Remnant: Force Heretic I

by Sean Williams

  The droids soon found the vent and burrowed into its muscular sphincter. The view through infrared was little different from what Saba saw around her in the hold: lots of indistinct, warm blurs and not much else. But the scarabs slid between the folds of tissue for three meters, nudging gnulliths aside with ease along their way.

  The moment the lead scarab began to detect light, it slowed its crawl through the vent. They had clearly reached the end of the narrow passage. Danni instructed the droid to carefully extend a photoreceptor out toward the light, and found a tank filled with clear fluid that was thicker than water and held bubbles in suspension like human saliva. Throughout, the tank was teeming with star-shaped creatures that twitched and writhed in the liquid. This was the source of the gnulliths.

  The scarab didn’t detect any nearby Yuuzhan Vong biorhythms, so the droid slipped free of the vent and swam awkwardly around the edge of the gnullith pool. Ignoring the scarab’s presence, the flapping star-shaped organic masks continued to swim into the vent from the bottom of the pool where, presumably, they were grown. The other scarabs followed the lead out of the pool, fanning out to find different hiding spots. The remote-control view became a mess of six slightly different images of the same place, and Saba cut them back to only the lead droid to keep it simple. The scarab found a promising passage through the bony wall, leaving its siblings behind.

  The view became nothing more than a series of close-ups of unpolished yorik coral at very close quarters as the scarab scurried along the narrow fissure. Eventually it came to a dead end, then backtracked until it reached a turnoff it had ignored before and took that instead. That, too, led to a dead end, so the droid went back to another turning and tried that instead. After a few times of doing this, Saba began to feel frustrated. If they didn’t find the equivalent of a control room soon, they were never going to be able to rescue the captives. And worse: they would end up captives themselves!

  “Got ’em,” Danni said suddenly, her voice low but excited.

  Saba snapped from her pessimism. “Where?”

  “Scarab Four.” Saba selected the view and watched biorhythm readings glowing in many colors across a view of yet another narrow fissure. The scarab was moving stealthily closer to the end of the fissure, visible just around a turn up ahead. Bright light shone from around the corner, and Saba could hear the harsh sound of the Yuuzhan Vong language in her earplugs.

  The scarab instinctively froze the moment it managed to get one of its photoreceptors around the corner for a look, finding itself at about shoulder height in a small control room containing two Yuuzhan Vong warriors. Brutally scarred, although not as extensively as some Saba had seen, they were elbow deep in the sort of organic controls typical for these vessels. On a strangely shaped screen before them, Saba saw something that she suspected represented the wreckage of the Dreadnaught at close quarters. It was hard to say for sure, though, because the biological display wasn’t configured to frequencies her eyes were sensitive to.

  Danni, however, was more certain. “That’s Bonecrusher,” she said. “At least we know we’ve still got a way off this thing.”

  But for how long? Saba thought as she shifted in the blorash jelly, brushing to one side yet another gnullith.

  “I’m going to send the other scarabs in to join Four,” Danni said. “We’ll get them to attack once they’re all there, okay?”

  Saba nodded. Given that they hadn’t been able to find a way out of the hold from within, this had become the human woman’s show. Nevertheless, she still had reservations. “Only two pilotz for a ship this big?” she asked dubiously.

  Danni shrugged in the jelly. “We’re not picking up any other readings,” she said. “And the scarabs have covered seventy percent of the volume ahead of us. It’s not so unlikely, really. This would be dishonorable work in their eyes: there’s no fighting, no victory; just picking up the pieces left behind by the true heroes.”

  Saba nodded again, more reassured. If that was the case, the attack of Braxant Bonecrusher was probably the most exciting thing these pilots had seen for ages. They would be relieved and cocky, and certainly not expecting an attack from within. Their appearance gave some credence to that notion: their armor was ragged, and one of them even had exposed skin showing through the vonduun crab shell.

  One by one, the scarab viewpoints began to overlap again. They crowded together in the crack Scarab Four had found, making tiny clicking noises with their thin, metal legs as they watched the aliens going about their business.

