Remnant: Force Heretic I

by Sean Williams

  “Okay,” he said. “Everyone take your positions. I’ll click you when I have something definite.”

  Jacen reached out into the Force. Good luck, he sent to Danni and Saba. If they received the thought, they were too busy to respond.

  He picked up a slight electromagnetic hum as the yacht’s air lock cycled through, but he doubted anyone outside the ship would notice. And if they did, they were likely to put it down to the wreckage settling. Ships took time to die all the way through. There might be pockets of mechanical life still ticking futilely away. There might even be survivors …

  A shadow moved across the screens in front of him. He stiffened, even though he knew what to expect. Braxant Bonecrusher’s slow roll around its center of gravity brought the slaveship gradually back into view a minute later—and, sure enough, it was looming much larger than before.

  Jacen clicked once to confirm that everything was going to plan. A second later, a powerful jolt ran through the Dreadnaught. For a second he thought that that one almost imperceptible click might have given them away, until he realized that what he’d in fact felt was the dovin basal of the slaveship grabbing on to Bonecrusher.

  Everything’s going according to plan, said Mara. His aunt had sent out a bubble of both encouragement and reassurance to everyone on board.

  Another jolt followed, accompanied by the sound of twisting metal. He feared for the structural integrity of the ship; without the inertial dampeners, it wasn’t used to such stresses on its frame. Thankfully, though, it held.

  When everything settled down again, the stars were no longer moving as fast, and the slaveship was rotating, too, anchored to the hull of Bonecrusher by the Yuuzhan Vong’s version of artificial gravity. It was coming at them tentacles-first, like something out of a nightmare.

  He clicked again, this time speaking into the comm.

  “They’ve got us,” he said. “And our friendly slaveship is moving in fast.”

  “Any sign of the ships?” Mara asked.

  “I think it’s safe to assume that most of them have gone back to their capital vessels,” he answered. “They seem to have left just enough to—”

  A voice over the comlink cut him off. Although not allowed to transmit, the Dreadnaught’s receivers were still intact.

  “This is Commander B’shith Vorrik,” said an abrasive Yuuzhan Vong voice. Jacen was initially nonplussed. The villips the Yuuzhan Vong used to communicate among themselves didn’t transmit over electromagnetic frequencies, unless they were modified by an oggzil. The only reason they would use one of those would be to speak to the enemy—and that was confirmed with Vorrik’s next words: “All infidels will surrender immediately, or be destroyed.”

  Jacen’s heart sank. The commander knew they were there. The plan had failed; it had all been for nothing!

  Wait, Jacen, Mara sent, sensing the despair welling up inside of him.

  “We have no intention of surrendering to become slaves,” came another voice over the receiver.

  The growled words came from Grand Admiral Gilad Pellaeon. Jacen almost laughed out loud in relief: the Yuuzhan Vong’s ultimatum had been addressed to the Imperials, not Braxant Bonecrusher at all.

  “Surrender the Jedi you harbor among you,” Vorrik continued.

  Jacen chuckled grimly to himself. Clearly the tactics they had introduced to the Imperials hadn’t gone unnoticed.

  “Why should we turn on those who help us?” Pellaeon replied.

  “What good is the help if it results in your destruction?” Vorrik responded.

  “You attacked us without provocation,” Pellaeon shot back. “It would seem our destruction was always your intention.”

  “The presence of the Jedi is provocation enough,” Vorrik growled. “Your resistance is provocation! Your very existence is provocation! Now, power down your weapons, infidel, and surrender.”

  “I have a better idea,” Pellaeon said evenly. “Leave the system now while you’re still in a position to do so.”

  Jacen knew that the Grand Admiral was playing for time—either that or he wanted to seem as if this was what he was doing. With the Dreadnaught powered down around him, there was no way of telling the disposition of the Imperial forces, but he assumed that Pellaeon was still working to the original plan: to make it appear as if they were in retreat. B’shith Vorrik’s announcement was probably nothing more than an attempt to hurry things along.

