasystem war.
But if he had to stop that ship, he would have to commit to a real stand-up-slug-it-out battle, a battle he could win—at the cost of the war.
Maybe that was all they wanted. His instincts certainly told him that this was a decoy of some kind, not what he was fighting for. Solusar seemed to concur. But if they couldn't be sure . . .
"First fighter wave in thirty seconds," H'sishi said tonelessly.
"Get ready, people."
A good crew. They would die if he asked them to.
"Tahiri," Solusar breathed. His face was beaded with sweat.
"What's that?"
"Tahiri. And Valin. Sannah. Anakin. They're all down there." His voice dropped lower, into a register of anguish, "Tahiri's been tortured."
"But they're down there."
"Yes. I'm sure of it."
"Thank you, Jedi Solusar. Dankin, break off the attack. We're letting this one go. Lay down minimal cover fire and tell the other ships to burn jets. We'll fight another day, people—when it really counts." Karrde took a deep breath, trying to release the pent-up tension in his neck and shoulders.
"And hope those Solo kids find that rogue Terrik before we have to fight that fight. After this, I'm definitely looking into getting my own Star Destroyer."
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Anakin arched his back and tried not to cry out as whatever the Yuuzhan Vong put on his wound sent cosmic flares of pain through his body.
"You hate pain," Vua Rapuung said with evident disgust.
Anakin couldn't and didn't disagree. He just gritted his teeth and waited for it to pass. He knew the Yuuzhan Vong venerated pain in themselves and others. It was one of many unlikable tenets of their unhealthy religion.
"What hit me?" Anakin asked instead.
"A nang hul," the warrior grunted. "Thud bug."
"Poison?"
"No."
The two sat in a damp cave behind a waterfall. It was slick with fungus and moss. The Yuuzhan Vong had evidently been hiding in the cave for a day or two, for various of his possessions were already in it, including the patch he had just applied to Anakin's shoulder. He'd peeled it from a pale green, roughly rectangular pad several centimeters thick. The pad consisted of many thin layers, like leaves of flimsiplast glued together. Rapuung had pressed one of these detached skins over Anakin's wound. Like everything else the Yuuzhan Vong used, it was alive. Anakin could feel it squirming, digging into his wound. It occurred to him that the warrior might be poisoning him or something even worse. But if Vua Rapuung wanted him dead, he could have accomplished
that anytime. After all, he had made short work of two Yuuzhan Vong warriors, and Anakin didn't have the strength to fight off a wokling.
"You saved my life," Anakin said reluctantly.
"Life is nothing," Vua Rapuung said.
"Yeah? Then why take the trouble?"
Vua Rapuung's black eyes glimmered murkily. "You, Jeedai. You fight your way toward the shaper compound. Why?"
" Your people have a friend of mine. I'm going to get her back."
"Ah. The female Jeedai. You wish to save her life. How pitiful. What a pitiful goal."
"Yeah? Well, I didn't ask for your help, you offered it. So explain or kill me. I haven't got time to waste."
"Revenge," Vua Rapuung said, his voice low, his eyes slitted. "Revenge, and to prove that the gods—" His eyes suddenly went hard and glittering. "I need not tell you, human. I need explain nothing to you, unsanctioned offspring of machines." He spat the last word out as if it were poison he'd suddenly discovered in his mouth.
"You need know only this," he continued. "I will stand at your side or your back. Your foes are my foes. We will kill together, embrace pain together, embrace death together if such is Yun-Yuuzhan's wish."
"You'll help me rescue Tahiri," Anakin said dubiously.
" It's a stupid goal, but finding her will serve my purposes well."
Anakin searched that black diamond gaze, trying to understand. There was nothing there, nothing. The Yuuzhan Vong was more like a holo than a person, an image, an appearance. How could such a thing have feelings to be understood? Without the Force, how could he hope to comprehend such an alien creature?
"I don't understand," Anakin said. "What did your people do to you? Why do you hate them so?"
Vua Rapuung slapped him, hard, and bounded to his feet, chest heaving.
"Do not mock me!" he shrieked. "You have eyes! You see! Do not mock me! The gods did not do this to me, they did not!"
As the Yuuzhan Vong started toward him again, Anakin hefted a rock with the Force and sent it straight for the warrior's sternum. It caught Rapuung completely by surprise, smacking him against the side of the cave. He sank down, looking a bit dazed.
Anakin hefted the rock again and poised it over Rapuung's head.
The Yuuzhan Vong looked up at the stone and suddenly started hacking as if he had the Dagobian swamp cough.
It took half a minute of this before Anakin recognized it as laughter.
When he calmed down, Vua Rapuung fixed the young Jedi with a curious gaze. "I saw what you did to the hunters, but still, to have it turned on me—" His face hardened again. "Tell me the truth, one warrior to another, if you can. In the warrior caste there are rumors. It is said your Jeedai powers come from machine implants. Is this true? Are your people that sick?"