  “How far can these thingz jump?” Saba asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Danni replied. “They have their own attack algorithms. I’d probably just get in the way if I told them what to do.”

  “And you’re sure the poison will work?” A range of anti-Yuuzhan Vong toxins had been identified by Master Cilghal; Pellaeon had instructed his security staff to fill the scarabs’ poison reservoirs with it before they left.

  “No.” Danni smiled at Saba through the faceplate in an attempt to lighten the mood. “But we’ll soon find out.”

  She keyed a new series of instructions for the scarabs, and immediately four of them detached their monolinks and scurried from the hole. The fifth and sixth moved forward to report what happened.

  Saba held herself still, despite every muscle yearning to strike, and strike fast. For the time they scurried across the wall, the four hand-sized assassin droids remained invisible to them. Then Saba noticed one appear at the top of the display, cautiously creeping across the ceiling. A second one appeared to the right; a third to the left, slinking along the floor like a sinister insect. The fourth was still out of sight, and Saba found herself leaning slightly as if this would somehow afford her a better view.

  The Yuuzhan Vong were still deep in conversation, totally oblivious to the scarabs making their way toward them. The scruffier of the pair leaned forward to adjust the trim, causing the scarabs on either side to momentarily freeze in their tracks. The one on the ceiling, however, kept moving, giving cause for Saba to hold her breath in nervous anticipation. What if they heard it? What if they looked up right now? The entire mission could be blown in an instant.

  She watched as the scarab crept forward another body’s length until it was positioned directly above the other alien. Then, turning ninety degrees and angling its head downward, it released its grip from the ceiling.

  The Yuuzhan Vong howled in pain and surprise as the metal fangs of the scarab sank deep into his arm. He stood abruptly, snatching the tiny droid from his arm and smashing it viciously against the wall. The second warrior stood also, looking to see what the commotion from his comrade was all about. As he did, one of the other scarabs launched itself at him, taking him under the armpit where the vonduun crab armor was traditionally weakest, but the fangs didn’t dig deep enough for the poison to be effective and the scarab was instantly swept aside.

  At first the two warriors were startled by the attack and didn’t seem to realize where it was coming from. But it only took a second to recover and get their bearings. Even though they were in what would have been regarded as a dishonorable position for warriors, they were both still formidable fighters, trained by years of torture and self-deprivation to respond instantly to any crisis.

  They reached into their armor for weapons. One had only a coufee, but the other had an amphistaff that stirred and spat viciously in his hands. The second scarab droid tried another leap at the one it had attacked, but was easily batted out of the air by the warrior, and this time was destroyed. The third and fourth scarabs quickly joined the fray, one crawling up the uninjured Yuuzhan Vong’s leg and trying to plant its fangs into his thigh, the other leaping for his face. The confined space barely seemed able to contain the sudden noise and movement as the amphistaff whirled and scarab fragments smashed against the walls.

  Danni bit her lip as she ordered in the fifth assassin droid. It jumped on the back of the unbitten warrior, managing to get a decent purchase. Finding a gap
in the vonduun crab armor, it emptied its reservoirs directly into the Yuuzhan Vong’s bloodstream. He shouted in alarm as his partner disposed of it with a single, precise slash of his coufee. The strong, slender needles, however, remained embedded in the warrior’s flesh. With seemingly little effort or discomfort, he twisted around and yanked them out. Wincing only slightly, he held them up to the light to see. All-too-alert eyes squinted malevolently at the tiny machine.

  “The poison isn’t working!” There was a nervous panic in Danni’s voice.

  “Grakh,” the Yuuzhan Vong spat, throwing the needles aside. The other struck the biological console in front of him and shouted more angry words in their own tongue. Alarms began to wail as one of the warrior’s hands went into the control sacs. A villip everted itself on the console and the head of a distant superior began to add more shouting to the racket.

  The droids had failed and the alarm had gone out. Reinforcements would no doubt arrive soon. Saba’s heart lurched into her throat as she felt a shudder roll through the ship and realized that the slaveship’s drives had just fired at full thrust. In the organic screen, the strangely distorted shape of Braxant Bonecrusher began to shrink.