  The Yuuzhan Vong commander’s laugh boomed out from the receivers. “If you were counting on the cowardly attack to our rear flanks to change the course of this battle,” he said, “then you should know that it has failed. Your survival, now, fool, rests solely upon my goodwill.”

  Grand Admiral Pellaeon hesitated just long enough to give the impression that this news had rattled him.

  “I don’t think there’s an atom of goodwill in the entire Yuuzhan Vong culture,” he said. There was a tremor in his voice. Jacen had to admit, the Grand Admiral was playing his role well. “We would sooner die than submit to you, Vorrik.”

  “Then so be it,” Vorrik said, laughing again. “And may Yun-Yammka devour your bodies as well as your souls.”

  The Yuuzhan Vong commander added something more, but Jacen stopped listening. A faint click had indicated that Saba and Danni had arrived in position and were preparing to cross over to the slaveship.

  Cross over … Jacen shook his head. If that wasn’t a euphemism, he didn’t know what was. He felt Mara joining him in wishing Saba and Danni luck as somewhere on the damaged hull of Braxant Bonecrusher they prepared themselves for what they had to do.

  He felt them leave, felt their rush of apprehension as the tentacles took them. Then their Force-signatures were muffled among the many trapped in the belly of the slave freighter. They were completely out of his reach now, and the situation out of his control—as was Pellaeon’s fight around Borosk. The only thing he could do from here on in was wait for a sign, and hope.

  When the mouth of one of the slaveship’s surviving tentacles came groping for her, Saba Sebatyne almost felt her courage desert her. A two-meter-wide, well-muscled sphincter nosing through the holes in the Dreadnaught’s hull was enough to make anyone think twice.

  Pellaeon’s minions had appropriated a number of cadavers from the nearest Star Destroyer’s morgue and scattered them around the intended blast hole. Saba felt dismay for the families of the dead soldiers, but she also knew it was necessary if they were to pull off this mission. A dead ship with no dead bodies might have aroused suspicions and put their plan in jeopardy.

  The tentacles didn’t waste time with the bodies, though, passing over the dead tissue to continue searching for something more useful. They poked deeper into the punctured hull, looking for anything alive—anything at all. Danni blanched behind her faceplate as one fumbled blindly closer, but she didn’t back away.

  Nor did Saba. Putting her faith in the Force, as well as her pressurized jumpsuit, she pushed out gently from her hiding place in the direction of one of the tentacles. With surprising speed, the tentacle noticed her and swung around to take her. Her body tensed as she remembered her people spilling out from the slaveship all those months ago, filling the void with six-pointed stars that drifted lifelessly from the ruptured wall of the ship. She closed her eyes and forced the memory down; now was not the time to be reliving such grief. She needed her wits about her; she needed to focus on the assignment at hand.

  “For this one’s home,” she whispered. “For this one’s people.”

  She forced her muscles to relax as she was engulfed by the maw of the tentacle and swept along a slippery, ribbed tube toward the hold of the ship. Hold? Who am I kidding? It was the slaveship’s belly, and right now she was being eaten by it, her body pummeled by every muscular surge of the tentacle.

  The contractions around her grew stronger as she approached the end of the tentacle. She wondered briefly if Danni was following, but didn’t have time to check; she was too caught up in the moment
and what she was experiencing to sense anyone else. Still, she wanted to reach back and feel for Danni, just to be able to touch her and find some reassurance. Just to get a hand to her right now would have made the discomfort that much easier to deal with.

  Then, abruptly, the ride was over, and she was spat into what felt like a thick mass of jelly. She was knocked repeatedly across the face and body by the large number of hard lumps in suspension, so much so that she feared for the integrity of her faceplate. But when she finally came to a halt, she was relieved to find it was still fully intact.

  She gasped for air and felt a pain in her ribs. Nothing seemed to be broken, but she was definitely bruised. All around her was a uniform, infrared glow—unfortunately too diffuse or muffled to see by. She spread her legs to orient herself and felt objects pressing in all around her. Soft on the inside and firm in the middle, the objects felt strange to her touch. Her fingers sought purchase, but they kept slipping in the jelly.

