Remnant: Force Heretic I

by Sean Williams

  “From the inside,” Saba said, nodding enthusiastically, “this one will be best placed to take over the ship. It iz not a warship, after all. It iz a glorified freighter. It will rely on otherz to defend it. At worst, disabling it will allow the cargo to be unloaded more easily.”

  “That’s the next problem,” Yage said. “Where does that happen?”

  “Right there,” Mara said. “When Saba has killed the ship’s brain, it’s just a matter of getting the captives somewhere safe.”

  “This one iz thinking of an old trick played on Barab One,” Saba said. “The best way to poison a bonecrusher iz to feed it live hka’ka that has eaten poisoned vsst. The bonecrusher doez not taste the poison until itz meal iz over—and then it iz already dead.” She shrugged her heavy, scaled shoulders. “It iz not an honorable way to hunt, but sometimez it iz better than dying.”

  The Grand Admiral’s expression sobered. “If you succeed, it’ll be the wildest stunt I’ve ever seen—and you’ll seal the gratitude of the Empire forever. Turning my back on the people the Vong captured was one of the most soul-destroying things I’ve ever had to do. It’s a burden I’ll be happy to be rid of.”

  “Luke?”

  “I presume you’ll want to be involved, Mara,” Master Skywalker said, ignoring the concerned whistle from R2-D2.

  “Jade Shadow would make an ideal poisoned vsst,” she said. “And it has a tractor beam that I know will come in handy.”

  “You can count me in, too,” said Danni, her head appearing over Mara’s shoulder.

  “Are you sure?” Mara asked, frowning slightly.

  “Saba and I have worked together before,” she said, “and this’ll be another great opportunity to see Yuuzhan Vong biotechnology at work up close.”

  “Too close for my liking,” Yage muttered. “But it’s your choice, I guess.”

  Pellaeon’s eyes were dancing behind the translucent shell of his visor. He was clearly seeing 3-D views hidden from those watching his hologram. “If we’re going to do this, then let’s get moving,” he said. “Every minute delayed is another minute my pilots are out there getting killed. We have a lot to put in place in a very short time, and I think I might’ve found our—what was it, Saba?”

  “Hka’ka,” she supplied.

  “Yes,” said Pellaeon. “You Jedi might be crazy, but those are Imperial lives you’re saving. I don’t want anything to go wrong. Is that understood?”

  Remembering the recent massive and tragic losses of her own people, Saba could only nod solemnly.

  Nom Anor woke to the sound of screams and the realization that, even in the depths of Yuuzhan’tar, he would never be safe.

  Years of backstabbing—sometimes literally—his way toward the top had taught him to be a light sleeper. It was a habit that had served him well, saving his life more than once in the years before his exile. But even here, in the bowels of the planet, he slept with the coufee he had carved from a discarded flake of coral within reach at all times, and the socket containing his plaeryin bol always half open. If anyone was fool enough to attempt attacking him during the night, they would wind up dead within moments of intruding in his sleeping quarters.

  This reflexive response had almost brought one of his new companions to an unfortunate end a week earlier. Quite unexpectedly, considering he had done nothing to curry her favor, he’d been visited in the dark hours by Niiriit Esh. In his usual semiconscious state he had sensed her presence and leapt from his sleeping mat, limbs instinctively adopting an attacking stance and his coufee whipping out to slash his attacker across the throat.

  He had barely reined in the attack in time. The faintest of lambent glows had revealed the shock in her eyes—as well as the hurt. Silent in her mortification, she had hurried from the room, her simple shift swishing against the shell walls as she retreated to her chamber.

  In the couple of heartbeats after she had fled, he realized with some embarrassment that she had almost certainly been unarmed, and that there had been no intentions of hostility in her actions. Far from it.

  But that had been then; this awakening left nothing in doubt: he and the other Shamed Ones were under attack.

  From the commotion outside, Nom Anor knew that the scream that had awoken him had been the sentry, Yus Sh’roth, being killed. It was a shame, he thought idly; the former shaper had been a vital member of this community of Shamed Ones. Nevertheless, Nom Anor neither had the time or the desire to grieve. The fact was, Sh’roth’s death scream could mean life for the others, because it gave them time to ready themselves for the invaders—whoever they were.

