Ylesia

by Walter Jon Williams

  The most important thing about Dagga was that she was smart enough to know when she was well off. Others might offer her a large sum to kill Thrackan, but they weren’t going to offer her a kilo of spice per week.

  The spice was the only thing on Ylesia that passed for money. The Yuuzhan Vong intendants in charge of running his supposed economy hadn’t even seen a need for money. Their chief economic principle was that those who obeyed orders and did their work without question would be rewarded with shelter and food. It hadn’t occurred to them that a person might want a little more than organic glop to eat, a membranous cavern to live in, and an overgrown fungus to sit on. A person might prefer to live in marble halls enjoying a bath with golden fixtures, and the latest-model atmosphere craft.

  Dagga looked up at him. “Is there anything you’d like me to do right now?”

  Thrackan sat, fingers stroking the smooth polished surface of his desk. “Evaluate security here in my office, and in my residence. If you can’t fix whatever’s wrong, tell me and I’ll fix it.”

  She flipped him a casual salute. “Right, Chief.”

  “And if you can recommend any reliable people to assist you . . .”

  She tilted her head in thought. “I’ll think about it. Reliability isn’t one of the more common Peace Brigade virtues.”

  “Did I say Peace Brigade?”

  Dagga seemed startled by the vehemence of Thrackan’s words.

  “I said reliable. I’ll import someone if he’s good enough. Though,” he admitted, “I prefer them human.”

  A white smile flashed across Dagga’s features. “I’ll put together a little list,” she said.

  There was a knock on the door. Dagga made a slight adjustment to her clothing to enhance her homicidal capabilities, and Thrackan said, “Who is it?”

  It was his chief of communications, an Etti named Mdimu. “Beg pardon, sir,” he said, “but the advance party for the joint maneuvers has entered the system.”

  “When are they scheduled to arrive?” Thrackan asked.

  “They’ll be landing at the spaceport in approximately two hours.”

  “Very good. Send the quednak to the spaceport now, and I’ll follow in my landspeeder at the appropriate time.”

  “Ah—“ Mdimu hesitated. “Sir? Your Excellency?”

  “Yes?”

  “The Yuuzhan Vong—they don’t like machinery, sir. If you arrive at the spaceport in a landspeeder they may consider it an insult.”

  Thrackan sighed, then explained slowly and simply so that even an alien like Mdimu could understand. “I’ll arrive before the Vong and then send the landspeeder back to its docking bay. I will return with the Vong on the riding beasts. But I will not ride those stupid six-legged flatulent herbivorous lumbering ninnies to the spaceport when I don’t have to. Understand?”

  Mdimu hesitated, then nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “And please tell the construction gangs to keep their machinery out of sight while the Vong are in town.”

  “Yes. Of course, Your Excellency.”

  Mdimu left the room. Dagga Marl and Thrackan exchanged looks.

  “Of this I build a nation,” he said.

  The Yuuzhan Vong frigate analog, which looked like a large brownish green lump of vomit, arrived escorted by two squadrons of coralskippers, which looked like rather uninteresting rocks. Thrackan’s official bodyguards—whom he would not have trusted to guard his body if it were the last on Ylesia, and who were most likely in the pay of various factions of the Senate anyway—shuffled into line and presented their amphistaffs.

  Amphistaffs. One of the Yuuzhan Vong’s most annoying and dangerous exports. Thrackan gave his official bodyguards a wide berth, as experience had shown they weren’t very good at controlling the weapon their Yuuzhan Vong sponsors had so graciously given them. The previous week he’d lost two guards, bitten during practice by their own weapons’ poisonous heads.

  Followed by his real bodyguard, Dagga Marl, Thrackan marched to the frigate analog and waited. Eventually a part of the hull withdrew somehow, and an object like a giant, wart-encrusted tongue flopped down to touch the landing field. Down this ramp came a double file of Yuuzhan Vong armored warriors with amphistaffs—which these warriors looked as if they knew how to use. Once formed on the pavement, they were followed by Supreme Commander Maal Lah, architect of the Yuuzhan Vong capture of Coruscant.

