by Greg Keyes
on a word she herself would utter.
When the grutchins had matured, she would speak the name Mezhan, and
Kae Kwaad would die, her new master slain symbolically by her old.
When she was finished, Nen Yim slept, and for the first time since Kae
Kwaad had come aboard the Baanu Miir, her sleep was peaceful and dreamless.
A ket later, the pupae began to molt.
When he saw the small but adult beasts, Kae Kwaad began to shriek
incoherently and sank into what appeared to be a deep depression. Calmly,
Nen Yim bore his ranting and whims, waiting until the end of the day, when
the initiates had been dismissed.
"I want all of the initiates killed," Kae Kwaad said quietly. "They are
plotting against me."
"I am sure they are not," Nen Yim told him. "They have worked
diligently. It is only their training that is at fault, and I am to blame
for that."
Why was she trying to reason with him, even now? She eyed the
grutchins, an arm's length away. She and Kae Kwaad were alone now. She need
only speak the word.
She had taken the breath for it when he spoke again.
"No, Nen Tsup, seductive Nen Tsup, perhaps I am to blame. It is my
hands, you see. They are not as steady as once they were." She noticed that
he spoke with a sort of glacial slowness, and his eyes had a peculiar look
to them. "My thoughts are drops of blood," he whispered. "Pooling at my
feet. My every thought is a sacrifice."
Nen Yim hesitated. It was as if, far in the distance, she saw a door
dilate open, with strange light beyond. She kept the word in her throat and
moved nearer, near enough that their bodies were touching. His glazed eyes
met hers, and she endured as he caressed her with those stunted hands.
How is it you were not sacrificed to the gods, Kae Kwaad? she wondered.
How is it you live to shame your domain and species?
For an instant his eyes changed, sparked, as if he knew what she was
thinking, as if they were in on the same joke and only pretending to act
their roles.
It was gone very quickly.
"Master," she asked, "why is it you do not replace your hands?"
He looked down at them. "My hands. Yes, they should be replaced. But it
is denied me. Only another master can
access that protocol, and none will do it. They are all against me, you
know."
"I know," she whispered, leaning her mouth near his ear "And yet," she
said, lowering her voice even farther, "yon are a master. You could do it
yourself."
"I haven't the hands to make hands."
"But / do, Master Kae Kwaad. I do."
"And you would have to learn the protocol," Kae Kwaad replied. "And you
are forbidden it."
Now her lips were touching his ear. "I might do much that is forbidden,
Master," she said.
He turned to look at her. She saw nothing behind his eyes now, and it
suddenly occurred to her that he might be worse than mad; he might be using
one of the ancient, forbidden toxins that induced stupor. Such a
self-indulgence. . . would be exactly like this being, she finished.
He hit her, then, a backhand that shattered one of her teeth and sent
her spinning to the ground with the taste of blood in her mouth. She lay
there, expecting him to follow the attack, ready to speak the word. This was
her last chance; if she hesitated longer, he would have the grutchins
destroyed because he thought them somehow imperfect.
He kept looking at her with that same vague expression, as if he had
never moved his hand, never touched her.
"Fetch the Qang qahsa villip," he said quietly. "I shall give you
access. You shall shape me new hands. The perfect grutchin will not escape
us."
A trembling, diminutive triumph quivered in Nen Yim's breast. She
nurtured it with caution. Much could still go wrong, but she had found a
chance, at least, to save the worldship. Though she wished she could bathe
her body in acid to erase Kae Kwaad's touch, he had agreed to give her the
thing she needed most.
As she went to find the villip, she promised herself that whatever else
happened, whether she saved the ship or failed, whether she was executed for
heresy or not, this wretched, pathetic thing whose touch had polluted her
would die before she did.
PART IV
REBIRTH
THIRTY-SIX
Realspace greeted Jaina with an actinic flare and a shock wave that
bucked her X-wing violently. She flinched instinctively, closing her eyes
against the glare, the memory of impaired sight still imprinted on her
nervous system.
Have some sense, girl, she thought, forcing them back open. You're in
enemy territory!
And about to smack into an asteroid, the same one the coralskipper
Gavin Darklighter had just drilled had exploded against. She yawed hard to
port to avoid an identical fate.
"Heads up, Sticks," Gavin's voice crackled in her ear. "Rogues, form
up. We've got plenty of company on the way."
"As ordered, Lead," Jaina said, weaving her way through the irregular
bits of shattered planet that stretched as far as her sensors could make
out.
Starboard and above her horizon, the yellow star at the heart of the
system was half eclipsed by the outstretched arms of the distant gravitic
weapon. Nearer and dead ahead was the more immediate target of Rogue
Squadron-the cordon where Kre'fey's stripped-down Interdictor had sacrificed
itself. Its shields had already collapsed, and its mass-shadow generators
were random ions; but an expanding cloud of superheated gas marked clearly
where it had been. Wedge had added one thing to the Bothan admiral's already
good idea-he'd rigged the reactor to go supercritical when the shields
reached 12 percent.