  Maybe, he thought, it was nothing more than a loner that had inadvertently stumbled upon the camp and been surprised by Sh’roth; or perhaps even just another band of Shamed Ones hoping to make a silent raid while the camp slept, trying to steal some food—

  But, no. He was fooling himself. The sound of amphistaffs cracking left no doubt in his mind that these attackers were warriors. Their camp was too deep to have been fallen upon by some passing patrol, which meant only one thing: these warriors, these trained killers, had been deliberately sent to wipe it out.

  The certainty was more than enough to spur Nom Anor into action. He quickly gathered his things and left his humble dwelling, knowing as he did that it was unlikely he would ever return. Outside he was almost bowled over by someone dashing past in a wild panic, heading down the long, spiraling corridor that ran the length of the disused ventilation shaft. Probably I’pan, he thought, given the wily thief’s knack for getting out of difficult situations.

  Waiting in the shadows a second longer, Nom Anor listened carefully for the sound of anyone pursuing I’pan. But there was none. All he heard were distant footfalls and muffled cries. He didn’t know how many warriors there were, but it was clear they had the upper hand. The cavern was quickly filling with the sound of the Shamed Ones’ massacre.

  Not this Shamed One, Nom Anor swore to himself, turning to follow I’pan down the corridor into the depths of the shaft where the chuk’a hibernated, and wishing his former companions speedy passages to the afterlife—if one awaited them. The Shamed Ones had, without question, saved him from what had been a very difficult situation when he’d fled Shimrra’s wrath. He had lasted longer than expected by eating granite slugs, but eventually he would have succumbed to this alien environment and died—at the hands of a predator, or from something as simple and stupid as drinking poisoned water. He owed them his life and, thanks to their stories about the Jedi, there was every chance he owed them his future, too.

  But what future would he have, he asked himself, if he were to charge up the corridor now and throw himself at a squad of fully armed warriors? He was just one against an unknown number.

  He had owed a few people his life before. He owed no one a death.

  With that in mind, he pulled a lambent from the wall and headed off down the gentle, curving slope in the direction I’pan had taken. Before he’d even taken a dozen steps, though, a high-pitched shriek brought him to a halt. He stood still for a moment, looking back in the direction of the scream, and knowing in his heart that it had come from Niiriit Esh. He hesitated for what seemed like an eternity, his newfound sense of responsibility causing within him a tremendous conflict. Niiriit might have been Shamed, but she was still a warrior, and she would never have run away from a battle. She would have fought to the death, for honor, for Yun-Yammka, for—

  He shook his head vigorously. This was all wrong, he told himself. He was still thinking of her in terms he knew from the world above. But she was no longer a warrior; she was a Shamed One. She wouldn’t have given her life to Yun-Yammka, the Slayer; she would have sacrificed herself to save her friends, as the Jedi did. Her memory deserved the truth, even if it still felt wrong to him.

  He turned and continued down the passage, practically smelling the blood lust of the killing squad chasing him into the darkness.

  The hulking mass of an old Katana-class Dreadnaught lumbered o
ut of Borosk’s lower orbits, where it had been lurking unnoticed since the beginning of the battle. Saba was familiar with its type; she knew her history well. It was a survivor of the Dark Force fleet that Admiral Thrawn had used so effectively against the New Republic. Reclaimed and refitted with centrally computerized slave-rigging units, it operated with a bare minimum of crew. Even so, its sluggish hyperdrive and weak shields had left such vessels sorely outclassed by more recent ships, and Saba was surprised to see one still operating. She wasn’t the only one.

  “That heap of junk isn’t going to get us very far,” Mara had said upon seeing it.

  “That’s exactly what you’re supposed to think,” Pellaeon had replied over the comm. “And besides, it’s not supposed to.”