  Maal Lah’s appearance was presentable, for a Yuuzhan Vong. Unlike Nom Anor, with his brand-new plaeryin bol implant—this eye replacement even larger and nastier than the one he had lost—or Shimrra, who was so scarred and mutilated that his face looked as if it had gone through a threshing machine, Maal Lah’s regular features were still recognizable as features. He’d restrained the impulse to carve himself up in honor of his vicious gods, and for the most part settled for red and blue tattoos. Thrackan could actually look at him without wanting to lose his lunch. If he let his eyes go slightly out of focus, the tattoos formed an abstract pattern that was almost pleasing.

  He made a note to try to keep his eyes slightly out of focus for the rest of the day.

  “Greetings, Commander,” he said. “Welcome to Ylesia.”

  Maal Lah had fortunately brought a translator along, a member of the intendant caste who had cut off an ear and replaced it with a glistening, semitranslucent sluglike creature the function of which Thrackan preferred not to contemplate.

  “Salutations, President Sal-Solo,” Maal Lah said through his translator. “I come to remind you of your submission and to bring your fleet to its obedience.”

  “Er—quite,” Thrackan said. A fine way with diplomacy these Vong have. “The intendants on Ylesia have . . . grown . . . your damutek. Would you care to see it?”

  “First I will inspect your guard.”

  Thrackan stayed on the far side of Maal Lah as the warrior inspected the Presidential Guard, hoping that if Maal Lah were accidentally sprayed with poison, Thrackan himself might have a running head start before Yuuzhan Vong warriors began to massacre everyone present. Fortunately no fatalities occurred.

  “A shabby lot of useless wretches, totally without spirit or discipline,” Maal Lah commented as he walked with Thrackan to the riding beasts.

  “I agree, Commander,” Thrackan said.

  “Discipline and order should be beaten into them. What I wouldn’t give to see them in the hands of the great Czulkang Lah.”

  Now that might be fun, Thrackan thought, though without knowing who or what Czulkang Lah might be. Thrackan always enjoyed a good thrashing, provided he wasn’t the one on the receiving end.

  “I’ll dismiss their commander,” he said. Their commander was a Duros, and therefore expendable. He’d replace the Duros with a human, provided he could find one who might conceivably be loyal.

  “I trust the Peace Brigade fleet is ready?” Maal Lah said.

  “Admiral Capo assures me that they are fully trained and alert, and eager to serve alongside their gallant allies, the Yuuzhan Vong.” Actually Thrackan had no great hope for the motley force that was the Peace Brigade fleet. In fact he rather hoped that Maal Lah would be so disgusted as to execute the Rodian Admiral Capo, thus providing another vacancy Thrackan could fill with a human.

  Again, if he could find one to trust. Here that always seemed to be the problem.

  Reflecting that he was a little old for this sort of thing, Thrackan followed Maal Lah up the vine ladder to the purple-green resinous tower atop the six-legged form of a Yuuzhan Vong riding beast. The quednak’s moss-covered scales reeked of something that needed flushing down the nearest sewer. At the urging of its intendant handler, the beast lurched to its feet and set off for Peace City at a slow walk. Thrackan hoped the motion wouldn’t make him ill.

  A pair of swoop analogs—open-cockpit fliers with a crew of two and sped along by dovin basals—rose to take position on either side of the riding beast. Maal Lah wasn’t trusting his life entirely to guards who moved on foot.

  Thr
ackan cast a glance at the double file of Yuuzhan Vong warriors trotting along in the big reptoid’s wake. By the time they traveled the twenty-two kilometers to Peace City, perhaps even the fabled Yuuzhan Vong would be tired of the pace.

  “Now that we have more of your people on the planet,” Thrackan ventured, “I wonder if we might better provide for their spiritual needs.”

  Maal Lah’s answer was dry. “How would you do that, Excellency?”

  “There are no temples to your gods here. Perhaps we could provide one for your people.”

  “That is a generous thought, Excellency. Of course, it is we who would have to provide the template for the structure, and, of course, the priest.”

  “We could donate the ground, at least.”

  “So you could.” Maal Lah considered for a moment. “As with many of my clan, I have always been a devotee of Yun-Yammka, the Slayer. It would be an act of devotion to foster his worship on a new world. Of course, the worship requires sacrifice . . .”

