“What about Syrtik?” she asked when Jag had finished updating her. “What’s happened to him?”
Jag’s pale green eyes seemed to glint with amusement. “Would you believe he’s been nominated for a military honor? Jobath has been really on the spot. Syrtik’s a national hero, the people love him, but at the end of the day he did disobey orders not to get involved. Jobath has to go along with it to save face, but he certainly doesn’t like it.” He shrugged. “So everything turned out for the best in the end, eh?”
“Not for the Yevetha, it didn’t,” she said, distractedly scooping some of the soup onto her spoon.
His expression sobered. “I know; I’m sorry. I read your report. It’s brief but to the point.”
Jaina vividly remembered the last words of the Yevethan pilot before he blew up his ship, preferring death—not only for himself, but for his species—rather than be rescued by aliens and become contaminated.
Run from them if you like, he had said about the Yuuzhan Vong, the destroyers of his civilization, but it will do you no good. There is no safety anywhere.
Even though the tide had turned for the Galactic Alliance, the war had been so long and they had lost so much that she sometimes found it easy to believe that the galaxy would never know peace again. And even if it did, it was unlikely that life in it would ever be the same, no matter what the outcome.
“I’m sorry about Miza,” she said, regretting her snap assessment of the Chiss pilot’s shortcomings. What had she known about him, really? Nothing, except that he’d flown well and occasionally irritated her. She didn’t know how old he was, if he had family back home, or whether he had someone special who would mourn him. She didn’t even know if he and Jag had been friends, but she felt the urge to tell him she was sorry anyway, because she was sorry.
“It wasn’t your fault, Jaina,” Jag said. His hand came over the top of hers in a gesture of reassurance.
“Falling afoul of an ambush while simply trying to help someone,” she said, shaking her head sadly. “It seems like such an inglorious way to die.”
“I don’t think there are necessarily any good ways to die, Jaina.”
“He’ll be missed, won’t he?” she asked.
“Of course,” he said. “For his good points as well as his bad.”
Jaina nodded. “And now the squad is one short.”
“After only our first mission, too,” he said somberly. “Not a good start, is it?”
She turned her hand beneath his, locking their fingers together and squeezing. He squeezed back, but with obvious reservations. She sighed, feeling guilty for having ruined the good mood he’d been in.
“I’m sure everything will be okay, Jag,” she said. “I know this is a strange way to run a squadron, but once we’ve ironed out the bugs—”
“That’s not what concerns me, Jaina,” he said. “I actually think we work well together. But if what your mother says is true, if the Vong have been reopening old wounds in order to exploit the aftereffects …” He trailed off uncomfortably.
“What, Jag?”
“Well …” He shrugged and pulled his hand away from hers. There was something on his mind; she didn’t need the Force to see that. “It may be nothing, but the New Republic and the Chiss haven’t always been on the best of terms. After Thrawn—”
“Thrawn was an Imperial. We know the difference.”
“But to us he was a Chiss, Jaina. The Expansionary Defense Fleet has been struggling for decades to protect our borders. Using the Empire as a tool, Thrawn made more progress in a few years than all the others combined. Yes, he may have overreached at the end, but still, when the New Republic finally defeated him, there were many among us who mourned. That’s partly why we tend to side with the Empire. It’s not just because we’re closer to them than we are to you along most of our borders. There’s still resentment.”
“You’re telling me the Chiss might work with the Yuuzhan Vong against us?”
Jag shrugged. “No, I’m not saying that. There will always be some who would rather hear a convincing lie than an uncomfortable truth. The right words in the wrong ears might have repercussions for the Galactic Alliance.”
“Great.” She pushed her bowl of soup aside, her appetite suddenly spoiled. “And that’s Uncle Luke’s next stop, after the Empire.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, looking down awkwardly at his hands. “It’s probably nothing. I didn’t really want to worry you about it.”
There was something in the way he said this that made her study him more closely. “But there’s something I should be worried about, isn’t there?”
He glanced up, and she could see the uncertainty in his eyes. Without saying a word, he removed something from his pocket and placed it on the table between them.
