Conquest: Edge of Victory I

by Greg Keyes

  “Who’s there?” a voice asked, from the shadows around the pool. Anakin stepped back quickly, heart running toward lightspeed, and withdrew into the darkness in the far corner of the compound.

  “Your pardon,” he rasped, grateful for the tizowyrm in his ear. He tried to make his voice sound as much like a Yuuzhan Vong’s as possible. “I am no one, a Shamed One.”

  The figure in the darkness shifted, and he could suddenly see more of her silhouette. Something was strange about her head. It wriggled like a nest of snakes, like nothing he had yet seen among the Yuuzhan Vong.

  “This is the compound of the shapers,” the woman’s voice said. “You have no business here, Shamed One.”

  “I beg pardon, great one,” Anakin said. “I wished only—I had hoped the waters of the succession pool would inspire me to beseech Yun-Shuno persuasively.”

  The silence stretched. “I should report you, you know. Only those Shamed Ones with passage pheromone are allowed here. I—” He heard a little gasp of pain.

  “Is anything the matter, great one?”

  “No,” she replied in a strained voice. “It is only my suffering. I came here to contemplate it. Go, Shamed One. I would not interrupt my reverie over you. Go, leave me in peace, and count yourself fortunate.”

  “Thank you, great shaper. As you will.”

  And with that, he withdrew. Sweat was coursing down his brow, and his limbs trembled slightly, but triumph was a supernova inside of him. He had what he needed, now.

  The supernova cooled a little as he left the damutek and padded back into the village of the Shamed Ones. He needed more than the lambent and the lightsaber. He needed time, and solitude, and even the lenient Uunu wasn’t likely to give him that. But he also couldn’t wait for Vua Rapuung any longer. Uunu was suspicious of him. Hul Rapuung had voiced a similar suspicion, that very first day.

  And Vua Rapuung might be dead.

  So he needed to hide somewhere. Where?

  Puzzling over that, he ran headlong into someone. A Yuuzhan Vong cursed, and a strong hand knotted in his hair. Startled, Anakin dropped both his lightsaber and the lambent, which flared into sudden light.

  In the illumination, a mutilated face stared down at him.

  “Vua Rapuung!” he gasped.

  “Yes,” the other growled. “Quiet that lambent.”

  “Let go of me, then.”

  The Yuuzhan Vong did so, and Anakin dropped to one knee, retrieving both items. Be still, he thought at the lambent, picturing it dark.

  The light paled and vanished.

  “What are you doing with that?” Rapuung snarled.

  “Never mind. I’m glad to see you. I’ve heard—”

  “They tried to kill me,” Rapuung said shortly. “We must act now. Tonight, or never.”

  “We can’t!” Anakin said. “There’s something I still have to do.”

  “Impossible.”

  “No, listen. You said one reason you wanted me was because of my lightsaber, right?”

  “It would help us a great deal,” Rapuung growled reluctantly. “Without it I am not certain how we will circumvent the portals and safeguards.” He cocked his head. “You lied to me? You have the weapon?”

  “It doesn’t work. But I can fix it. With the lambent I can fix it.”

  “Do so, then, and hurry.”

  “Even if I hurry, it could take a day or two.”

  “Again, impossible. We cannot hide for two days here, and if we go beyond the perimeter, we will never come back in.”

  “I need two days,” Anakin said stubbornly.

  “Tomorrow they will realize I am alive,” Rapuung said. “Unless you have a Jeedai sorcery to make us invisible …”

  “No,” Anakin said, “but—listen. The temple that was here, the one built of stone. How was it destroyed?”

  “What? A damutek was landed on it. Its substance was dissolved and used to nourish the coral.”

  “But did they fill in the caverns below it?”

  “Caverns?”

  “Yes,” Anakin said excitedly. “If they just flattened the temple with one of these damuteks, the caverns underneath might still be there. Didn’t you say the damuteks drive down roots, or something—for water and minerals?”

  Rapuung swore. “Of course,” he said. “If there are indeed caverns of size below, and if the gods are with us—but of course they are. I am Vua Rapuung.”