  By then, Saba had changed ships and changed into one of the brown, lightly armored jumpsuits that had become standard for Jedi Knights going into close combat with the Yuuzhan Vong ever since the mission to the worldship orbiting Myrkr. Danni Quee had also slipped into one and was sitting nervously with Saba as they listened in on the discussion about the ship that would ferry them into position. Saba’s claws twitched in readiness, filled with a primal need to strike back at the ones that had taken her people from her.

  How better could they be remembered?

  “I’ve been saving it for a suicide strike,” the Grand Admiral had gone on to explain. “It’s designed to die twice. The first time, what the enemy sees is selective field failures and shaped charges designed to make it look like the engines have failed. Then, when it looks like it’s adrift in vacuum, it comes back to life and takes everyone by surprise.”

  “You hope,” Mara had put in wryly.

  Pellaeon had shrugged in his tank. “That’s the plan, anyway. We’ve never had cause to use it before.”

  “The difference between a fake death and a real one is slim,” Mara had commented.

  “I am aware of that,” he’d said soberly. “That’s why the crew complement has been reduced to the bare minimum. We found some old combat droid brains mothballed in storage. Emperor Palpatine recovered them when Governor Beltane’s SD project fell in a heap, decades ago. Since there’s never been an SD-Eleven and we needed every resource we’ve got, I figured we could combine the two and create something new. This ship is pretty much capable of flying itself to the target, maintaining a convincing semblance of attack, keeping its crew alive while the outer shell ‘dies,’ then commencing the second, covert operation in accordance with new instructions. There’s plenty of room on the inside for stabilizers and inertial dampeners; it’s basically just a hollow shell. Ordinarily we’d crew it with a squadron of TIE fighters and some troopers, blow the shell when surprise can be maximized, then retreat, if possible. But I’m sure we can make room for other cargo.”

  On the way in, Saba knew, “other cargo” meant Jade Shadow and a reduced TIE fighter contingent. If all went according to plan, the Dreadnaught—originally Braxant Brave, but hastily renamed Braxant Bonecrusher in honor of her plan—would cram its empty heart with liberated slaves. A rapid repressurization unit had been installed at one end of the massive space; Jade Shadow’s tractor beam would help capture the slave carrier and its contents; force fields would keep the air and cargo in long enough for the ship to jump to safety while Jade Shadow and the fighters covered its back.

  That was the plan, anyway. It was, as Pellaeon had suggested, almost crazy enough to work. Saba kept her thoughts carefully away from what she would like to do to the Yuuzhan Vong if the chance arose. Instead she concentrated on the people in the slaveship. They were what mattered. Not her. Not what she had lost.

  “All in place,” came Jacen’s voice over the secure comlink. “Ready for you to dock, Aunt Mara.”

  Jade Shadow’s thrusters fired to jockey it into the same orbit as Bonecrusher. “All systems go?” Mara asked.

  “Initial jump locked in; the drives are hot. We’re ready when you are.”

  Jacen had wanted to be involved in the mission as soon as he’d heard about it. Pellaeon, however, had advised against it.

  “You should stay behind,” the Grand Admiral had said. “That’s where a responsible leader belongs.”

  Jacen had seemed mystified by this. “But I’m not leading anyone.”

  “One day you will,” Pellaeon had said, “and you owe it to those who follow you to be there for them, both during and after a campaign.”

  The comments had been a compliment to Jacen’s character, but it didn’t seem to compensate for the idea of being left out of the mission. While he obviously appreciated the Grand Admiral’s confidence in him, he still did not want to be left behind. In the end, he had eventually forced a compromise. He would be the human brain behind the droid minds during Bonecrusher’s elaborate ruse, hidden away inside the Dreadnaught shell, where it was safe, and from where he was currently directing the operation. As sophisticated as the SD combat droids had been, they were no match for a Jedi, and Saba felt better knowing that she could trust the Dreadnaught to do what it was supposed to do with Jacen behind it. Once she and Danni were in the slaveship, she wanted to know that there would be somewhere to escape to on the way out.

  Danni checked her pressure seals for what seemed like the thousandth time as Jade Shadow nudged its way into Bonecrusher’s ordinary-looking flight deck. They had enough air for six hours. If they weren’t out by then, they would need to locate pressurized areas on the slaveship, or find alternate ways to breathe.