  She gripped the flesh of the wall impotently as the crush of bodies seemed to tighten around her. There was nothing she could do but watch helplessly as her only hope of survival receded into the distance …

  The chuk’a was a simple creature, bred to turn the base compounds found in stone and dust into pearly building material, and when asked to rest its slumber was complete. There was a specific series of stimulations to be applied in order to bring it to life again; the ex-shaper Yus Sh’roth would have been able to tell Nom Anor what they were. He would also have warned against startling the chuk’a out of its hibernation because, under the circumstances, that could only mean disaster.

  The dagger in its side wrenched the creature from its sleep, thrusting it into a world of pain—the shock of which triggered a defensive spasm that caused the chuk’a to retract its anchors from the sides of the shaft. The mass of the chuk’a was too great for the bottom of the structure it had built, and to which it was still attached. As a result, the shell on which Nom Anor and Kunra stood gave way, sending them hurtling downward, along with the creature.

  Luckily—although it didn’t feel so at the time—the slope of the vent provided enough friction to slow their fall. It also made the chuk’a and its attached chunk of shell tumble, sending its two passengers bouncing around inside the small space, smashing against hardened shell and occasionally slashing themselves against sharp edges. Nom Anor rolled himself into a ball to protect his stomach and head and tried to relax every muscle in his body. Kunra was somewhere nearby, howling in fear as they continued to plummet. Through the shell they could feel the chuk’a frantically scrabbling for a grip on the sides of the walls as they swept past. Its stubby limbs had no success, and fared badly against the unyielding surfaces. With shell to protect it on just one side, it was sorely battered by the tumble and fell silent and limp just moments before they reached the end of the vent.

  Nom Anor and Kunra had no warning that it was coming. One moment they were bouncing off the ferrocrete walls; the next they were tumbling in free fall. In its own way, that silent descent was worse than the crashing and bumping. It was impossible to know what awaited them at the bottom of their fall or how far it might be, and there was nothing to check their acceleration.

  With a bone-jarring crunch followed by another brief moment of weightless spinning, then a second impact that seemed even more brutal than the first, the chuk’a reached the end of its downward journey. The sound of shell cracking was loud in Nom Anor’s ears as the plug broke in two and fell in pieces around the body of the creature that had created it. His remaining momentum carried him several meters across the surface of what felt like a giant bowl. The refuse of centuries crunched and crackled under him as he groaned and rolled onto his side. Every centimeter of him was screaming with pain, as if his entire body had been pummeled by dozens of amphistaffs at once.

  When silence had settled around him, Nom Anor struggled to sit upright. It hurt, but he refused to acknowledge it with a groan or a cry. He had learned over the years not to become a slave to unavoidable pain, but to use it as a goad.

  With teeth clenched, he moved through the rubble on his hands and knees to where the lambent had fallen nearby, a lonely star in a world of darkness. He took it and examined the place where they had come to rest.

  It was indeed a shallow bowl, but one made of some kind of metal and surrounded by a lip almost a meter high. That was all he could see; the bowl seemed to be hanging in a vast and empty space—a space so large that echoes off its distant walls and ceiling were smothered by the silent shadows. There was no sign of the bottom of the vent, nor of any other wreckage that had followed them down. That meant that the Shamed Ones’ nest was still intact. Had it become detached from the vent walls and followed them down, the warriors riding along with it would have been the least of Nom Anor’s worries.

  The chuk’a itself appeared to be dead. Its mollusklike form had burst and splattered over a large area of the bowl, its body cushioning its passengers and their shell saddle from the bulk of the impact. Lumps of gray flesh oozed clear fluids everywhere he looked, while jagged fragments of shell lay among the organic wreckage, some still settling.

  Suddenly, into the quiet, Kunra cried out in pain. Fearful of how far the sound would carry, Nom Anor quickly rose to his feet and circled the body of the chuk’a to where the ex-warrior lay. The Shamed One was on his back, one leg impaled on a chunk of shell. Trying to sit up, Kunra reached for the approaching lambent glow, but the movement was too much for him and he fell back down with another cry.