  He said this last as if repeating a mantra, and Anakin felt renewed apprehension, remembering Uunu’s opinion of Rapuung. If there had indeed been an official attempt on his life, he might have gone from being a solenoid short of a transformer to a fused mess of circuits.

  But did it matter? Mad or not, Rapuung was the closest thing to an ally Anakin had. Right now, he would take what he could get.

  Rapuung kept talking, almost to himself it seemed. “They will think we have run into the jungle again. She will search for us there, never in the very roots of her stronghold. Never below her very feet. But we will need gnullith breathers.”

  “You can get those, right?” Anakin asked.

  “I can get them. But this is a risk,” Rapuung warned him. “If we are noticed entering the roots, we will be sealed there to die very long, very ignoble deaths.”

  “More ignoble than dying a Shamed One?” Anakin shot back. “Besides, it never occurred to me you were worried by risk.”

  He couldn’t see Rapuung’s face, but he could imagine the glare there.

  “A good thing you never thought that,” Rapuung replied. “A very good thing. As I said. Wait here.”

  And he was gone, leaving only his putrid scent and the shadow of his anger. Anakin was once again alone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  “Adept Nen Yim?”

  Nen Yim searched the darkened laboratory grotto for the sound of her name and found it coming from a young male with the forehead marks of Domain Qel—one of the smaller minor shaper domains. He lacked a shaper’s hands, which placed him below her in rank.

  “You have my name, Initiate,” she said, letting a bit of irritation show. “And my attention.” Her head throbbed and occasionally spiked with the pain of the Vaa-tumor thriving in it, but she embraced the growing discomfort. It would not interfere with her work, or this conversation.

  The male’s headdress was knotted in respect, but something about his face remained annoyingly bold, if not challenging.

  “My name is Tsun,” he said. “I have been assigned by Master Mezhan Kwaad to aid you today in our glorious work.”

  Nen Yim braided tendrils in skepticism. “The master said nothing of assistants,” she noted. “She was to meet me here herself.”

  Again, Tsun trod the outskirts of perniciousness in the studied ease of his answer. “Mezhan Kwaad sent me, Adept, to explain that she will meditate today rather than labor. Her Vaa-tumor is to be removed next cycle, and she wishes these last periods to contemplate her pain.”

  “I see. Your message is delivered then. But how am I to recognize her authority in it?”

  Tsun’s eyes flashed with a certain mischievous light. “I must say,” he purred, “I am honored. I have much wished to meet you, Adept Nen Yim.”

  That had a strange effect. She felt a slight warmth creep up her neck. Was this another side effect of her Vaa-tumor? She commanded her headdress to remain quiescent. “Oh?” she replied.

  “Yes. I was once a companion to a friend of yours. Yakun.”

  This time she had to clench her tendrils to keep her emotions hidden. This was suddenly a very dangerous and painful nestling of history and words to be a part of.

  “Yakun?” she said, as if just remembering that there was such a name. “He was a Domain Kwaad initiate in Baanu Kor?”

  Tsun nodded. “Yes. He introduced me to you once, when you tended the mernip breeding pools together.”

  “That was before his heresy,” Nen Yim said.

  “Yes,” Tsun agreed. “Before they took him.”

  �
�We shall not speak of him, then, shall we?” Nen Yim replied. “For he is a heretic and not to be spoken of. I will forgive this mention of him. Once.”

  Tsun genuflected. “I knew him well, Adept Nen Yim, in the days after your reassignment. He spoke of you often. He often wished to hear from you, especially near the end.”

  She kept her tongue and tentacles as still as unliving stone, but she remembered. Remembered hearing the news of Yakun’s accusation and sacrifice. She remembered private, forbidden moments with him before, and her vain prayers to Yun-Txiin and Yun-Q’aah to protect him.

  How she had tried not to think of him at all.

  Perhaps Tsun understood her posture, or her headdress betrayed her, for through the sudden renewal of pain behind her eyes, she saw he knew.

  “I do not mean to sadden you,” he said. “It is only that Master Mezhan Kwaad asked me to tell you I knew him, that we were confidants.”