  “Plenty of slaves for that purpose,” Thrackan said, as heartily as he could manage.

  Maal Lah bowed his head. “Very good. So long as you are willing to donate one from time to time.”

  Thrackan waved a hand dismissively. “Anything we can do for our brothers.” At least he could make sure none of the victims were human. “I have a piece of land already in mind,” he added.

  He certainly did. The land in question was adjacent to the Altar of Promises, where the t’landa Til administered to the slaves their daily dose of telepathic euphoria. The t’landa Til were said to have powers over all humanoid species, and Thrackan was inclined to wonder if that included the Yuuzhan Vong.

  The sight of the Yuuzhan Vong rolling about in ecstatic bliss would certainly be a pleasing one. The sight would be even more pleasing if he could get the mighty warriors addicted to their daily blast of cosmic communion, as were the slaves.

  It seemed worth sacrificing a few aliens to have a whole regiment of Yuuzhan Vong addicts willing to do anything Thrackan suggested in return for a daily ecstatic thunderbolt from their god.

  Thrackan chuckled to himself. And Shimrra thought he was an expert on the taking of vengeance.

  So agreeable did Thrackan find this vision that he almost missed Maal Lah’s next statement.

  “You should prepare yourself and the Senate for a special visitor in the next few days.”

  It took Thrackan a few seconds to realize the import of this. All his pleasing fantasies vanished like vapor before the wind.

  “Shimrra’s coming here?” he gasped.

  Maal Lah snarled at him. “The Supreme Overlord,” he corrected savagely, “will remain in his new capital until the gods tell him otherwise. No, it’s another who will soon be paying you an official visit. With this one you will sign a treaty of peace, mutual aid, and nonaggression.” A smile snarled its way across the warrior’s face. “Prepare yourself to meet the Chief of State of the New Republic.”

  The streaming stars flashed and nailed themselves to the heavens, and the Ylesia system leapt into life on Jacen’s displays. Alarms bleeped at the realization that the ships in orbit around the planet were enemy. Jacen closed up on Jaina, the formation leader, his X-wing tucked in neatly behind his sister’s fighter.

  “Twin Suns Squadron, check in!” Jaina’s voice on the comm.

  “Twin Two,” said Jaina’s Neimoidian wingmate, Vale, “in realspace with all systems normative.”

  “Twin Three,” another pilot said. “In realspace. All systems normative.”

  The pilots all checked in, all the way to Jacen, who had been added to Jaina’s flight as Twin Thirteen. He made his report, the Force filling his mind, and through it he felt the Jedi: fierce, loyal Lowbacca and the exhilarated Tesar near at hand; Corran Horn distracted by his own pilots’ checklist; the cold-blooded exhilaration of Saba Sebatyne and her Wild Knights. And, more distantly, with other elements of the fleet, the concentration of Tahiri, the melancholy determination of Alema Rar, the confidence of Zekk, and the sheer power of Kyp Durron, a power very much akin to rage.

  And, most clearly of all, Jacen felt the presence of Jaina, her mind ablaze with machinelike calculation.

  The Jedi meld filled Jacen’s mind, a psychic feedback mechanism between himself and the other Jedi. He was impressed by the meld’s power, and by how it had grown since he’d last experienced it on Myrkr. There, it had been a mixed blessing, but then the Jedi war party at Myrkr had been divided among themselves. Here, they were united in a single purpose.

  Jacen’s sensitivity to the Force had grown within the meld, and he was aware of the other lives around him, the non-Jedi pilots of Twin Suns Squadron, and others nearby, particularly the disciplined minds of Jagged Fel’s Chiss squadron, which flew to port and slightly behind them. Jag had volunteered his squadron for this fight, even though they weren’t technically a part of Kre’fey’s command. Once Kre’fey had been reminded that Jag’s veterans had originally been a part of Twin Suns Squadron before being split off, he’d accepted Jag’s offer.

  “Listen up, people.” Jaina’s voice came again on the comm. “I know we outnumber the enemy, but that doesn’t make the ordnance they’ll shoot at us any less real. This isn’t a drill, and you can get killed if you’re not careful. I want everyone to stick with their wingmate and keep an eye open for an enemy maneuvering to get behind you. Streak,” she said to Lowbacca, “I want your flight to our right, a couple of klicks behind. Tesar, you’re flying above and behind.”