Jaina felt her stomach frost the moment she looked down and saw it. The last time she had seen anything like this had been on the worldship around Myrkr, before Anakin had died. There had been Yuuzhan Vong temples there, some larger than most cities; each had featured gruesome effigies to their cruel and insatiable gods. One in particular stood out. In her worst nightmares, like the one she’d recently awakened from, she saw a particular face looming at her out of the dark, graven from coral slabs that rose scores of meters high into the air.
The fact that this particular image was made from a silvery bonelike substance and was barely larger than her thumb didn’t matter. The face was the same: it was Yun-Yammka, the Slayer.
Jaina looked up at Jag; he was watching her closely.
“Where did you get this?” she asked, unable to keep the anger and disgust from her voice. It took all of her effort to resist snatching the thing from the table and throwing it down a garbage chute. It was an abomination, an incitement to horror. As far as she was concerned, no sane individual would ever want to own such a thing. “Where did it come from?”
There was no escaping the accusation in her tone.
“It came from Tahiri,” he said with some apology. “She dropped it when she collapsed on Galantos.”
The frost quickly spread to Jaina’s heart, and for the longest time she didn’t know what to say.
The coufee came up so quickly that Shoon-mi didn’t even have a chance to see it. With the blade across his throat, he was dragged back into the crack leading from the anonymous sub-basement to the access tunnel that led deeper into the underground.
“Who has betrayed us?” hissed a voice in his ear. “Who sent the warriors to kill I’pan and Niiriit?”
Shoon-mi flailed wildly but was unable to break free. The blade of the coufee was so sharp he didn’t even realize it had cut him until he felt the blood trickling down his chest. He stopped wriggling, then, panting heavily and fearfully.
“Kunra!” he called out, but the word came out as barely more than a gasp.
The shamed warrior stood nearby in the center of the basement, unmoved by Shoon-mi’s plea for assistance. Instead of coming to his help, Kunra merely folded his arms across his chest to watch coldly.
“Who has betrayed us?” Shoon-mi’s attacker repeated, allowing the coufee to bite a little deeper into the flesh.
“It wasn’t me!” Shoon-mi cried desperately, realizing that no one would be coming to his aid. “I swear it wasn’t!”
In an instant the coufee was gone, and a knee in his back pushed him sprawling to the ground. He pressed at the cut on his throat with his hand, fearful that his lifeblood was flowing away.
“You’ll live,” growled the one who had cut him. The figure stepped from the shadows to loom over him. The coufee was held menacingly by his side, its blade darkened with Shoon-mi’s blood. “And you will tell me what you know.”
Shoon-mi stared up into the horrible, one-eyed visage. “Amorrn?” His voice trembled.
Nom Anor nodded slowly, pinching the coufee blade between two fingers and wiping the blood from it. “But this is no time for reacquainting ourselves,” he said. “You have ten seconds to tell me what I wan
t to hear, or this blade will open your veins and drink from your filthy—”
“It wasn’t me, I swear!” the Shamed One repeated frantically. “It wasn’t any of us! The warriors weren’t looking for Niiriit or the others. They were looking for thieves! Supplies had gone missing and they guessed that one of the underground groups was responsible. Yours was the third they hit that night. They wiped all of them out. Not just you; not just Niiriit. We didn’t know in advance so we couldn’t warn you. It happened too quickly.” Shoon-mi scrabbled desperately backward in the dirt as Nom Anor loomed over him. “I’m telling you the truth! Please …”
“We’re making too much noise,” said Kunra, who still hadn’t moved.
Nom Anor ignored him. “Just thieves?” he hissed. “Nothing to do with the heresy? Nothing to do with me?”
“No, just thieves.” Shoon-mi continued to back away from Nom Anor. “I wouldn’t lie to you, Amorrn. I’m telling the truth!”
The coufee disappeared as Nom Anor fixed the whimpering Shamed One with a look of distaste. “Do not ever call me that again,” he said. “It is a name that belongs to someone else.”
