As he wove through the basement of the place he had briefly called home, he became aware of the sound of breathing. At first he thought it might have been his own echoing back, but the faint thudding noise that accompanied it suggested otherwise. He smothered the lambent in his fingers, turning the light it cast a dull red, and followed the sounds to their source.
Creeping around a jagged hairpin bend, he saw a huddled figure crouching on the floor of a dead end, dressed in the familiar rags of a Shamed One. Nom Anor felt his body sag in relief as he exhaled heavily. For a moment he had feared it might be a warrior sent to cut off escape.
“I’pan, you fool,” he said. “You almost—”
He stopped when the figure turned to face him. It wasn’t I’pan at all. It was Kunra.
The disgraced warrior half rose to his feet, holding a chunk of yorik coral in his right hand. It was black-stained in the reddish light.
“What are you doing here?” Kunra asked, making no attempt to hide the bitterness he held for Nom Anor.
“I could ask you the same thing,” Nom Anor said. “But I imagine we’re both here for the same reason.”
The warrior looked down, then back up at Nom Anor.
“That is the chuk’a cap, isn’t it?” Nom Anor added, indicating the bloody patch by the warrior’s feet.
With its job done, the shell-excreting chuk’a now blocked the rest of the shaft and acted as plug, keeping any subterranean dwellers from coming up from below—as well as preventing anyone from going down. Opening that plug would allow him, and Kunra, to get away before the warriors reached them, and with any luck they might not follow them down into the darkness.
But the creature’s “cap” was anchored securely into the side of the shaft, and getting it to withdraw those anchors wasn’t easy. There was a soft, spongy layer of flesh just below the hardened cap, and somewhere beneath that was the nerve connected to the creature’s right ganglion network. Once that nerve was stimulated, the cap’s multiple pincers that were thrust into the rock would retract defensively, causing the chuk’a to fall. From the blood on Kunra’s hand and around his feet, Nom Anor guessed he hadn’t had much success doing that.
Kunra nodded in response to Nom Anor’s question. “But it’s not responding. I can’t reach it.”
“Let me try.” Nom Anor moved forward, handing the lambent to the warrior and pulling the homemade coufee from his belt. He did this slowly, making sure Kunra had a chance to see the blade before stooping over to examine the fleshy portion of the shell-making beast. Then he set about digging for the nerve with the point of his coufee. It wasn’t easy; he was distracted the whole time, constantly wondering whether Kunra would vent his dislike of the ex-executor by bringing the piece of yorik coral down on the back of his head.
“I can’t see,” he said. “Move the light over here.”
The light wobbled as Kunra shifted, then steadied at a more useful angle. Nom Anor breathed an internal sigh of relief. We are allies again, he thought. For now, anyway. But there are still things I need to know.
“Did you lead them here?” he asked without turning to face Kunra. “The warriors?”
“No!” The shock in Kunra’s voice that such a thing could even be suggested left no doubt in Nom Anor’s mind that the ex-warrior was telling the truth. “What would make you think such a thing?”
Nom Anor shrugged. “You and I were the only ones who got away, and I know I didn’t call them.” He glanced up. The ex-warrior’s face was a mess of half-finished scars and internal anguish.
“It wasn’t me,” Kunra reasserted. “I don’t know why they’re here. I escaped because—” He hesitated for a second then forced out the words: “I was with Sh’roth when they came. While they fought him, I—I ran.”
Nom Anor studied Kunra a moment longer, then returned to his work with barely a nod of acknowledgment. I ran. That explained everything: why Kunra had been the only one given enough time to escape, and why he was Shamed in the first place. Warriors didn’t run, no matter what the circumstances; judging by the look on Kunra’s face, this clearly wasn’t the first time he had displayed cowardly tendencies. He was probably lucky to have escaped the first time with just a Shaming.
“Then what brought them here, do you think?” he asked. He couldn’t help but wonder if someone else had betrayed him to the authorities. If Shimrra had learned of his existence, sending such a band of warriors to finish him off in the dead of night was exactly the kind of thing he’d do.
