by James Luceno
“You doubt our power?” Da’Gara asked, apparently cuing in on her expression.
“You’ve learned our language,” she replied.
The prefect turned his head sideways and tapped a finger against his ear, and Danni saw something inside it, wriggling quickly like the back end of a worm. “We have our ways, Danni Quee. You will learn.”
Danni didn’t doubt that, and it made the Yuuzhan Vong all the more terrible.
The prefect steeled his gaze at Danni. “He is not worthy,” he said, indicating her new companion, and then, with a sudden hand motion, he set the other two into action and they leapt into the water. Da’Gara continued to stare at Danni for a long while, then slipped into the dark water behind them.
Danni ran to the human. He wore no identification, wore nothing at all other than a tight pair of shorts. He carried many fresh scars, as though Da’Gara’s warriors had wounded, and then healed, him. Given the prefect’s last words to her, that this one was not worthy, Danni understood what that meant.
He would be sacrificed to the war coordinator.
Danni sucked in her breath and held herself steady. She, too, had faced the war coordinator, the horrid yammosk. Its two thin and sticky inner tendrils had entwined her, pulling her in, in, between the huge tentacles of the beast and toward those black eyes and that singular toothy maw.
But the war coordinator had not taken her, had deemed other purposes for her, which, Prefect Da’Gara had assured her, was an incredible honor—though Danni, her knees nearly buckling as she fought off a fit of fainting, had not appreciated it at all.
The war coordinator wouldn’t do the same with this one, Danni believed. He would be wrapped in tentacles and brought in slowly to be devoured.
The man stirred, then blinked his eyes open slowly, in obvious pain.
“Where?” he stuttered.
“On the fourth planet,” Danni replied.
“Starfighters … rocklike,” the man stammered.
“Coralskippers,” Danni clarified for him, for Da’Gara had told her the literal translation of the Yuuzhan Vong name. She eased the battered man’s head down gently. “Rest easy. You’re safe now.”
An hour or so later—Danni really couldn’t begin to keep track of the time—the man woke up, with a start and a cry. “Coming through the ship!” he yelled, but then he stopped himself as he became aware of his current surroundings. He looked at Danni curiously. “The fourth planet?” he asked.
Danni nodded.
“The Helska system?”
Danni nodded again and moved to help the man sit up. “I’m Danni Quee,” she began. “I came out of the ExGal station on Belkadan—” The man’s sudden look of recognition stopped her.
“Spacecaster-class shuttle,” he said.
Danni looked at him incredulously.
“We tracked you,” the man explained. “To Helska. We came to find you.”
“We?”
The man forced a smile and held out his hand. “Miko Reglia of the Dozen-and-Two Avengers,” he said.
Danni took his hand, but her expression revealed that she had no idea what he was talking about.
“A squadron of …” Miko had to pause—what, exactly, were they a squadron of? “A squadron of starfighter pilots,” he explained. “Led by Jedi Kyp Durron and myself.”
“You’re a Jedi Knight?” Danni asked, eyes widening, a flicker of hope flashing behind them.
Miko nodded and visibly settled down, as if the reminder that he was a Jedi Knight had put him in a completely different frame of mind. “Yes,” he said solemnly. “I was trained at the academy, under Luke Skywalker himself, and though my training is not yet complete—I’ve been doing an apprenticeship under the tutelage of Kyp Durron—I am indeed a Jedi Knight.”
Danni glanced back at the water. She believed Miko’s claim, and in light of that, she wondered if she had found a weakness in her enemies. Prefect Da’Gara had called this one unworthy, but how could a Jedi Knight be unworthy in the eyes of any fellow warrior? Perhaps Da’Gara and his fellows had underestimated this man, and perhaps Danni could find some way to exploit that error.
She looked back to Miko, to see him sitting calmly, eyes closed in a meditative pose.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
Miko blinked his eyes open. “Calling out,” he explained. “Projecting my own thoughts and trying to sense those of any other Jedi Knight who might be in the area.”
“Will it work?” Danni asked eagerly, moving closer.