Weak with relief, Shoon-mi slumped against a wall while his attacker moved away to think.
Not the heresy. Not me … Nom Anor’s mind spun. All through their long ascent to the basement levels, he had felt safe assuming that the attack had been politically motivated—if not against him then certainly against the ideas I’pan was propagating. Kunra had set up the meeting with Shoon-mi as a first attempt to find out who had betrayed them. And when they knew who it was, Nom Anor would have killed without hesitation.
But if he hadn’t been betrayed, if the attack had simply been a case of bad luck, then that changed everything. Neither the heresy nor he was being actively hunted. He could breathe easier for a while, could stop imagining regiments of warriors at every turn, waiting to ambush him. He could pause long enough to think and decide what needed to be done next.
He almost chuckled aloud at the irony. The warriors might not have been hunting him specifically, but it was still he who had brought death to Niiriit and the others. He and I’pan had been stealing with some regularity from the upper levels, using access codes he remembered from his years as an executor. The thefts, clearly, had not gone unnoticed, and the killing party had been sent in to the underground to mop up anyone likely to be responsible. He had brought death down upon those who had saved his life just as surely as the warriors who had actually wielded the amphistaffs.
He looked at Kunra. Through the gloom he could see the ex-warrior’s stoic expression, and wondered if behind that impassive stare he wasn’t coming to the same conclusions.
Nom Anor stepped forward and extended a hand to Shoon-mi, who eyed it uncertainly for a moment before nervously taking it and allowing himself to be helped to his feet. Resisting the powerful urge to stab Shoon-mi through the heart, then dispatch Kunra just as quickly, Nom Anor manufactured an expression of relief and let it wash over him.
“We are safe, then,” he said, speaking as much to Kunra as to Shoon-mi. “If what you say is true, then the warriors won’t be hunting us. As long as the thefts cease, we should be able to live unharmed. Yes?”
“There have been no more thefts,” said Shoon-mi, nodding. “The way of the Jeedai is safe. No one has betrayed us—and no one will! You have seen yourself the way we spread the message. You know that we are careful who we choose to hear it. The word is safe.”
The Message. Nom Anor paced across the room, conscious of Kunra’s eyes tracking him every step of the way. He had heard the Jedi heresy referred to as the message on occasions before and thought it a suitable euphemism. Whichever word was being obscured—Jedi, insurrection, hope—the nature of it was the same. The message was anathema to Shimrra, and that was all that mattered to Nom Anor.
But it was becoming increasingly clear to him that at this rate the message would never reach Shimrra directly. It had been irrelevant to the warriors who had attacked the communities in the underworld of Yuuzhan’tar; heretics, if the warriors even knew they existed, ranked lower than thieves in terms of priorities. For the message—as well as Nom Anor—to reach Shimrra, it would have to break out of the underground, and it would have to do it soon.
“Perhaps we are too careful,” he said, thinking aloud and testing their responses as he spoke. “We hold our revelations close to our chests, much like the priests guard their secrets. We hide the light under cloaks of fear and timidity so that no one else may see it. As long as we continue preaching to the converted, we will never grow, never be strong like the Jedi are strong. The millions like us who deserve to know that there is a better way to live, a freedom that counters everything we have ever been taught—they will remain forever in the darkness. Perhaps the time has come, my friends, to shine our light into the darkness.”
Shoon-mi looked even more nervous than before. “But if we speak openly about the Jeedai, we will be killed!”
“You’re right, Shoon-mi,” Nom Anor said, turning to face him in the shadows. “We would be killed. Therefore we must find new ways to spread the message, to recruit new followers. But we must expand only through the ranks of the Shamed Ones before we dare take our message higher up. As we stand now, we are weak and poorly organized; we will never make a difference like this. We must find strength and take our fate into our own hands—and when we are strong, then we may break free.” He came to stand in front of Shoon-mi and placed his hands on his shoulders. The Shamed One continued to tremble beneath his grip. “To gain everything, my friend, we must risk everything.” His one eye bored deep into Shoon-mi’s own eyes until the Shamed One had to turn away in discomfort. “Are you with me?” Nom Anor whispered close to Shoon-mi’s ear.