  “Help me,” he panted breathlessly when Nom Anor stood over him.

  “Why?” Nom Anor felt nothing but contempt for Kunra’s pitiable whining in the face of pain.

  “What?” the ex-warrior spat.

  “Why should I help you?” Nom Anor repeated calmly.

  “Because I’m bleeding to death!”

  Nom Anor directed the light from the lambent over Kunra’s extensive injuries. From the way the dark fluid was spurting from the leg wound, along with the alarmingly pale taint to Kunra’s skin, it seemed likely that the ex-warrior’s assessment of his condition was correct.

  “You left your friends to die,” Nom Anor said. “Do you think you deserve to live?”

  “Do you?” It was clear from Kunra’s expression that just talking was causing him a lot of discomfort.

  “They weren’t my friends.”

  “Niiriit—” Kunra stopped, wincing from a pain that was both physical and mental.

  Nom Anor crouched down beside the ex-warrior. “That’s been bothering you since I came along—hasn’t it, Kunra?” he said, grinning despite the terrible throbbing of his own injuries. “Once I arrived, she had no interest in you anymore. You were no one.”

  Kunra winced and sucked air through clenched teeth. “You ruined everything,” he managed to hiss out.

  Nom Anor shook his head. “And you weren’t even there for her at the end, were you?” he said. “If you had really cared—”

  “All right!” Kunra gasped. The blue sacks under his eyes were growing as white as his scars. “I didn’t care enough to die with her. Is that what you want to hear? I didn’t care enough. Just help me. Please! I’ll do anything. Don’t let me die!”

  Kunra’s pleading became fragmented and confused. The pulsing from his leg had slowed to a trickle. Nom Anor waited until the ex-warrior had lapsed fully into unconsciousness before kneeling beside the injured man and reaching into the pack he had brought with him, removing the few medical provisions he had pilfered while on his upward excursions with I’pan.

  The Shamed One’s leg wasn’t broken. That was lucky. Nom Anor had decided that he would expend the effort to deal with the wound, but there was a limit to what he could treat. He injected microscopic knut
h bugs into the dying man’s circulatory system to replace the lost blood. Clip beetles closed the wound, once the coral had been removed. A porrh wash kept harmful germs at bay and a neathlat covered the wound beneath a living bandage. There would be nothing for the pain, though; it wasn’t the Yuuzhan Vong way. And even if he did have something, he would not have administered it. He wanted Kunra to be completely focused when he awoke. Focused and grateful.

  While he waited for that moment to come, he explored his surroundings. The lip of the bowl wasn’t uniform all the way around. There was an indentation at a point where a long, exceedingly massive arm led off into the darkness, presumably attaching the bowl to a wall in the distance. The top of the arm was flat and roughly two meters wide; he would have to walk across it, if there was anywhere to walk to. Below the bowl there was nothing to be seen at all, and he wasn’t about to take a chance on another fall.

  As he stood staring into the darkness, he realized that he had passed an important hurdle. He had not just endured the underworld of Yuuzhan’tar; he had endured an attack from his own kind. He was now most definitely a fugitive, and that hammered home the fact that mere survival was not enough. Any peace he found in the catacombs would always be an illusion, whether it was the heresy or his name that brought the warriors down upon him.

  Kunra moaned. Nom Anor went over to him and pressed the coufee against the injured man’s throat just as his eyes flickered open.

  “Understand this,” Nom Anor said. “I could have let you die. But do not allow the fact that you are alive deceive you into believing that I won’t kill you out of hand, now or in the future.”

  Kunra didn’t appear frightened; he was probably too weak from his injuries to feel anything much apart from shock.

  “I’m not fool enough to think that, Nom Anor,” Kunra said. Fluid rattled in his lungs as he spoke; he coughed once to clear it, spitting the gray-green mucus into the dust at his side. Then, fixing his wavering eyes on Nom Anor again, he said “I am too aware of your reputation. You do nothing that doesn’t benefit your own cause.”