  Above was a meaningless term in space, but it was easier than saying “ninety degrees from my and Lowbacca’s axis,” and Tesar knew what she meant, anyway.

  “Copy,” Tesar said, and Lowbacca gave an answering roar.

  “Remember that Jag Fel’s to our left. Understood?”

  There was a chorus of acknowledgments.

  “Right then,” Jaina said. “Let’s teach these traitors a thing or two.”

  Jacen was impressed. He hadn’t realized Jaina had become such an effective leader. Her performance was even more impressive because, through the Jedi meld, he could also sense her scanning her displays while she was talking, minding her comm channels, and worrying about her inexperienced pilots while trying to work out tactics that would keep them from killing themselves.

  Jacen kept his fighter tucked into formation behind Jaina’s, an extra wingmate for Twin Leader. His eyes scanned the displays and saw that Kre’fey’s entire armada had by now entered realspace, three task forces grouped as close to Ylesia as the planet’s mass shadow would permit. Each of the three groups was the equal of the entire Peace Brigade fleet, and they had the enemy force trapped between them. The only hope for the enemy commander was to leave orbit instantly and attack one of Kre’fey’s task forces, hoping to smash through it before the others arrived to overwhelm him.

  Moments ticked by, and the enemy commander made no move. His only real hope was slipping through his fingers.

  And then the enemy fleet moved, choosing as its target Twin Suns Squadron, and the task force behind it.

  The Chief of State of the New Republic was in the middle of his address to the Ylesian Senate when one of Thrackan’s aides—the human one, fortunately—came scuttling down the aisle of the Senate building and began to whisper in Thrackan’s ear. Maal Lah, who was watching the speech from another seat nearby, suddenly became very preoccupied with talking into one of the villips he wore on the shoulders of his armor.

  Thrackan listened to the aide’s agitated whisper, then nodded and rose. “I regret the necessity of interrupting,” he began, and saw the Senate’s malevolent gaze immediately turn in his direction. “A fleet from the New Republic has appeared in Ylesian space.” He watched the august Senatorial heads turn to one another in growing panic as a buzzing filled the hall. Thrackan turned to the Chief of State of the New Republic.

  “You didn’t tell anyone you were coming, did you?” he asked.

  If it weren’t a dire emergency in wh
ich he might be killed, Thrackan might almost enjoy this.

  “These are rebels!” the New Republic Chief of State proclaimed. “Rebels against rightful authority! They wouldn’t dare fire on their leader!”

  “Perhaps,” Thrackan suggested, “you’d care to get on the comm and order them to stop.”

  The Chief of State hesitated, then came down from the podium. “This is the sort of misunderstanding that can only be cleared up later. Perhaps we should, umm, seek shelter first.”

  “An excellent idea,” Thrackan said, and turned again to the Senate. “I suggest that the honorable members proceed to the shelter.” As a few bolted at top speed for the exit, he added, “In an orderly manner!”—as if it would do any good. His words only seemed to accelerate their flight, desks overturning as the founders of the noble Ylesian Republic jammed shoulder to shoulder in the doors.

  Thrackan turned to Maal Lah and suppressed a shrug. These people hadn’t betrayed their own galaxy out of an excess of courage, and he couldn’t say he was surprised by their behavior.

  The Yuuzhan Vong commander was barking into his little shoulder villip. His translator sidled up to Thrackan.

  “Commander Lah is ordering the forces that were already in transit for the joint maneuvers to come at once.”

  “Very good. Will the commander be going to his command ship?”

  “The distance to the spaceport is too great.”

  Especially if you’re traveling at the pace of a fat ugly Hutt-sized reptoid, Thrackan thought.

  “I can offer the commander room in our shelter,” Thrackan said.

  “The commander has no need of the shelter,” the translator said. “He will instead take charge of the troops here in the capital.”

  “Excellent! I’m sure we’re in good hands.”

  Maal Lah finished his one-sided conversation and stalked toward Thrackan, his fingers curled around his baton of rank. “I will need to take command of your Presidential Guard and your paramilitaries.”