  Then something scrabbled at her faceplate, making her jerk backward. Her hands found the torch in her equipment pack and snapped it on. Just enough light came through the jelly to reveal that something leathery and star-shaped was trying to force its way across her face. She firmly brushed it aside and suddenly came face to face with a human.

  She gasped with shock, then cursed herself. Of course. She was in a slaveship; what did she expect? The goop around her was probably a softer version of blorash jelly, used in combat to pin an opponent’s limbs down. The thing flapping at her face might have been a gnullith, living breath masks for Yuuzhan Vong’s pilots. The human floating upside down in front of her—just one of thousands trapped in the jelly—didn’t have a gnullith and was, as her questioning hands determined, quite dead. The black-haired woman must have drowned before the gnulliths reached her—or worse, died during ingestion.

  A pressure wave rolled through the jelly from above her, and Saba assumed that Danni had just arrived. She moved her powerful legs and arms to propel herself forward, attempting to swim for the outer shell of the belly, but it was impossible to tell if she was making any progress. And even if she was, she had no real idea of which direction she was in fact moving. It was like trying to swim through a sap pool while blindfolded.

  She tried climbing instead of swimming, using the people around her for leverage. They all seemed to be in a state of drug-induced unconsciousness, and as such didn’t respond when she grabbed hold of them. Again, she wasn’t sure if she was making any real progress. For all she knew, she could have been simply pushing the bodies behind her rather than moving along them. Any sense of direction had abandoned her in her free fall. She wouldn’t have minded so much had it not been for the gnulliths swimming through the jelly. Everywhere she turned she encountered their strange flapping motions as their slithering air tubes constantly groped for her mouth.

  So she gave in and centered herself. Switching out the light and closing her eyes, she sought her innermost point, and then she reached out.

  The people around her created a concentrated ball of life pressing in on all sides. She was deep within it, and had been heading deeper until she’d stopped. Reorienting herself, keeping her claws carefully sheathed and her tail limp, she used the Force itself to move her through the resistant jelly.

  The edge gradually came closer, and she found herself reaching for it well before it arrived. It was almost as though she was groping for breath from the bottom of a lake. All of the captives were unconscious, but many of them were fearful and suffering in their dreams; not even sleep could protect them from the trauma of what their bodies were undergoing. The overlapping nightmares were suffocating, and Saba found herself humming a childhood tune she hadn’t thought of for years to keep them at bay. It worked, but only just.

  When she finally hit the edge of the belly, she clutched tightly at it, allowing herself the time to regain her strength. The interior surface was ribbed, so movement along it wouldn’t be difficult once she got going again. All she had to do was collect her thoughts, orient herself with respect to the ship around her, and then—

  Something clutched at her from out of the jelly. She pushed herself between a couple of the immense ribs, kicking out at what she thought to be another gnullith. But it came back, groping insistently for her. For a moment she panicked, completely flustered by the oppressive, grotesque environment. The same one the last of her people had endured, before … She reached automatically for her lightsaber, even though she knew that lighting it would inevitably hurt the unconscious captives pressing in around her.

  Then a light appeared out of the reddish murk. It grew brighter as whatever was grabbing at her found purchase, and pulled. Saba realized with a flood of relief that the thing that had taken hold of her equipment belt was a human hand—and that the hand belonged to Danni Quee.

  The Barabel couldn’t help it. She laughed at herself, amused by her mistake and buoyed by the fading of her intense but fleeting panic. Her sissing fit continued until Danni’s faceplate pressed up against hers and she could see the human woman frowning in concern.

  “Saba? Are you all right?” Danni’s voice was muffled by the thickness of their masks. “You’re shaking!”

  “This one iz very glad to see you, Danni Quee,” she said, forcing herself to be calm. Given their situation, uncontrolled laughter could be just as detrimental as panic. “How did you know where to look?”

  “Through the Force,” she said. “Can’t you see me that way?”

  Saba shook her head. “There are too many people in here with us. I am drowning in their mindz.”

