Rebirth: Edge of Victory II

by Greg Keyes

  “They are being questioned, to verify or dispute your story.”

  “But Taan—” Tahiri began.

  “Will be fine,” Corran said, cutting her off.

  “The prisoner will not be harmed,” the dodecian confirmed. “Now. If you will accompany my aide, you will be provided with quarters and repast fit for your species.”

  “Are we prisoners?”

  “I would prefer you did not think of yourselves as such. You have been allowed to retain your Jedi weapons. But I would also prefer you remain confined to the quarters we assign you. The station is delicate. Were there to be violence of any sort, it could well suffer explosive decompression.”

  “I understand,” Corran said stiffly.

  Anakin did, too. It was a polite threat. Try to escape—suck vacuum. That was an equation it didn’t take a Givin to understand.

  “That is well,” the dodecian replied.

  Anakin caught something, then, from the dodecian, something so tangible it almost formed words. If it were put into words, it would go something like, We have Jedi to bargain with. That also is a factor.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Though his mind and mood sped through an astonishing array of transmogrifications, the perfect-grutchin idea somehow remained fixed firmly in the faltering brain of Master Kae Kwaad. Nen Yim and all of her apprentices were pulled even from standard maintenance and set to the task of weeding through grutchin germ plasm in search of “perfect” structures, incubating larvae and discarding those that displayed any slight deviation of form or color that Kae Kwaad detected. During this time, the master became ever more offensive, at one point demanding that Nen Yim work in a state of complete undress. At another, he forced Suung to get down on hands and knees and act as his stool, a task fit only for a slave.

  Nen Yim considered the inventory of toxins that one might accidentally ingest or accidents that might befall one in the business of shaping. Her plans began to form themselves.

  Ona Shai gripped her hands into fists behind her back and shot Nen Yim a deep glare.

  “The capillaries of the maw luur are belching half-digested wastes in the Toohi sector,” the prefect complained. “Many Shamed Ones have sickened from the fumes and cannot perform their tasks to full efficiency. A few have died.”

  “That is regrettable,” Nen Yim replied. “However, I am uncertain why you discuss it with me.”

  “Because your master will not admit me or speak to me via villip,” the prefect snarled.

  “I am his adept. I can do nothing without his leave.”

  “When you were the head shaper, things got done,” Ona Shai said. “Since this master has arrived, conditions have only gotten worse.”

  “If I agreed with that, I wouldn’t be at liberty to say so,” Nen Yim told her.

  “I don’t ask you to gossip with me as if we were a pair of slaves,” the prefect snapped. “I’m asking you to intercede, to place my words in the master’s ear. To release you, at least—or even Suung Aruh—to tend to this problem with the maw luur.”

  “I will certainly mention your concern.”

  Ona Shai nodded tersely and turned her back on Nen Yim. She could see the ridged muscles of the prefect’s back, as tight as the tendon-rigging of a landing sail. She also noticed that she had recently sacrificed three fingers to the gods.

  “This ship must last another year, at least, Adept. If it does, some of our habitants may survive to be offloaded onto a new worldship.”

  “I will speak to the master,” Nen Yim replied. “I can do no more.”

  Ona Shai dropped her head. “Disgraced we may be, Nen Yim,” she murmured. “But the gods cannot intend for us to die out here, so near the glory of conquest, able to see our new worlds but not to ever touch them. Death is nothing, but the ignominy …”

  “I shall speak to him,” Nen Yim repeated.

  Her path back to the shapers’ quarters was a crowded one. The Toohi sector was not the only dispossessed part of the ship; the Phuur arm had become unlivably cold toward the tip. With nowhere else to go, Shamed Ones and slave refugees crowded the halls. Their rustle of conversation quieted where she passed, but behind her it began again, with an angrier note to it. Once or twice, she was certain she heard the word Jeedai, and felt a quiver run along her spine.

  Tsavong Lah had killed nearly every slave and Shamed One who had been at Yavin 4, yet still somehow the legend of the Jeedai had spread even here.

  Was this yet another thing she would take the blame for?

  She found Kae Kwaad where she often did, clucking over the grutchin larvae, his useless hands drawn up onto his knees. He did not even glance at Nen Yim as she entered.

  “I’ve spoken to the prefect,” she said. “Ona Shai urges that we turn at least some attention to the functioning of the ship. Toohi sector is now experiencing noxious fumes.”

  “That’s interesting,” Kae Kwaad said thoughtfully. He pointed at one of the larvae, indistinguishable from the rest. “This one will have to be destroyed. Its color is off.”

  “Indeed,” Nen Yim said.

  “See to it,” Kae Kwaad said. “I must rest now.”

  “You should speak to the prefect,” Nen Yim pressed.

  “What would a master shaper have to say to the likes of her?” Kwaad sneered. “You have spoken to her. It is enough.”

  Nen Yim watched him go, then despondently turned her attention to the larva. She was carrying it toward the orifice, to feed it to the maw luur, when she suddenly understood that she was no longer considering the death of Kae Kwaad, but was committed to it. Not only that, but she had chosen the method of his death.

  Grutchins were used to breach the hulls of infidel ships and contained an acid powerful enough to eat through metal alloys. A single bite from one would be sufficient to end the life of her miserable master.

  So instead of destroying the pupa, she worked her own shaping on it. She removed neurons from the tiny brain of the grutchin, and with the protocol of Qah imprinted a simple series of reflexes keyed to the scent signature of Kae Kwaad, which she obtained from skin cells shed in his quarters. As a failsafe, she made the triggering of the reflexes dependent 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, “you are a master. You could do it yourself.”

  “I haven’t the hands to make hands.”

  “But I 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 FOUR

  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 had 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 all.

  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.