Miko shrugged. “Jedi have a connection, a common understanding of the Force that brings us together.”
“But will it work?” the pragmatic Danni pressed.
Again the shrug. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I don’t know if Kyp escaped, and I don’t know how far away he, or any other Jedi, might be.”
That was all the answer Danni needed. She came to the conclusion then that they couldn’t depend on this mystical thought-projection. They needed their own plan.
“Who are these people?” Miko asked after a pause. “Smugglers?”
Danni burst into laughter, despite herself. Smugglers? If only it was that simple, and explainable. “Maybe they, the Yuuzhan Vong, were smugglers,” she replied, “in their own galaxy.”
Miko started to respond, but stopped short and stared hard at her, the implications of her words obviously hitting him.
“They’re not from our galaxy,” Danni explained.
“Impossible,” Miko replied. “A lie they told you to keep you afraid.”
“We tracked them inbound,” Danni went on. “Right through the galactic rim. We thought it was an asteroid or a comet, and when we figured out where it was headed, three of us came out to investigate.”
“The other two?” Miko asked, but Danni was shaking her head before he ever finished.
She thought of Bensin Tomri and Cho Badeleg then, of Bensin’s horrible ending, and saw it in light of Da’Gara’s words concerning this man, Miko. She didn’t want to witness that scene repeated.
“What are they doing here?”
“The Yuuzhan Vong want it all,” Danni explained.
Miko looked at her skeptically. “Conquest?”
“The whole galaxy.”
Miko snorted. “They’re in for a surprise.”
“Or we are,” Danni said gravely.
“How many?” Miko asked. “How many planets? How many comets, or asteroids, or whatever they might be, came in?”
“Just one,” Danni answered, and she added, “so far,” before Miko could respond. “Others will follow, I’m sure.”
“They’ll need ten thousand times this number,” Miko declared.
“It’s not just about numbers,” Danni pointed out. “They’ve got ways, and weapons, we don’t understand. It all seems to be based on living organisms, creatures they’ve trained, or bred, to serve their needs.”
“Like the suits they put us in,” Miko observed, and both he and Danni shivered at the memory.
Danni nodded. “They’ve got their ways,” she said.
Miko waved his hand dismissively. “We were taking them out three to one,” he explained. “And we were just flying starfighters, and most of them outdated. The alien fighters wouldn’t stand up against a Star Destroyer or a battle cruiser.”
“You were winning, but you did not,” Danni reminded.
“Only because they found some way to get our shields down,” Miko started to say, but he stopped, his words hanging ominously in the air.
“Don’t underestimate them,” Danni scolded, and she wondered then if she might have found the reason that Da’Gara apparently held little respect for Miko. “They’ve got tools and weapons and technology foreign to our sensibilities. Weapons we might not easily be able to counter. They’re confident, and they seem to know us better than we know them.”
Miko started to climb to his feet, unsteadily, and Danni moved to support him. A moment later, he gently pushed her away, then we
nt into a dancelike routine of slow and deliberate balancing motions. When he finished a few moments later, he seemed to have found his center. “We have to get off planet,” he said, glancing all around and, finally, up at the encasing ice.
“It’s hundreds of meters thick,” Danni remarked.
“We have to find a way,” Miko said, his tone full of determination. “I don’t know if any of the others got away, but someone has to get back to inform the New Republic. Let’s see what these aliens—what’d you call them, the Yuuzhan Vong?—can do against some real firepower.”
Danni nodded resolutely, bolstered by the offered strength of the Jedi Knight, and hoping, hoping, that Prefect Da’Gara had indeed underestimated him.
“We lost more than a dozen,” Da’Gara admitted, and the eyes on Nom Anor’s villip narrowed dangerously. “But when we discovered their weaknesses and used the dovin basals to counter their blocking energy shields, the battle turned our way,” he quickly added. “We can beat them now, one to one, one to ten.”
“How many?” the executor asked.
“Eleven enemies were destroyed,” Da’Gara reported. “A twelfth was forced down, and though two escaped, the grutchins were in swift pursuit. We believe those last two enemies were destroyed.”
