Remnant: Force Heretic I

by Sean Williams

  “How’s Jacen coming along?” Luke asked.

  “He’s getting results,” Mara said. Her grim tone prompted Pellaeon to take a look.

  Jacen Solo, the boy Jedi who had come so delightfully close to besting Moff Flennic, was on Right to Rule. In the hours since regrouping at Yaga Minor, thousands of MSE-6 mouse droids had been modified with the Yuuzhan Vong-detecting algorithms the Galactic Alliance had developed and sent scuttling from ship to ship throughout the fleet, identifying three Yuuzhan Vong infiltrators. In analyzing the communications these infiltrators had received from within the fleet, Jacen had been able to expose more than a dozen sympathizers. None had been confronted directly, but all had been posted to the Right to Rule and individually summoned to a “staffing meeting” with the intention of seeing their activities brought to an immediate end.

  Jacen had set up the meeting in a conference room that looked perfectly innocent, but had in fact been heavily modified with some of the most sophisticated security devices the Empire had to offer, via which Pellaeon was able to follow the proceedings over the monitors set up in his room. Also, nearby, a squad of stormtroopers stood ready to rush in to Jacen’s aid, should he require it. It was a risk, perhaps, to have such a concentration of the enemy in one area, but Jacen felt it was less of a risk than having the same enemy scattered throughout various ships when they were exposed. It would have been harder to coordinate their rounding up, whereas having them all contained in one room presented a controlled situation, more easily contained if something went wrong.

  The traitors arrived one by one, staggered at two-minute intervals to ensure that they wouldn’t meet in the corridor outside and suspect the trap they were walking into. Jacen sat patiently at the front of the room, saying nothing as each one entered.

  The disguised aliens were the last to enter. The first came into the room a full five minutes after all the traitors had been seated. She breezed easily in, noting those seated around the large table in a single glance. Her expression was unreadable, and so human that Pellaeon could scarcely credit that it wasn’t in fact her real face, but rather an example of the biotechnological masks the Yuuzhan Vong called ooglith masquers. She was, to all appearances, a tall, plain woman with long, gray hair tied back in a severe bun, with nothing remarkable about her at all.

  But there was something in the way she hesitated slightly when she caught sight of her human sympathizers that convinced Pellaeon she wasn’t all she appeared to be.

  “Greetings, Fiula Blay,” Jacen said from the front. He continued to lean against the podium as he spoke, his casual demeanor oozing disrespect. “Won’t you take a seat while we wait on the arrival of the others?”

  The woman glared at him, but did as she was asked without comment. Pellaeon noticed the beginnings of fear in the eyes of four of the spies as they recognized the leader of their particular resistance cell.

  “What’s going on here?” one of them demanded. “You have no right to keep us here like this!”

  “Keep you here?” Jacen repeated with an exaggerated frown. “You make it sound as though you were prisoners. Why should you think that?”

  The man swallowed but said nothing more.

  “You’ve been called here so we can have a little chat,” Jacen went on. “That’s all.”

  “Fine,” another said sharply. This one wore the uniform of an intelligence coordinator. “Then let’s get on with it, shall we?”

  “When we’re all here,” Jacen said calmly.

  “We haven’t got time for this,” he went on angrily, making to stand. “In case you haven’t noticed, there’s a war going on out there!”

  Jacen stood up straight and took a step forward. “That’s precisely why we’re here,” he said, his eyes leveled evenly at the traitor.

  The man returned to his seat with a grunt of complaint and fell silent.

  “You could at least tell us who you are,” said a third, a female security officer.

  “Can’t you guess?” Jacen said.

  The door opened at this point, and the second of the Yuuzhan Vong entered, this time in the disguise of a portly corporal seconded from the Relentless. He, too, hesitated when he saw the group gathered before him, but like Fiula Blay he kept his expression tightly controlled.

  “What is the meaning of this?” he asked. “What am I doing here? I should be out there, where I’m needed—”

  “All will be explained,” Jacen said, pointing to an empty seat. “Please, sit.”