“What else?” Kunra said, more animated after the change of subject. “The one thing the high castes are afraid of, of course: the heresy.”
Nom Anor admitted to himself that the idea made sense. The priests would tolerate the Jedi sect as much as Shimrra would the Jedi themselves, perhaps even less. The Shamed Ones preaching it would be the enemy within, and rooting them out would be a priority. But if that was the case, then why had he never heard of such cleansing raids through the underworld of Yuuzhan’tar before his fall from grace? He assumed the answer to that lay in the nebulous way the message spread: even if Shimrra captured a convert, that one would only lead him to two or three others, who would in turn lead him nowhere, or in circles. There was no clear trail—as Nom Anor himself could attest. He had tried to find it, and failed.
Perhaps his own inquiries had, for the first time, established a clear trail to follow. He might have brought premature death down upon his fellow Shamed Ones by trying to find a way to use their beliefs to his own end. If so, the irony wasn’t lost on him. Without them—and without a way out of the bottom of the shaft—he might very well find himself caught in a trap he had inadvertently laid for himself.
Frustration made him stab deep into the chuk’a cap over and over again, until his right arm was buried in it up to his elbow, black with gore. Finally he felt the creature respond with a spasm, and knew he had to be close to the nerve. He twisted the blade deeper, and for his effort felt a tremor ripple through the chuk’a. Another twist and the tissue around his hand tightened like muscle pulling taut. Fearing his fingers might be broken—or worse, that he might lose the only weapon he had left—he hastily pulled the coufee from the cap. A spurt of dark blood followed it, and the shell around them shook even more.
Kunra looked relieved.
“You’ve done this before?” he asked, the beginnings of a smile on his scarred lips.
Nom Anor was about to confess that in fact he had never done anything like this in his life, when the floor suddenly fell out from beneath them, consigning them both to the depths of the vent.
Not far from Jade Shadow, Jacen Solo’s thoughts were very much focused on the present, not the future. In the minutes remaining till the end of jump, there was so much to do: systems to familiarize himself with, droid brains to program, decoy strategies to scrutinize, along with innumerable other checks to be made on an unfamiliar system. It was time-consuming, but necessary. Once he gave the order to jump, then the mission would truly be under way, and there wouldn’t be time to make sure everything was in order.
Sealed in the cockpit of a flightless TIE fighter that was in turn wrapped in an energy web dense enough to stop a comet—all of it huddling inside the belly of Braxant Bonecrusher with Jade Shadow and numerous TIE fighters—he was electronically patched into the mind of the Dreadnaught and able to oversee its every move. He felt like a Phindian puppeteer, using tricks of light to cast shadows many times larger than himself onto a screen. Jacen only hoped the Yuuzhan Vong would be fooled by the illusion. If they weren’t, the Dreadnaught wouldn’t last long, and the mission would turn out to be very short indeed. It packed only the one surprise; once that was gone there would be nothing else. All they’d have to rely upon then was luck. And while good fortune was one of the things his family was famous for, it was not something he wanted to base the success of this mission upon. The death of Anakin had proven once and for all that luck did not stay in one’s favor indefinitely.
The seconds ticke
d by as he continued his last-minute checks. The chores were complicated, but they only occupied the analytical part of his brain. Another part—the more intuitive section that he usually assigned to the understanding of his place in the Force—turned to Danni and Saba in Jade Shadow. As he observed them and their own preparations from a distance, he suddenly realized just how little he was really adding to the mission itself: he was there mainly just to double-check what the SD brains would be doing. Nevertheless, he still believed it was important for him to be around for at least part of the mission. And he believed it for reasons that, until now, he had kept hidden even from himself …
Danni’s nervousness touched him deeply. She didn’t have a lightsaber or a full Jedi’s training in the Force; she would essentially rely on Saba throughout this mission into the belly of the slaveship; but she was still going, and her courage made him like her even more. He vividly remembered the moment they had shared while waiting for Captain Yage to board Jade Shadow. There had been something there, a connection of some kind. Had that been the result of boredom? he wondered. Or was it evidence of larger, genuine feelings? There was no denying he’d had a mild, juvenile crush on her shortly after rescuing her from the Yuuzhan Vong on Helska 4, but that had been a fleeting and insignificant thing. He had put it down to mere emotions affected by circumstances, nothing more, and so had effectively buried the impulses. But now those feelings were back, and what troubled him more than anything else was how it had taken so little to rouse them.