“You believe?” Nom Anor echoed skeptically.
“They jumped past lightspeed, what they call hyperdrive,” Da’Gara explained. “Still, at last sighting, several grutchins were attached before the jump, and many more went in pursuit. They could not have survived.”
Nom Anor gave a long pause that Da’Gara didn’t dare interrupt. The prefect understood the problems here. Even releasing the grutchins had been taking a huge chance, for unlike many of the Yuuzhan Vong’s bred creatures, grutchins were not rational, thinking, or even trained beasts. They were instruments of destruction, living weapons, and once released, they could not be controlled or recalled. Those that had not made the jump piggybacked on the enemy starfighters or in immediate pursuit, but had stayed in the region with the coralskippers, had been destroyed—it was too risky to try and capture a mature grutchin. That loss was not significant, for the insectoids bred and matured quickly, and those lost would soon enough be replaced. Of more concern were the many that got away. Likely they had destroyed the starfighters and were now running free in the galaxy. They couldn’t reproduce, for they had no queens, but grutchins were aggressive creatures and would continue to seek out and attack other ships in the region. Soon enough they might draw the attention of the New Republic, turn the eyes of the enemy to this sector of the galaxy’s Outer Rim, and that could bode ill for the Praetorite Vong.
That’s what had Nom Anor concerned, and rightly so, Da’Gara knew, but still, what other choice had his warriors? They could not chase the enemy through a light-speed jump, after all, for the dovin basals fronting the coralskippers, sensitive as they were, could not hold any lock on enemy ships through such a ride.
“Your new prisoner,” Nom Anor prompted. “You believe him to be Jedi.”
Now Da’Gara fully relaxed, pleased to relay this grand information. “He is, Executor.”
“Take care with that one,” Nom Anor warned.
“He is with the woman,” Da’Gara replied. “There is no escape.”
“You have begun the breaking?”
“We use the woman against him,” Da’Gara confirmed. “We have told her that he is unworthy, as we have told him. We will execute him a thousand times in his mind, if that is what we must do. And when he is within the grasp of the war coordinator, pulled toward the great maw and expecting death, his willpower will ebb.”
Nom Anor’s villip echoed his chuckle. Da’Gara knew exactly how the executor felt. The breaking was a common procedure used against captured enemies of the Yuuzhan Vong, mental torture over physical torment, a shaving away of the sensibilities and determination until the unfortunate prisoner was left broken on the floor, sobbing like a baby, his mind snapped from a succession of expected horrors, of promised, terrible deaths.
“We will measure his willpower carefully, Executor,” Da’Gara assured him. “Then we will know the limits of the Jedi, and know how to exceed those limits.”
The villip’s look was purely contented now, and Da’Gara knew the expression to be an accurate reflection. What luck that they had, so early on, been able to capture a Jedi! Now, while Nom Anor continued his test of the Jedi’s physical abilities with the disease he had inflicted upon Mara, Da’Gara and the yammosk could learn so much more about the mental prowess of these supposed supercreatures.
“Above all else, denigrate him,” Nom Anor suggested. “He is not worthy—that is your litany, that is the message we will use to infiltrate his willpower and crack the barriers apart. And all the better that you still have the woman Yomin Carr told you about to use as a measuring rod against him. She is worthy, he is not. That should effect some weakening.”
“Then we are in agreement,” Da’Gara assured Nom Anor.
“Our secrecy nears its end,” Nom Anor replied. “With the escape of the two craft—”
“They did not escape,” Da’Gara dared to interrupt, something he would normally never do to a peer. In this case, though, the prefect understood the necessity of setting the premise. Still, he breathed a sigh of relief when Nom Anor granted him that conclusion.
“They may have loosed a warning beacon,” Nom Anor explained. “Even if not, the inevitable actions of the vicious grutchins may turn some attention in your general direction. Also, what brought the starfighter squadron out to you in the first place?”
Da’Gara had no practical answer. He had hoped it was just a twist of fate.