  The tension within the room mounted as everyone waited uncomfortably for the last of the infiltrators to arrive. Nothing was said, but the body language of those around the table spoke volumes. Pellaeon estimated that perhaps eight of the eleven sympathizers had already figured out what was happening, with the remaining three probably just having the beginnings of suspicion in their gut. It showed in their furtive eye movements, their flushed expressions, and the way they squirmed uneasily in their seats. The only ones who didn’t flinch or show any concern were the two disguised Yuuzhan Vong. What was going on in their minds was anybody’s guess.

  Finally, the door hissed open and the third Yuuzhan Vong walked in. An enormous man with shoulders as wide as a Wookiee’s, “Torvin Xyn” took in the scene instantly, his expression breaking into a snarl as soon as his eyes fell upon Jacen.

  “Jeedai!” he hissed. “I can smell you!”

  A number of those seated started to stand as Torvin Xyn’s skin peeled away from his face, revealing the scarred and snarling visage of the Yuuzhan Vong beneath. The skin covering his chest and arms rippled, and suddenly there was an amphistaff in his hands.

  Jacen took a step back toward the podium. “There is no need for this,” he said. “Nobody need be harmed!”

  But even as he spoke, the Yuuzhan Vong let loose an unintelligible roar and launched himself at Jacen. Almost inaudible beneath the alien’s deafening war cry was the distinctive snap-hiss of Jacen’s green-bladed lightsaber extending. He brought it up between them in a bright blur, sweeping in an arc to deflect the intended blow to his neck from the amphistaff. Then, shifting his weight back onto his right leg, he moved to one side, just enough to miss the charge of the giant alien. The Yuuzhan Vong swept his amphistaff down and around to cut at Jacen’s legs as he passed but the Jedi Knight was already off the ground by that point, kicking outward with his left leg to knock the alien off balance. Amphistaff and lightsaber clashed again as the two other spies burst out of their disguises and joined the fray. Realizing they had been discovered, the human sympathizers fell about in a panic.

  Any thought that the enemy still had the upper hand was soon dispelled when the door burst open and the squadron of stormtroopers filed in, the snouts of their blasters trained on the aliens. Security droids swooped in behind them. A quick succession of shots brought down two of the Yuuzhan Vong infiltrators. Exposed without their vonduun crab armor, they died with their hideously scarred visages snarling. The final warrior fell when he raised his amphistaff high into the air in readiness to bring it down on Jacen’s head, and the young Jedi proved to be too fast. Thrusting his own weapon up high, he managed to block the Yuuzhan Vong’s strike when the warrior had barely started the downward swing, then seemingly effortlessly brought his lightsaber down onto the Yuuzhan Vong’s torso. Such was the force of the blow that his weapon cut almost halfway through the alien’s barrel chest before coming to a halt.

  Jacen stepped back from the smoking corpse of “Torvin Xyn,” wiping a forearm across his sweat-beaded face as he turned to the panic-stricken traitors clustered together away from all the fighting. A few were jabbering apologies and pleas for mercy, lost in the babble of so many people trying to speak at once.

  “There’s no point protesting your innocence,” Jacen said loudly. When the noise settled he let his lightsaber fizz out, replacing the handgrip on his belt. There was a look on the young Jedi’s face that surprised Pellaeon, as though the fighting he’d just been involved in dismayed him. And ye
t, at the same time, there was a rock-steady certainty there, as well. “Your quarters have been searched and your movements monitored. Your guilt is beyond question. The only question remaining is whether there are any more of you that we should know about.”

  The cold-eyed intelligence coordinator took a step forward. “Jedi scum,” he said, spitting on the floor at Jacen’s feet. “You’ve only delayed the inevitable.”

  “Permanently, I hope,” Jacen said, unflustered. He looked around the room. “Anyone else have something to say?”

  No one answered, but Pellaeon noted two who looked as though they might under different, more private circumstances. With a gesture from Jacen, stormtroopers took the prisoners away for interrogation.

  The young Jedi sagged back into a chair when everyone had gone, pulling back the sleeve of his robe to speak into a wrist comlink.

  “Mission accomplished,” he announced tiredly.

  His voice came over the private link at the same time as Pellaeon heard it via the microphones in the dummy interview room.