When the mission was over, he would have to examine the situation more closely. And delicately, of course. He had proven himself as a pilot, a warrior, and—some would say—a Jedi, but when it came to matters of the heart, he was a definite novice.
“Jump complete,” the droid brains announced, snapping him out of his reverie.
“Er—halfway there,” Jacen said quickly to the others, worried that any hesitation might somehow reveal something of his thoughts. His fingers flew over the controls, calculating then laying in the second jump. The layout of the instruments in the TIE cockpit was different from what he was used to, but not radically dissimilar.
“That sounds just optimal,” Mara said from the cockpit of Jade Shadow, not far from where he was sitting.
“Correct,” the droid brain said. They hadn’t been programmed to recognize sarcasm.
Jacen’s course matched that of the droid brains. Unless the slaveship had radically altered position, they should come out practically on top of it.
He okayed the jump. According to the instruments, the drives surged back into life; thanks to the energy web, he felt as though they’d remained completely stationary.
“On our way,” he informed the passengers of Jade Shadow. “We’ll be there soon.”
“In seven point four-seven standard minutes,” the droid brain informed them. “Tactical circuits engaged. TIE decoys ready for launch. Shield generators programmed. Hull detonators primed.”
The droid brains cycled through their precombat checklist once every minute with no variation. Jacen found himself half hypnotized by the steady mantra, and his mind began to wander again. His thoughts turned to Danni once more, and he called up a view of Jade Shadow’s cockpit, where she and Saba waited with Mara for the mission to truly begin. Her breathing became heavier as her tension increased. But there was an edge of excitement to that tension—and it was infectious, too. He could feel his own heart beating a little faster, and his palms began to sweat …
He was thankful when the droid brain announced their imminent arrival. He busied himself with double and triple checks to Braxant Bonecrusher’s systems, ensuring everything was locked down nice and tight—including himself.
“Here we go,” he said over the comlink. “Hang on. This is going to be rough.”
“I’m sure you’ll look after us, Jacen,” his aunt said. He smiled uncomfortably at her confidence in him.
Not if I don’t focus on what I’m doing, he thought to himself.
“Five seconds,” the droid brain announced. “Status: optimal. Three. Two. One.”
The white of hyperspace streaked and became stars as the Dreadnaught barreled back into realspace with all the subtlety of an asteroid. Sensors swept the immediate area, searching for the slaveship. Once it was found—almost exactly where predicted—the Dreadnaught’s cannons and batteries locked on and began firing at the tentacles. At the same time, the squadron of decoy TIE fighters launched from the flight deck and swooped in to attack.
This was a crucial phase in the operation, and Jacen couldn’t help but feel anxious. The attack had to be stiff enough to convince the Yuuzhan Vong that it was a serious threat, but not so stiff that it would seriously damage the slaveship. The last thing they wanted to do was burst it open and destroy its contents.
But there seemed to be little danger of doing that. The slave freighter was armored against attack, and its tentacles were tough. It wasn’t equipped with plasma guns to defend itself, and its dovin basals weren’t responding the same way as those on combat vessels, but coralskippers soon launched from nearby vessels and powered hard to intercept the attack. Jacen watched the views on the screens surrounding him with apprehension, fists clenching uneasily: it was impossible not to be nervous so deep in enemy territory, with so little standing between success and destruction.
But then, that was the point. They were pretending to be a suicide mission, and the Yuuzhan Vong would instinctively accept it as such. It fit perfectly into their philosophy. The arrogance of the species didn’t allow them to learn from their mistakes, it seemed—or at least accept that others thought differently from them.