  Danni removed her faceplate from Saba’s and looked around. It was her turn to shiver.

  “It’s dark in here,” she said upon turning back to face Saba. “I’m glad I’ve got this light.”

  Saba nodded. “This one iz more glad that you found me.”

  “Do you know where we are?”

  Saba concentrated again. She couldn’t feel the alien ship or its Yuuzhan Vong crew, but she could sense the shape that the sac of imprisoned humans made, then work out where they were from that.

  “We’re past the halfway point,” she said. “There iz a bulge that I suspect containz the ship’s control centers. It’z not far from here—about a hundred meters or so.”

  “Point me in the right direction, then, and let’s go,” Danni said with determination—although it obviously came with some effort. She was as uneasy about the whole thing as Saba was. “The sooner we’re out of here, the better.”

  Saba led the way, propelling herself along the wall by digging her claws into the ribbing and pulling herself forward. Danni followed, using Saba’s tail as a guide. As before, Saba had to shoulder aside unconscious or dead bodies on her way, and the extra energy this required soon tired her.

  Movement along the wall was certainly simpler than swimming through the jelly, but it still wasn’t easy. The interior of the slaveship was muscular and slippery, the surface soft but resistant to her probing digits. The ridges, she decided, were formed by vast muscle fibers wrapped around the hold, keeping the pressure in and allowing it to flex when new additions arrived. It wasn’t as tough as yorik coral, small plates of which she noticed had coated the exterior. With the slaves kept unconscious—presumably by a compound delivered via the gnulliths, since contact with the blorash jelly hadn’t affected Danni at all—it seemed obvious that the Yuuzhan Vong had ignored any threat from the inside. Saba felt reasonably confident that, if worse came to worst, they could cut through the inner layer and find a way out between the yorik coral plates. But that would mean risking explosive decompression, sending the contents of the belly out into hard vacuum …

  The image of six-pointed stars tumbling into space flashed through her mind. She fought down the thought angrily.

  I won’t let that happen again!

  Time was passing quickly, so she forced herself to hurry. She didn’t know how long the slaveship would hover around the Dreadnaught, sniffing for new captiv
es. There had been a couple of small movements through the ship, suggestive of slight attitude adjustments, so she knew it hadn’t made any dramatic moves yet. The moment it left, though, their job would become a thousand times more difficult.

  When they reached the bulge, its dimensions became clearer. The bulge was shaped like a volcano, with a round lip surrounding a slight dimple at the top. Feeling her way to the dimple, she was disappointed to find that it wasn’t an exit as she had imagined. It was, in fact, an entrance, but not one she could fit through. It was from here that fresh gnulliths were constantly pumped into the vast sac, riding on a gentle current of blorash jelly. Avoiding them proved difficult, and Saba pressed herself as flat as she could against the fleshy inner wall to present as small a target as possible.

  Danni pressed her faceplate against Saba’s. “This place is getting worse by the minute.”

  “At least they don’t seem to know we’re here,” Saba replied. “We seem safe enough.”

  “For now,” Danni added.

  Danni reached awkwardly for her pack and slid a fat cylinder from it. Saba helped her unscrew its cap and clear away the jelly long enough to activate its contents. Six modified Mark VII scarab droids came to life at the touch of a switch on Danni’s remote controller. Each had six legs as long as a human’s index finger and two retractable injection fangs. They had high-gain photoreceptors and sensitive biodetectors that had been tuned to Yuuzhan Vong rhythms and pheromones. They didn’t normally need remote operators, although their sensors could be accessed from a distance. These had been further modified to give Danni a measure of remote control—since the interior of the slaveship was a completely unknown environment—without jeopardizing their mission. Each scarab would lay a threadlike molecular wire behind it, virtually invisible to the naked eye, which would allow her to keep in touch without using comlink channels.

  Heads-up displays in Danni’s face mask allowed her to see what the scarabs saw. As she keyed a series of instructions into the tiny droids and sent them scuttling for the gnullith vent, Saba accessed the information and watched, too.