  “Well done, Jacen,” Mara Skywalker said from Jade Shadow. “Are you all right?”

  Pellaeon watched on as the Solo boy examined the back of his hand. “Just a nick,” he said. “I’ll be fine.” He glanced around at the Yuuzhan Vong corpses. “This wasn’t necessary. They had a chance to come peacefully.”

  “Did you really think they would?”

  “You never know.” He half smiled. “Maybe sending their most dangerous and aggressive warriors in to be killed by us will eventually reduce the gene pool, breed a more temperate Yuuzhan Vong.”

  Pellaeon had never had occasion to laugh in a bacta tank before, but he couldn’t help himself now. “Victory by natural selection? An interesting game plan, Solo.”

  “Requesting permission to fall back behind the mine rings, Grand Admiral,” Captain Yage interrupted.

  Pellaeon had been keeping half an eye on the disposition of the battle while watching Jacen’s handling of the spy situation. The Yuuzhan Vong fleets had engaged on all four fronts, with the fighting fiercest where they’d first entered the system.

  “Permission granted,” he said. As the frigate began to drop to a lower orbit around Borosk, Pellaeon switched to a general command channel. To the numerous generals, captains, and commanders to whom he entrusted the details of the battle, he said: “Commence fallback. Rule and Protector battle groups first, then Stalwart and Relentless. Orbital control, activate the mines as soon as the bulk of the enemy comes within range. Ground, make sure the targeting systems concentrate on the smaller ships, where possible; the shields and mines should keep the capital vessels at bay for us to deal with. And remember: we’re playing a waiting game. The more we can bleed them, the more they’ll hurt.”

  A series of affirmatives returned over the line. With no Yuuzhan Vong infiltrators left among the Imperial forces, Pellaeon felt sure that the fallback of his fleet would appear as an unruly retreat to the rigid-minded warmaster behind the attack. He was confident that the fully charged turbolasers and cannons waiting for them down on Borosk below would convince the Yuuzhan Vong of their mistake.

  Then, at last, the battle proper could truly begin.

  Saba hissed as a slave carrier appeared on the edge of the scope, emerging from the planet’s atmosphere. Her tail whacked agitatedly against the floor as the sight of it brought back the memory of the destruction of her own planet.

  Captain Yage looked up. “What is it?”

  The Barabel pointed at the screen. The carrier had come out of hyperspace well back from the front and was lightly protected. Its tentacles whipped at vacuum like hungry space slugs snapping for food. Where it had been a flattened sphere before, it was now fatter.

  Fuller, Saba thought.

  “They are confident of success,” she said. A terrible hunger gnawed at her belly.

  “Maybe they have cause to be confident,” Yage said grimly. The solid woman turned aside for a moment to call instructions to the crew scattered throughout the ship. The bridge of Widowmaker was busy in a productive, controlled away, but still noisy to a Barabel’s ears.

  “This one can feel them,” Saba said, closing her eyes and reaching out through the Force. Past the many nearby life-sources that comprised the planet of Borosk and the massed navy of the Empire, and beyond the empty gulf of the attacking Yuuzhan Vong, she felt a concentrated scar in the Force—a scar that itched from pain and fear. She sensed suffocation, imprisonment, claustrophobia, darkness—all the things she had failed to notice when her own people had been taken because of the emotions of anger and rage she had been unable to control. The concentration of those feelings now was too intense to ignore—so intense, in fact, that her head reeled from it. But she would not turn away. She couldn’t. She needed to embrace this pain, share in it, in the hope that doing so would somehow alleviate some of the guilt she carried.

  Hunt the moment…

  The people inside the carrier had been stuffed in like animals being taken away for slaughter. The chances were that many of them would die before they ever reached their destination. As appalling a thought as that was for Saba, she knew that from the Yuuzhan Vong’s point of view it did make sense. To them, these beings were little more than animals, so what did it matter if a percentage of the stock was lost in transit, as long as enough survived to fill the armies at the front?

  But Saba Sebatyne was a Jedi, and she could not stand by and allow it to happen. She had to do something—something that could make up for the deaths of all those Barabels she had killed.