“You are a long way from the Core,” Nom Anor continued. “And the New Republic has much to contend with close to home: the Osarian-Rhommamool conflict is full-scale now, and several other minor wars have begun, both interplanetary and within planetary governments loyal to the New Republic. They would not have sent a squadron out there without cause, if that squadron went out under any specific orders. See what you might learn from the captured Jedi.”
“My intention exactly.”
“And beware, Prefect Da’Gara,” Nom Anor said ominously. “When is the rest of the Praetorite Vong to arrive?”
“The second worldship will dock this day,” Da’Gara answered. “The third within the week.”
“Prepare your defenses properly, and do not let down your guard,” Nom Anor warned. “If the New Republic knows of you, or if either of those fleeing starfighters did escape, you can expect much more formidable opponents within the week.”
“We will be ready.”
“See that you are.”
The villip abruptly inverted, the connection broken, and Prefect Da’Gara relaxed and rubbed the kink out of his neck, made sore by his standing at perfect attention throughout his discussion with the great executor. He had already communed with the war coordinator, and the yammosk had assured him that the humans and their pitiful energy weapons were not to be feared. The planet was a fortress now, with the yammosk emitting its own energy fields and using dovin basals to focus them instantly. Once the second and third worldships, each carrying full payloads of coralskippers, were in, let the humans come.
Da’Gara grinned wickedly as he considered his other order of business, the breaking of the Jedi. He had assisted with other breakings during his prefect training, of course, but this was his first time ever overseeing one.
To the warrior, always looking for weakness in his enemies, it was indeed a pleasurable experience.
Danni and Miko climbed to their feet when the water started to churn, and looked to each other, each trying to confirm that this was the time for action. A slight nod, one and then the other, and the pair moved to opposite sides of the small chamber and waited, with Miko going down into a squat and pressing his palms together before him.
Danni, too, went into a crouch, watching the churning water. But then she looked higher, to Miko, and marveled at his
posture and preparedness. She could see the taut muscles of his arms straining under the isometric press, building pressure as if to literally explode into action.
A Yuuzhan Vong head, black hair chopped erratically, fleshy star-shape over the face, appeared, and then the arms, one hand holding a short staff, came over the rim, grabbing hold and propelling the powerful humanoid out of the water and onto the lichen-covered floor.
Danni circled, and turned and clawed at the wall, as if trying to run, demanding the creature’s attention.
Another Yuuzhan Vong warrior came up, and then a third.
Miko exploded into motion, launching himself sidelong against the three, knocking one back into the water, the other two to the floor.
Danni dived atop one, grabbing his weapon with both hands and pressing her forearm into the warrior’s throat as she did. She drove down with all of her considerable strength, but this was a Yuuzhan Vong warrior, hugely strong, and within a split second, he had Danni up high enough so that her press on his throat was not choking him.
Desperation drove her, though, and so she clung to the staff with one hand, keeping it at bay, and she freed up her other hand enough to get a grip on the warrior’s face, working frantically to avoid his snapping jaws as she wedged her fingers under his star-shaped mask.
Miko and the other alien scrambled to their feet and squared off, and then the third practically leapt out of the water, staff at the ready.
“Unworthy,” they kept saying, circling, circling, waving their weapons, but shortening the blows, more to measure the Jedi’s reaction than to initiate any real attack routines.
Miko kept his cool and his balance, taking care not to overreact. He saw Danni struggling with the remaining soldier, the warrior rolling over atop her and gaining the upper hand.
He dismissed the image, reminding himself that he couldn’t begin to help Danni until he had first helped himself. The Yuuzhan Vong behind him thrust his weapon like a spear, and Miko jumped ahead and to the side, and when the warrior before him took that as an opportunity to come in hard, the skilled Jedi dropped one foot back and turned sidelong to the blow, deflecting it harmlessly aside with his open palm. Like a snake, he struck, with that same blocking arm, elbow flying up high, arm snapping straight, the side of his hand knifing into the Yuuzhan Vong warrior’s throat.