Anakin returned the challenging stare. "Our powers do not come from machines. Furthermore, some of your people must know that, because they've had ample opportunity to dissect some of us. Your rumor is a lie."
"Yes? Then the Jeedai Master does not have a machine hand?"
"Master Skywalker? He does, but—" He broke off. "How do you know this?"
"We hear many stories from converts and spies. So it is true, then. The leader of the Jeedai is part machine." Rapuung's face probably couldn't have shown more disgust without being surgically altered.
"One has nothing to do with the other. Master Luke
lost a hand in a gre
at battle. He had it replaced. But his power, like mine, flows from the Force."
"Do you have implants like your master?"
"No."
"Will you receive them as you attain rank?"
Anakin laughed briefly. "No."
Vua Rapuung nodded. "Then it is as I said. We will fight together."
"Not if you keep flying off course like you did a minute ago," Anakin replied. "I may be injured, but as you've seen, I'm not without resources."
"I see," Rapuung growled, "but do not challenge me. I dislike it."
"You keep the same thing in mind, pal. Now. You say we're going to fight together but you won't tell me why. Can you at least tell me how?"
"The shapers have planted five damuteks on this moon. That is where your Jeedai companion is held."
Anakin let pass the precise definition of damutek for the moment. "Why? What will they do to her?"
Murder flashed in Rapuung's eyes again, but this time he mastered it without an outburst. "Who can know the mind of a shaper?" he said, softly. "But you can be sure they will shape."
"I don't understand. What is a shaper?"
"Your ignorance is—" Rapuung stopped, blinked his eyes slowly closed, open, closed, and started again. "The shapers are a caste, the caste nearest the great god, Yun-Yuuzhan, who shaped the universe from his body. It is they who know the ways of life, who bend it to our needs."
"Bioengineers? Scientists?"
Rapuung stared at him for a second. "The tizowyrm that translates for me makes no sense from those words. I suspect they are obscene."
"Never mind. There was a Jedi named Miko Reglia. Your people tried to break his will with a yammosk. They
tried to do the same to another Jedi named Wurth Skidder. Is that what you think they'll do to Tahiri?"
"I do not care what they do to your Jeedai. But what you describe is—" He grimaced. "I once knew a shaper who spoke of such things, of warriors who thought they could do the task of shapers, as you describe. But breaking is not shaping. It is a child's parody of it. Understand, the shapers make our worldships. They make the yammosk. They will not try to break your Jeedai—they will remake her."
A chill seeped into Anakin's veins, and he remembered his vision of an older Tahiri.
He knew what they would make of her. And they would succeed, if Anakin failed.
What Rapuung offered might be a cruel trick, a part of some devious plan; Anakin would have to take that risk. Without the Force to guide him, he could never be certain the Yuuzhan Vong wasn't telling the truth. Now was no time to dither. Any course that would take him closer to Tahiri was worth plotting, even if he had to let someone he didn't trust do some of the figures.
"Okay," he said. "Let's go back to an earlier vector. You said something about damuteks?"
"The sacred precincts within which the shapers live and work."
"How many of them? How many shapers?"
"I don't know for certain. Around twelve, if initiates are included."
"That's all? That's all the Vong on this world?"
Rapuung spat something Anakin didn't understand. He didn't seem to be so much angry as in genuine shock.
"Do not—never refer to us in that way," he sputtered. "How can you be so ignorant? Or do you wish to insult?"
"Not that time," Anakin said.
"To use the word Vong alone is an insult. It implies that the person so addressed does not have the favor and kinship of gods or family."
"Sorry."
Rapuung didn't answer, but stared out into the forest.
"We should go," he said, "I have hidden our scent from the trackers, but they will find us soon enough if we stay still."
"Agreed," Anakin said. "But first—how many Yuuzhan Vong on this moon, total, would you think?"
Vua Rapuung considered briefly. "A thousand, perhaps. More warriors in space."
"And we'll fight our way through all of them? "
"Was that not your plan?" Rapuung asked. "Does the number we face mean anything to you?"
Anakin shook his head. "Only in terms of tactics. Tahiri is there. I'll find her and get her out, no matter how many Yuuzhan Vong I have to walk through."
"Very well. You can walk, now?"
"I can walk. Soon I can run. It might hurt, but I can do it."
"Life is suffering," Vua Rapuung said. "We go."
CHAPTER TWENTY
Vua Rapuung gnashed his teeth. "No, ignorant one," he growled. "Not that way."
Anakin didn't look at him, but kept his gaze wandering through the whispering Massassi trees, searching for shadows that did not agree with the wind in their motion.
The two stood at the divide of the ridge top; one stone spine snaked down and away to Anakin's right, the other continued up and to his left. Anakin had started up the steepening trail.