The droid brains were in their element here. Scattered throughout the ship but linked by a high-speed network, they fired turbolasers and bolstered shields while broadcasting objectives to the simpler TIE fighter brains. Their reports were uniformly flat-toned and perfectly objective. Even when a freak missile squeaked through the shields and took out one of their own, the pitch of reporting didn’t vary. This was battle, Jacen thought, and losses were expected. The droids probably regarded the jolting and jarring of the Dreadnaught as an indication that they were doing their job properly.
Two TIE fighters were destroyed almost instantly when the skips arrived; another three fell within the following minute. The remainder of the fighters managed to cripple one of the slaveship’s tentacles, while Bonecrusher dispatched three coralskippers using the random-stutter technique Jacen had programmed into the droid gunners. For a brief moment it looked like they might hold out longer than anticipated, but then fortune’s tide turned and the TIE fighters were destroyed with deadly precision.
Within minutes, the last one had been picked out of the sky by two converging streams of plasma. Barely had the burning cloud of wreckage dissipated when the attack turned on the Dreadnaught itself, pounding it from every direction. The droid brains brought the craft about, as though intending to flee. Skips swooped around it, firing round after round into its shields. Explosions rocked the ship as one by one the shields were permitted to fail. Debris sprayed into space as one of the hyperdrive engines blew, rattling Jacen in his protected roost like he was nothing more than a die in a cup. Even through the hull of the Dreadnaught, the energy web, and the TIE cockpit shell, there was still enough leftover energy to give him a shake. The steady thrum of Bonecrusher’s generators stuttered as the Dreadnaught’s course began to twist back upon itself.
That was all the encouragement the Yuuzhan Vong needed. Sensing the kill, they sent streams of plasma fire into the weakened points along the hull. Quad batteries exploded; deflector shield projector bays burst into flames as air leaked out of decompressing decks; the Dreadnaught’s rounded, almost beaked nose burst open as though its command decks had been breached. Artificial gravity failed along with the remaining drives. Then the reserve power generators took a direct hit, blowing an enormous hole in the side of the ship, venting air and even more debris into the vacuum.
Then
it was over. Generators shut down and—since Jacen was there to bring them back when required—the SD droid brains shut down with them. Something groaned deep and long as the Dreadnaught settled into a state of inactivity. The clanking and rattling of debris escaping through gashes in the outer hull sounded like garbage being ground and mangled in a compactor.
Eventually total silence fell in the secret heart of the ship. Jacen unconsciously held his breath, sensing the TIE fighter pilots and his crewmates in Jade Shadow doing the same. This was the moment that would determine whether the mission failed or succeeded. If the Yuuzhan Vong didn’t believe the ship to be truly dead, then they certainly soon would be.
To the rest of the universe, the Braxant Bonecrusher looked as though it had spent its fighters in a failed attack and been taken out itself. With everything powered down, there would be no reason to suspect that another squadron waited within for the word to launch, along with Jade Shadow, Jacen in his TIE cockpit, and the droid brains. Everything depended on this illusion remaining intact.
Jacen had only two holocams on the hull transmitting data back to him. He kept his eyes on the views—one above the breach in the Dreadnaught’s back, the other from the stern, looking along the ship. Stars rotated around the Dreadnaught; the last explosion had given it a convincing tumble.
It was Mara who finally broke the silence. “Anything, Jacen?” She spoke in barely a whisper.
“Nothing conclusive yet,” he returned equally as quietly. “They’re not firing, which is a good thing, but the slaveship isn’t visible at the moment, either.”
“This one iz convinced by the quiet,” Saba said.
Jacen listened. It was impossible to hear through a vacuum, so what the Yuuzhan Vong were doing would be impossible to detect aurally. But there was a quality to the silence that suggested Saba was right: the Yuuzhan Vong had called off the attack. What happened next was not yet known, but there was really only one possibility.
Remnant: Force Heretic I Page 28