The Shamed One nodded uneasily. “I-I shall do what I can, of course,” he said. “I don’t know how to fight, but I do know lots of people.”
“Good,” Nom Anor said, nodding and smiling his pleasure at the Shamed One’s response. “That is indeed good. Word of mouth is our greatest weapon right now.” He turned to face Kunra. “And what of yourself? Are you with us, too?”
The ex-warrior’s eyes glistened in the gloom. This was the crucial moment, Nom Anor knew. If Kunra defied him, he would have to kill both of them and start again from scratch, finding and infiltrating another cell of heretics to turn to his vengeful cause. He might never find one so perfectly primed for the task.
The ex-warrior hesitated, shuffling uncertainly from foot to foot.
“Decide,” Nom Anor prompted as he placed a hand inside his robes. Almost eagerly, the pommel of the coufee found his fingers.
Kunra’s gaze fell to the robe as he nodded slowly. “I am with you,” he said. “For Niiriit and I’pan, and for all of those who have died, I am with you.”
But not for me, Nom Anor thought. It didn’t matter, though. The ex-warrior’s compliance would be enough for now. The task ahead of him would be difficult, and he needed all the help he could get, in whatever spirit it was offered. The heresy as it presently existed was disorganized and internally inconsistent, and would never get any farther than the Shamed Ones. He would need to give it momentum if it was to serve his purposes. Several circular references had developed through numerous retellings; some stories took place on different planets, with different names, at different times. He would need to refine the tale so it suited his needs best, and spread it efficiently enough so it would eradicate the other versions, if only by sheer volume.
It was a long shot, he knew, but it was the only one he had. Nom Anor had dealt with religious fervor before, on Rhommamool, and he knew how to turn a smoldering thought into flames of resistance. But did he dare do it among the Yuuzhan Vong, his own species? This was rank heresy, after all. The Jedi, no matter what good they might do for the Shamed Ones, were still machine users. His conscience—atrophied though it had been by years of treachery—continued to nag at him.
But not for long. He had tried unsuccessfully to c
limb the social ladder imposed by Shimrra, despite being resourceful and intelligent. If he was ever to succeed, he would have to find another way to climb that same ladder that had refused to let him ascend.
Shoon-mi began to say something, snapping him out of his thoughts. “Amorrn—”
“I told you not to call me that!” he snapped. He had told Kunra that a time would come when he would need to choose a new name; perhaps that time had come now. He needed one to carry him in this new direction.
Shoon-mi took an anxious step back. “Then—then what should we call you?”
Nom Anor thought about this for a moment. What name should he choose? Certainly one that would symbolize the work he needed to do in order to ensure his survival, and one that Shimrra would recognize also.
He smiled, then, at a thought. There was a word from an ancient tongue, rarely spoken except in the older worldships. It had connotations for all castes, no matter which god they worshiped. Its meaning was an unmistakable stab at Shimrra, and would be recognized as such by the Shamed Ones he would have to rely on to make the dream possible.
“From now on,” he said to his first two disciples, “you shall call me Yu’Shaa.”
There was a moment’s silence; then Shoon-mi stepped forward a pace, his face creased in consternation.
“Yu’Shaa?” he echoed. “The prophet?”
Nom Anor smiled, nodding. “The Prophet.”
When Grand Admiral Pellaeon convened a brief meeting on the bridge of the Imperial Star Destroyer Right to Rule, twenty-four standard hours after the battle of Borosk, all the surviving Moffs attended, along with those navy admirals and senior officers not committed to the defense of the Empire from the retreating Yuuzhan Vong. Jacen agreed with Pellaeon that there would be a brief period after Vorrik’s defeat during which it would be safe to tie up so many leaders from across the Imperial Remnant; not until the Yuuzhan Vong had regrouped and obtained new orders from Shimrra would there be any serious counterattack from the enemy. The strafing of Yaga Minor on their way out had been little more than an afterthought, easily repelled.
Remnant: Force Heretic I Page 35