  “It’z okay,” Saba told Danni, who had moved from nervously checking her suit seals to rummaging through her instrument pack, making sure she’d not left anything behind. “Remember yammosk hunting.”

  “That was easy compared to this.” Danni looked much younger with her hair pulled back into the hood of the jumpsuit; at barely half Saba’s mass, she wouldn’t have even passed for a Barabel child. But Saba was under no illusion as to what the woman was capable of. She had survived the Yuuzhan Vong on numerous occasions. Some people had even joked that she was a good-luck charm. Saba didn’t know about that, but she did know that the woman was Force-sensitive, and that had to work in their favor.

  Her breaths came in long, deep waves, filling her with an energy she hadn’t felt for months. The thought of the challenge was exciting and unnerving at the same time. She told herself that she was equal to it, but she knew that it didn’t matter if she wasn’t. She had to try. It was the only way she would ever be free.

  A series of deep clangs announced that Jade Shadow had passed through the flight deck’s fake inner hull and docked with the heavy grapnels designed to withstand the shaking the Dreadnaught would receive during the early stages of its mission. Over Mara’s shoulder, Saba could see two rows of closely packed TIE fighters cradled in cushioning energy nets. The fake flight deck was filled with older TIE fighters piloted by less sophisticated droid brains, designed to act as decoys during the initial attack.

  “Breaking orbit,” Jacen said. The ship might have been old, but its inertial dampeners were first-rate. Saba felt nothing at all as its drives engaged. “Heading for the jump point.”

  “Fly well, Braxant Bonecrusher,” came Grand Admiral Pellaeon’s voice over the comm. “We’ll keep them as busy as we can for you down here.”

  “Thanks, Gilad,” Mara said. “Just make sure you’re still around to pick up our pieces afterward.”

  “It will be my pleasure to return the favor.”

  Saba felt a stirring through the Force as though Luke and his departing wife were communicating in private—and then there was nothing but the silence of hyperspace. Her connection with the living universe was gone. They were on their way.

  “First jump engaged,” Jacen said.

  “Trim optimal,” interceded a droid voice, deep but with jarring, nasal overtones—the voice of the droid brains doing the job normally done by thousands of crew. “Projection optimal. All systems optimal.”

  “ETA?”

  “Seven point five-three standard minu
tes,” the droid replied. “Perfectly optimal.”

  “I don’t suppose above optimal is an option, is it?” Jacen asked.

  “Good question,” Mara said, pushing her hair back from her face as she leaned back into her molded flight seat. “If we could shave off a few seconds, that could only be a good thing.”

  “Anything other than optimal would be wasteful,” the droid replied.

  Saba sissed slightly at the droid’s annoying pragmatism.

  “I can’t help wishing we had a few of Lando Calrissian’s YVH droids here to lend us a hand,” Danni said as she looked up from adjusting the webbing of her pack.

  “You’re not the only one,” Mara said sourly. “They might show those SD brains that they’ve got more to worry about than being precisely on schedule. Obsolescence is a terrible thing for a droid, you know.”

  Jacen chuckled, but the droid remained silent. Saba hissed again and settled back to wait, her claws retracted and tail relaxed, to all appearances a perfect example of Jedi patience. Only another Barabel would have recognized the signs of nervousness she was actually displaying: the slight stiffness to the scales down her back and the restless extension and retraction of her inner eyelids. Not even her Jedi training could completely remove her anxieties.

  Hunt the moment …

  The tunnel extruded by the chuk’a ended in a complicated series of whorls and loops, all of them easily large enough to admit an adult. There were no rooms as such, just random chambers spawned like bubbles in blorash jelly where the chuk’a had meandered to a halt. The lambent Nom Anor held high in his hand sent strange colors and oily reflections dancing all around him. The going was difficult, and Nom Anor stepped carefully on the slippery surface, wary of sharp edges. He wasn’t sure how far the torturous passages led; all he knew was that the top of the chuk’a itself was to be found at the very lowest point of the passage. There its soft tissues would be exposed and sensitive; there lay his means of escape.