There was no knowing how many Yuuzhan Vong ships it had taken with it.
However many it had, there were plenty left coming through the drifting
planetary shards, and they were the business of Rogue Squadron. Calculations
had shown that the temporary shift in gravitic stresses in the system would
give them a very small window of opportunity-not big enough to risk
Kre'fey's larger ships on, but plenty big enough to sneak the Rogues and
Kyp's Dozen through. The Dozen were headed straight for the weapon to scout
out whatever forces were guarding the thing. The Rogues' job was to clean
out the Yuuzhan Vong nested around the stable hyperspace entry, which was
the only way in for the Ralroost-and for the Yuuzhan Vong forces at the
perimeter of the system. The Rogues had to gain control of it.
"I make something big at the target coordinates," Gavin informed them.
"Might be a ship; might be a battle station. Designate Wampa. One-flight,
we'll take that. Two and Three, keep those skips off us."
Jaina double-clicked to acknowledge, and peeled off with Three-flight,
lining up off Twelve's port wing. She felt a brief sadness, remembering that
she had once flown wing for Anni Capstan, back when she first joined the
squadron. Anni had died at the Battle of Ithor. Twelve was a stranger, a
Duros named Lensi. Jaina ha
d met him in the final briefing.
"Turn two hundred thirty-one to twenty-three," Alinn Varth, leader of
Jaina's flight, ordered. "We'll take that bunch."
Jaina acknowledged and did as ordered, seeing as she did so a flight of
eight skips in pyramid formation, coming in fast. The space around was
relatively clear of asteroids now, reflecting the low mass-density that made
the area safe for jumping into and out of. Jaina felt exposed.
"Only two to one," Lensi said. "Not bad."
"Don't get cocky, Twelve," Varth snapped. "This is just the first
course."
"As ordered," Twelve responded. Then he rolled, firing splinter shots
at extreme range. Jaina stayed with him, but held her fire until they were
closer in. The skips began firing all at once; Jaina jinked the stick and
cut a hard corkscrew turn. The plasma globs went by without even singing.
Now behind the skip that had fired at her, she got a targeting lock on it
and began spraying it with underpowered shots. The skip produced a void and
began absorbing them, but in doing so lost some of its mobility and taxed
its power. When the shots started getting through, Jaina switched to a
full-power quad burst.
To her surprise, the anomaly gobbled that, too.
Sithspawn. "Watch it, Twelve," Jaina said. "They're on to the bait and
switch. They're letting the splinter shots in early."
"Acknowledged. Let me dust that off your tail, Eleven."
A quick glance showed Jaina she had indeed picked up an admirer. She
yanked her stick back, hard, but the skip followed. Her shield took a hit.
Twelve dropped in behind the skip while Jaina put her X-wing through a
series of convoluted maneuvers. The skip hung right in there.
"Grounded for too long," she muttered.
Then the tagalong flared and tumbled, trailing plasma.
"Thanks, Twelve," she said.
"Not a problem."
Jaina dropped and rolled down to target another coral-skipper. Like the
previous one, this one started letting the splinters through early.
"We can learn, too," she said under her breath. She kept up the spray,
fired quad lasers, then fired again on full power. Three glowing holes
appeared in the skip. It continued along its vector, no longer firing. Jaina
wasted no more time on it, but found Twelve and dropped back to his port.
"Let's get that stray," Twelve said.
"Negative, Twelve," Nine's voice crackled. "Re-form. We can't get them
all, and we can't afford to let them separate us for any length of time."
"As ordered," Twelve acknowledged.
Four more skips were coming in. If we don't get this door open soon,
Jaina thought, we'll never get it open at ail,
A sudden harsh crackle quivered Jaina's eardrums. Then
Gavin's voice. "I've lost Three," he said. "Deuce, take my back. I'm
going in."
Jaina gritted her teeth, wishing she could see what was going on at
Wampa, but she had her own problems. Three skips came up on her port. She
hated to do it, but after a little splinter fire she switched to proton
torpedoes. A void appeared to catch the deadly missile, and as programmed
the warhead detonated before it could be sucked in. The bonus was that the
explosion was near enough to take out all three Yuuzhan Vong fighters.
That's right, boys. Keep coming like that.
Then it occurred to her they were probably encouraging her to waste the
torps. After all, they were never going to take out that monster down in the
shipwomb with lasers.
But of course, they couldn't take it out at all if they died here. One
thing at a time.
The Falcon bounced on the expanding plume of vaporized coral her lasers
had just coaxed out of the interdictor. Han's view of the massive ship
broadened, and also allowed the fifteen or so coralskippers on his tail a
shot at the Falcon without danger of hitting their mother ship. Cursing, Han
dived low again and quickly encountered the major problem with that, one he
had never encountered while using similar tactics against Imperial Star
Destroyers.