  How better could they be remembered?

  “This one would speak to Jade Shadow,” she said to Yage. The captain frowned uncertainly, but made arrangements with her comm officer.

  “Over there,” she said, pointing to an empty comm station.

  Conscious of the eyes of the crew upon her—possibly the most obvious nonhumanoid many had seen up close for years—Saba moved to the station and spoke softly into the link: “Mara, this one haz a plan.”

  There was a slight delay before Skywalker answered. “You have my attention, Hisser,” she said. “Whatever you have in mind, it has to be better than taking potshots and watching Luke’s retrothrusters.”

  “Do you see the slave carrier? This iz the prize. If they lose this, the battle will be hollow for them.”

  “You’re saying we should take it out? Saba, we can’t do that. It’s full of—”

  “We do not destroy it,” Saba cut in, then paused as she considered the audacity of what she was about to suggest. Her stomach rumbled. “This one wishez to liberate it.”

  There was an even longer silence this time. “Wait a second,” Mara eventually said. On the scope, Saba saw Jade Shadow disengage from the battle, closely followed by Master Skywalker’s X-wing. “I’m going to patch you into the command ring.”

  The holoprojectors flickered into life, revealing the faces of Mara and Grand Admiral Pellaeon. Saba moved to allow Captain Yage to take the seat.

  “Did I just hear right?” Pellaeon asked.

  “Saba wants to free the people trapped in that slaveship,” Mara said.

  “And what do you think of that?” the Grand Admiral asked.

  “I think that’s a worthy objective,” Mara said.

  “Which is not to say it’s practical,” Pellaeon countered.

  “No, but Saba makes a valid point. Taking that carrier ship might save a lot of lives, Admiral.”

  The ageing Imperial nodded, sending wisps of thin white hair swaying in the fluid around him. His expression was mostly hidden behind the breath mask.

  “So how would it be done?” he asked. “It’s on the other side of the Yuuzhan Vong fleet.”

  “Exactly,” Saba said. “Attention iz forward, on the attack. The rear will be vulnerable.”

  “We’d still have to get past their interdictors,” Mara pointed out. “And it wouldn’t stay vulnerable long. There are an awful lot of capital ships out there. An assaul
t party would soon find itself surrounded, Saba, a long, long way from backup.”

  “And they won’t bring it forward until they are certain we’ve lost,” Luke said, inserting himself into the conversation via the comm unit.

  “Could that be the way?” Pellaeon asked. “We’re on the retreat, anyway.”

  “Too risky,” Yage said. “We’d have to basically give them Borosk before they’d believe us, and there’s no guarantee we’d ever get it back.”

  Pellaeon nodded again, and Saba received the distinct impression that he was treating the discussion more as a theoretical exercise than a serious proposal—although she also sensed that he would like someone to make it work.

  “We require a sacrifice,” she said. “And we muzt deliver it directly to the target.”

  “I don’t understand,” Yage said, turning slightly to look up at the Barabel leaning over her. From so close, the woman’s scent was pungent in Saba’s nostrils, but not offensive.

  “They will guess that we know what the slaveship iz. Perhapz that iz why they have produced it so early in the battle. They use it to enrage us, to challenge our honor. They are saying, You are slavez already. It’z only a matter of time.” Saba’s blunted claws unsheathed at the insult. Embarrassed by the reflexive action, she hid her hands behind her back. It seemed she could put the Jedi into the Barabel, but she couldn’t always take the Barabel out of the Jedi. “We attack it, az they are daring us to.”

  “But if they’re daring us, then that means they’ll be expecting us to respond,” Mara said.

  “Yez. And we will lose.”

  “I think I’m beginning to follow you,” Yage said. “We send in some sort of assault ship to take on the slave carrier. It gets knocked out of the picture, but not before acting as a diversion for another attack, right?”

  “No,” Saba said. “It iz the attack. If the ship iz not utterly destroyed, itz crew will be bounty. They will not waste it.”

  Pellaeon chuckled through his breath mask. “Emperor’s ears—are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting? You don’t mean ‘sacrifice’: you mean bait.”