"Why?" he asked. "The search craft are over there." He waved toward the lowlands off the left ridge.
"They are not 'craft,' " Rapuung snapped.
"You know what I meant."
"How do you know where they are, when you cannot sense Yuuzhan Vong or the life shaped for us?"
"Because I can sense everything native in this forest," Anakin replied. "Every whisper bird and runyip, every stintaril and Woolamander. And the ones over there are agitated. I get flashes."
"This is so? How many fliers? Five, yes?"
Anakin focused his concentration. "I think so."
"They will split into a lav peq pattern, then. First the lowland, then arcs tightening to the highest point. If they find us up here, they will converge and release netting beetles."
"What are netting beetles?"
"If we do not isolate ourselves on an elevation, you will not find out. This is not air warfare, Jeedai, and unless you plan to fortify this high spot and fight all of the warriors on this moon, altitude is of no use to you."
"I want a look at the lay of the land."
"Why?"
"Because you've gotten us lost, that's why. You no more know where the Vo—the Yuuzhan Vong base is than a mynock knows how to play sabacc."
"I can find the shaper damutek. But if we slash a straight line toward them, they will snare us."
"I know this moon," Anakin said. "You don't." He stopped, staring suspiciously at the warrior. "How did you find me, anyway?"
"I followed the search parties, infidel. You were slashing a straight path, weren't you? Yes. Without me, you would have been captured ten times by now."
"Without you, I would have been in your shaper base by now."
"Yes. I just said that," Rapuung said. He closed his eyes, as if listening to something. "What do your Jeedai senses tell you now? "
Anakin frowned in concentration. "I think they've split up," he said reluctantly.
"I can hear them," Vua Rapuung said. "Not as well as I once could. Once my ears were ..." He reached and lightly touched the festering, oozing scar tissue on the side of his head. He snarled and dropped his hand.
"We go down," he said.
"I go up," Anakin replied. He started up the trail. He didn't look back, but after he had gone perhaps thirty strides, he heard what he guessed to be a Yuuzhan Vong profanity and the sound of footsteps pacing up behind him.
"Gee," Anakin breathed. Tears stung his eyes.
He stood at the crest of the height, where he could see
the familiar meander of the Unnh River. He'd seen this spot from the air maybe fifty times, and knew it as well as he knew any place.
Except that things had changed. The Great Temple— which had stood for untold thousands of years, watching the passage of the people who built it, of Jedi dark and brilliant, the destruction of the Death Star—was gone without a trace.
In its place near the river were five spacious compounds formed like many-rayed stars. The walls were thick and perhaps two stories high, and probably had chambers in them. The inner courtyards were open to the sky. Two seemed to be filled with water, another with a pale ye
llow fluid that probably wasn't water. Another had structures in its central space—domes and polyhedrons of various shapes, all the same color as the larger structure. The fifth was full of coralskippers and larger spacegoing ships. Lots of them.
It looked like canals had been dug from the river to connect the compounds.
"We must descend before they scent us," Vua Rapuung insisted again.
"I thought that stuff you rubbed on us fools the sniffers, or whatever they are."
"It causes confusion. It gives us time to hide. There is no place to hide here, and they will see us. There is no fooling that."
There is for Jedi, usually, Anakin thought. But he could no more cloud a Yuuzhan Vong mind than he could dance on the surface of a black hole.
"There's cover," he said. The hill was blanketed mostly in scrub and lacked the high canopy that grew over most of the moon's land surface, but the bushes were usually more than head-high.
"Not from heat-pit sensors," Rapuung demurred. "Not from netting beetles. No water."
Anakin nodded thoughtfully, but he was really still ex-
amining the shaper base, barely paying attention to the Yuuzhan Vong beside him.
"Outside of the big compounds—all of those little structures that look like somebody just threw them down and let them grow—what's all that? It looks like a shantytown."
"I don't know that word, shantee. That is where the workers and slaves and Shamed Ones live."
"Support colony. They do the drudge work."
"If the tizowyrm translates correctly, yes."
"Workers and slaves I know. What are Shamed Ones?"
"Shamed Ones are cursed by the gods," Rapuung said. "They work as slaves. They are not worth speaking of."
"Cursed how?"
"When I say they are not worth speaking of, how do my words confuse you?"
"Fine," Anakin sighed. "Have it your way."
"My way is to leave this ridge, work spiralwise toward where the gas giant sets. Quickly."
"That's the wrong direction! We're only a few kilometers away!"
"All the forest below is trapped," Rapuung said. "The river, too. There is only one way in for us, and I know it."
"Tell me what it is, then," Anakin said. "Convince—" But he stopped. "Listen."
Rapuung nodded. "I hear them. They are weaving the lav peq. I was foolish to trust you. You think with something other than your brain." He pressed his frayed and ulcerous lips together in an expression of contempt.