The Yuuzhan Vong ship opened a void. If Han's reflexes had been a
single twitch slower, they would have smacked right into it, and he didn't
want to find out what that would do. He hit the repulsors and bounced again,
intentionally this time, hurling the Millennium Falcon into a tight arc that
quickly became a circle. The skips followed-in time for half of them to run
into a new explosion, this one from a concussion missile.
"That's better," he grunted.
"We're doomed," C-3PO noted.
"Lock it down. We've seen a lot worse than this."
"Might I point out-"
"No."
The quad lasers were pounding steadily, Jacen and Leia doing their
part. A gratifying number of skips had already succumbed to his family's
efforts, but they weren't the problem. The big ships were the problem,
especially the Interdictor.
Only the Falcon had a shot at it. Karrde's ships were fighting for
their lives against the two Peace Brigade vessels and the Yuuzhan Vong
frigate analog.
"Han Solo," he muttered, "suckered into the most obvious pirate trap
imaginable. I'll never live it down."
"I'll add that to the list of other things you'll never live down," his
wife's voice said over the open intercom.
"Yeah, well, you'd better hope I do live this one down, sweetheart."
"Dad?" Jacen said. "Did lever mention this whole pirate thing was a bad
idea?"
"Why no, son, you-Wow!"
His exclamation was comment on the jet of plasma the interdictor had
just released. Its diameter was greater than that of the Falcon, spearing up
like a solar flare. He avoided it by a turn so sharp that even with the
inertial compensators at 98 percent, the g's sent blood rushing from his
head.
Behind him, he heard a loud clattering sound as C-3PO smacked into a
bulkhead. Again.
"Okay," Han muttered. "Time for a change in strategy. Threepio, quit
fooling around and haul yourself up here. I need you."
The golden droid's head peeped around the corner. "You need me? I would
be happy to be of service, Captain Solo, but I don't see how a protocol
droid could be of help. Unless you want me to transmit our surrender, which
I must say seems like a bad idea, even when you consider the alternative."
"That's not it," Han said, weaving through a cloud of fresh skips.
"Earlier, we noticed an odd radiation signature from one of those cargo
pods. Figure out what it is."
"Sir, I really don't see-
"It's that or you start working on your surrender speech."
C-3PO moved to the sensor readout. "I'm quite sure I don't know what
I'm doing. Nevertheless, I hasten to be of service. Oh, why didn't I stay
with Master Luke?"
THIRTY-SEVEN
"This is driving me crazy," Tahiri fussed. "Not knowing. For all we can
tell, the Yuuzhan Vong have already taken over the entire system."
"I think there are a few hundred Jedi proverbs about patience," Corran
said. "Though they all elude me just this moment. Try to follow Anakin's
example." He
paused. "I can't believe I just said that."
Anakin hardly paid attention to his companions. He was mostly beyond
the plain, boxy room they were "guests" in, riding the Force out through the
reaches of the Yag'Dhul system. He brushed the intricate, mathematical
beauty of the tides of the planet and its three moons, felt the straining of
Yag'Dhul's atmosphere toward space. He heard the whispering of millions of
Givin minds in the corridors of their hermetically sealed cities. He touched
a billion shards of stone and ice that had never cohered into planets,
biding their time until the sun finally caught them in its fiery noose.
And he felt them, the Yuuzhan Vong. Not in the Force exactly, but
through the telepathic lambent incorporated in his lightsaber. The feeling
was akin to a faint, staticky comm signal-but it was unmistakable.
"They're here," he said.
"Who?" Corran asked.
"The Yuuzhan Vong. They're in the system. I can't tell anything else,
nothing about how many or how-" He choked off as something new, strong, and
terrible struck him in the Force. He gasped, and tears welled in his eyes,
spilling down his cheeks.
"What?" Tahiri said. "What's wrong?"
"Mara," Anakin managed. "Don't you feel it? Aunt Mara is dying. And
Uncle Luke ..." He sprang up from his cross-legged position. "We have to get
out of here. Now." He drew his lightsaber.
"Anakin, we can't," Corran said. "The dodecian wasn't kidding when he
threatened to decompress the station. The Givin can survive in vacuum,
remember?"
"We have to do something," Anakin said hotly.
"Anakin, dying on Yag'DhuI Station won't help Mara. We have to keep our
heads."
"I won't just sit here and wait for them to come for us. We can't leave
it up to the Givin to decide whether we live or die."
"I say we escape," Tahiri said. "All we need is another ship."
"As long as you're wishing for the unlikely," Corran said, "why not at
least wish for vac suits first. That way we would at least stand a chance of
reaching the imaginary ship we're going to steal."
"You used this place as a base once," Anakin reminded him. "Don't you
know where they would keep vac suits?"
"Well, I've considered that, of course, but I don't see any reason the
Givin would still have those around. Or that they would be in the same place