  The flash of agony released as suddenly as it had come. Mezhan Kwaad did send him, Nen Yim thought, her growing panic taking a step back. This is her message I am to trust him. Yakun was a heretic. My master is a heretic. So is Tsun.

  “Initiate Tsun,” she said firmly. “I said we should not speak of that person. I mean it. Now let me show you our work.”

  The Jeedai’s eyes had lost much of their focus; she no longer glared like a predatory beast. Instead she stared for long hours at nothing, a look of puzzlement on her face.

  “She seems stunned,” Tsun noticed.

  Nen Yim signaled the vivarium to become opaque to sound. “She can hear us, and she knows the tongue of the gods. Even in that state she might remember anything we say. Or nothing.”

  “She is being drugged?”

  “Not precisely. We are altering her memories.”

  “Ah,” Tsun said knowingly. “The protocol of Qah.”

  “No,” Nen Yim corrected, “not exactly. That protocol was ineffective on her human brain.”

  “How can that be?”

  “It is a simple biotic protocol in which clumps of memory neurons are introduced into a Yuuzhan Vong brain. The Jeedai’s brain is too different.”

  “And yet you are modifying her memory.”

  “A bit at a time. Soon we will be able to do so much more efficiently.”

  “You have prayed for a new protocol?” Tsun asked slyly.

  “No,” Nen Yim replied. “Our approach has followed two axes. We have mapped and remapped her nervous system. We have identified her memory networks and are using the provoker spineray to discourage their use.”

  “You mean her old memories trigger pain?”

  “Yes. Accessing her long-term memory extracts a pain sacrifice. The more connected memories she tries to bring to conscious thought, the greater her suffering.”

  “Why not simply wipe clean the centers of memory and begin again?”

  “Because she retains the knowledge of her Jeedai powers. A day will come—after we’ve shaped her—when we’ll want her to remember how to use them.”

  Tsun studied the human. “I see you have scarred her forehead with the Domain Kwaad sign.”

  “We will do more, in time. We will alter her face, especially that strange nose of hers. But that is superficial. Attend.”

  Nen Yim squatted near the vivarium membrane, opened it again to sound, and spoke to the Jeedai. “What is your name?” she asked.

  The Jeedai didn’t react. With a sigh, Nen Yim stimulated a minor pain center and cortical nerve with the provoker spineray.

  What would have once made the young Jeedai shriek in agony only cycles before now merely made her flutter her eyes and frown.

  “Yes, Adept?” the Jeedai said, as if waking reluctantly from a dream.

  “What is your name?” Nen Yim asked.

  “My name?”

  “Yes.”

  “It is—” She frowned, then suddenly her eyes bulged and she gripped her head. “My name is—” Her teeth clenched and her face went white. Then, as if in sudden remembrance, the Jeedai’s face cleared.

  “My name is Riina Kwaad,” she said.

  “Very good, Riina,” Nen Yim said. “You have learned. And today you will learn more.”

  “I see now,” Tsun said. “You trellis her thoughts. Unwanted responses bring pain. Desired ones do not.”

  “No,” Nen Yim replied. “That name came from an implanted memory.”

  “But you just said that the protocol of Qah was ineffective.”

  “Yes. But we can build a kind of Qah cell using her own, human brain cells.”

  A look of sheer delight crossed the initiate’s face. “So it is true,” he whispered. “Here, you pursue our dream, the superprotocol—the methods of finding new knowledge without asking the gods.”

  Nen Yim felt infected by his joy, but she drew her tentacles into a mild admonishment. “Here, in these chambers of the master, such things may be spoken in security,” she cautioned. “But outside of this room, have a care.”

  “Yes, of course. I know what happens to heretics as well as you. But what am I to do? Command me, Adept Nen Yim. Make me a part of this!”

  He was very like Yakun, Nen Yim reflected. How had she not seen it immediately, the passion in his eyes? It was almost as if her lover had been reborn.

  Keep to the task at hand, she counseled herself. “The modified memory cells are weak,” she told Tsun. “Most are rejected within a matter of hours and have to be reimplanted. My task is to understand why; it is not a biochemical matter, as I see it—difficult to explain, and perhaps connected to her Jeedai powers. Your task, Initiate Tsun, is to grow new memories for her. We are in the process of transferring a complete set of false memories developed in the Qah protocol to a human-cell equivalent. We can then bud them as many times as we wish. When I have found a way to condition her to accept implanted memories permanently, we will then have a complete set to transfer. Meanwhile, we modify the cells, try them out, and see how long they last. We might stumble on a biological solution in the process, or at the very least learn more about how her memory works.”

  “I hear and obey,” Tsun said eagerly. “But since there is no protocol to follow …”

  “I will demonstrate. The trials were rigorous and required much testing—”

  “Testing,” Tsun breathed. “A word I never thought to hear spoken aloud in this context.”

  “Are you listening, Initiate, or will you comment on my every word?” Nen Yim remonstrated, trying to keep her voice stern.

  “Apologies, Adept,” he said. “I am all attention.”

  “Good. I was saying, Initiate, that developing the process was difficult, but the resulting protocol is simple, and as easy to follow as any of the god-given ones. If you come here, I will describe it to you.”

  He genuflected and followed her eagerly, but did not interrupt her again except with necessary questions.

  Riina watched the two Yuuzhan Vong go about their work in confusion. Who were they? Why was she here?

  Discontinuity. She came to, trembling, her thoughts drifting in angry swarms, unwilling to associate with one another. She remembered the female asking her name, and answering “Riina.” That hadn’t hurt.

  But somehow it was wrong.

  There were things she could see from the corner of her eye she could never see looking straight on. Her real name was like that, lurking just out of sight. When she tried to stare straight at it, it bit her with hot needle teeth.

  That was true of a lot of things. The face that kept appearing in the dark of her mind, the voice that sometimes rang in her head, the memory that kept trying to surface of how she had gotten here—all were shifting trails in the sand, all led to agony.

  But she couldn’t give up. She wasn’t supposed to be here.

  Or was she? Brief flashes of color and sound came, now, of a world turned inside out, with no sky but only land that curved up to meet itself. A crèche-mother with a sloped forehead and nearly noseless face. The prickly sweet scent of fum
ing omipal during the ritual of appellation. The spicy, slightly rotten taste of von’u, a rare treat given her by her naming-father.

  Riina they called her. Riina Kwaad.

  She felt as if she were drifting down a stream of soothing water, surrounded by comforting voices. She rubbed her forehead and felt the marks of her domain, and even the raw pain of them felt good, in its own way.

  Tahiri!

  The voice again. Memories of her past splintered like crystal and cut into her brain. Other images flashed, names. One name.

  Anakin.

  The stream became a river, raging, sucking her under, and Anakin was in it with her. She held to the image, though paroxysms shook her body.

  This was real. This happened! We were little, at the academy, we were following dreams that drew us together—

  She screamed, leapt, and slammed into the barrier that separated her from the Yuuzhan Vong. She reached out in the Force to try to choke them, but they weren’t there, somehow. There was nothing real behind their startled faces.

  “My name is Tahiri!” she screamed at them. “I am Jedi! Tahiri!”

  Then a tidal wave of dazzling anguish crawled up every single nerve, centipedes with legs of fire, and she lost consciousness.

  “What did it say?” Tsun asked.

  “That was Basic, the language of the infidels,” Nen Yim told him.

  “Should she be able to access that?”

  “No. She still resists. We found that she somehow reroutes to nerve clusters we have not mined. However, the provoker spineray follows the reroutes and stimulates them, as well. In time, she will have no way into or out of those memories save through the embrace of pain. By that time it will not matter. She will be infidel no longer, and will welcome the challenge.”

  “Thank you for explaining,” he said.

  Nen Yim acknowledged him with a twist of her headdress, returning to her work.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  The damutek root was a hollow tube, and when Anakin and Vua Rapuung entered it, it was almost a meter in diameter. Close, but not claustrophobic.